The Core

Is it grift?

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the Federal Reserve has engaged in quantitative tightening, or shrinking its balance sheet, to the tune of $50 billion per month. We are talking about the creation of an ocean of debt, while the Fed has raised rates nine times in the current cycle, in addition to quantitative tightening, which, according to some studies, equates to about two more rate hikes. The Fed wants to raise rates two more times this year, based on its dot plot [individual rate projections by the members of its policy-setting committee]. This is a problem for the stock market. U.S. manufacturing data has deteriorated. Mortgage applications are near an 18-year low. ... Backing off on quantitative tightening would be a big help to the markets, but it won’t happen with the S&P down less than 20%. Stocks would have to fall 30% from their peak for the U.S. central bank to consider this.

I’m negative on emerging markets and have been for the past decade, during which they significantly underperformed developed markets. Emerging markets benefit most from quantitative easing. As interest rates collapsed, they became prolific borrowers on both a country and corporate basis. Second, liquidity risk in these markets is significant. A lot of money is chasing very few stocks and bidding up allocations, even if EM allocations haven’t gone up. There are very good companies in, say, India, but I own none because they don’t compete from an investment standpoint.

Nandan Nilekani, the billionaire founder of Indian IT services giant Infosys Ltd. and the program’s original chairman, calls Aadhaar the modern equivalent of the U.S. instituting Social Security numbers in 1936. He likens the government funding to U.S. federal investments in the interstate highway system and in research projects that led to GPS and the internet.
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Critics also say Aadhaar has been subject to monumental mission creep. It has morphed, they say, from a voluntary program distributing benefits to the poor to one that is effectively required for many facets of daily life. Some schools, for example, have required children to have Aadhaar IDs in order to enroll. Many local governments and businesses now demand Aadhaar numbers for obtaining marriage certificates, purchasing train tickets and even for gaining entrance to cricket matches, in addition to getting bank accounts and phones.

Earlier this year, the Unique Identification Authority of India, the government body that runs the Aadhaar program, lodged a police complaint against a journalist for a story about how she accessed cardholders’ personal data by paying an anonymous seller on WhatsApp 500 rupees ($7.80).

A lot of states have/had laws like that for car sales.

During the Depression, desperate manufacturers often forced dealers to take new vehicles they hadn't ordered. Automakers recruited too many new dealers, including some who sold cars from their houses, storefronts or gravel lots. Such tactics thrust too many dealers into fierce competition with each other.

Established dealers with investments in their dealerships, property, experienced employees and stock turned to discounting vehicle prices and overpaying on trade-ins to make new-vehicle sales. But they were up against brokers and low-investment storefront franchise holders who showed little regard for sales territories.

Competition deteriorated into often unsustainable actions: selling on price alone, fierce price wars, rampant overpaying for used cars, clocking odometers, hiding defects, or otherwise tricking sales customers and overcharging service customers.

Borrowing Prohibition slang, some dealers engaged in bootlegging -- shedding excess new cars by selling them for a few dollars under factory invoice to a broker in another dealer's territory.

In May, NADA’s general manager told the board that, based on the renewal record and members’ difficulty in paying dues, it would be “impossibleto carry the association beyond the first six months of the year without drastic changes.”

The secretary was to find new quarters for the association at a cost not to exceed $50 per month. The board reduced activity to a minimum and for the rest of 1932 employed only a secretary-manager and a stenographer, who also handled bookkeeping. The general counsel, field staff and mailroomclerk were let go.