Trump Bans Fund From Buying Chinese Stocks In First Step Towards Capital Restrictions
The Trump administration is moving ahead with a plan to block the government retirement savings fund from investing in Chinese equities.
The president's decision was conveyed to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia in a letter from Larry Kudlow and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien. Scalia then ordered Michael Kennedy, the chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, to “halt all steps” in connection with a planned shift that would have found government employees investing
Free-market free-trading Kudlow drank the kool-aid and has done a full Graham.
Well, I had quite the email exchange w/ Kudlow during the GFC when he went FULL THROTTLE on every proposed government intervention & bailout. Imo he’d lost any “free market” credentials he had long before that, he just waited til 2008 to openly declare it, while denying it at the same time.
From NYT (Reuters) on May 11-
2019-
US direct investment in China was $14B. China direct investment in US was $5B.
1st Q 2020-
US direct investment In China was $2.3B. China direct investment in US was $200 Million.
So how long after the “right-wing” government decides where companies should build their supply chains, where they import their workers from, who should receive public bailouts or not, who should pay tariffs or not, mandates the cost of money, purchases private debt, dictates which industries may open or close, replaces economic activity with printed money, chooses which companies survives or not, decides which companies make what products by fiat, inveighs on a company’s shipping costs and logistics, tweets about which employees may be retained or fired, and institutes capital controls can we say we have effectively moved past last-stage capitalism? Asking for a Socialist friend.
Wow! You nailed that list. We are all frogs being boiled and the heat is now really up.