July Issue: Best of Dialogue & Discourse
Continued strains on global markets, sweeping protests championing police reform, looming prospects of the November election, among other news and ideas published in our publication this summer.
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Below, our editorial team has curated the most intriguing, valuable pieces featured in our publication this past quarter.
Equity Support for Europe’s Mid-Cap Firms Seek to Alleviate Struggling Factor Markets
by Eric Song
“Debt and liquidity burdens have severely stressed monetary institutions, where European policymakers are avid in minimizing the risk of mass bankruptcies to ensue in the coming months. Early efforts to heavily support large corporations in the common free-market Friedman fashion are now contrasted with proposals of populating public stakes in small and mid-cap businesses.”
Police Reforms Pushed By Democrats Would Not Fundamentally Change Policing
by Kevin Gosztola
“Part of the omnibus legislation contains the “Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act,” which limits the use of some military-grade equipment. It notes $500 million worth of property was transferred to law enforcement and $6.8 billion worth of weapons and equipment were transferred to police in all 50 states and four territories in fiscal year 2017. Members of Congress also propose $5 million a year for a Justice Department task force of bureaucrats that would be called the “Task Force on Law Enforcement Oversight.” It mandates the collection of federal data on traffic violation stops, pedestrian stops, frisk and body searches, and instances where officers use “deadly force” and contains an anti-lynching law.”
Of Course John Kasich Will Be Speaking at the Democratic Convention.
by Lauren Martincheck
“Kasich is often given credit for vetoing incredibly restrictive anti-abortion legislation before he left office, that aimed to ban abortion the moment a fetal heartbeat is detected. Conveniently, those who were so quick to paint him as some sort of moderate, reasonable champion seem to have forgotten the fact that the only reason he did so was because he knew it would never stand.”
The Resource Curse: Russia’s Endless and Enduring Nightmare
by James Holley
“These are the necessary preconditions or structural factors that often precede, and demonstrably do in Russia’s case, an over-dependence on non-renewable resources. Unfortunately for Russia, these structural preconditions for over-dependence only get worse once the resource curse is in full effect, making the solution to the problem that much more elusive […] The resource curse is more appropriately and fully described when it is analyzed in terms of state-ownership of the abundant resources with some scholars going as far as to claim that, “The resource curse might as well be a state-ownership curse” in its entirety (Tompson 2005).”
Chancellor Merkel is Stirring the European Union’s Ambition to become a German-led Superpower
by Meziechi Nwogu
“[…] Germany’s ambition is to create a “European Army.” to work alongside NATO. The main difference between supporting NATO and creating an EU army is the government. In the first choice, Europe follows the US’s leadership; in the second option, Europe follows Germany’s leadership. The fact that Germany is the EU’s most robust economy makes it the natural leader when it comes to standard defense policy. What’s more, Germany has integrated various European combat brigades into the German Army.”
What Nobel Prize-Winning Economists Tell Us About Financial Markets
by Andrea Cazzaro
“Since Hayek’s (1945) work on the spread of information within markets through the use of the price mechanism, financial economists such as Fama and Shiller have given different opinions on the efficiency of capital markets and the degree of information available to traders. According to Fama’s (1970) Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), all available information in financial markets is incorporated into security prices and therefore all participants share access to the same degree of information, which is constantly adjusted by price changes in stocks; as a consequence, traders cannot beat the market and their average expected return on the investment is equal to 0.”
US Prosecution Of Assange Expands To Criminalize WikiLeaks Staff Who Helped Snowden
by Kevin Gosztola
“The indictment criminalizes Assange’s speech in support of Snowden and any future whistleblowers and twists his words into a prime example of WikiLeak “encouraging” the “theft of information” from the U.S. government […] Of course, the Justice Department refuses to accept the public benefit that came from Snowden’s disclosures. He still faces an indictment for allegedly violating the Espionage Act, which is why he remains in Russia, where he obtained asylum in 2013.”
Singapore’s Paradoxical Housing Policy
by Gregorio de Matos
“In 1964, HDB also began selling the properties. For that, workers’ Central Provident Fund (Singapore’s State-controlled pension fund) mandatory savings could be used as down payments for the acquisition of apartments as of 1968, which enabled many families to become house owners. This is quite peculiar, because while this city-state is deemed to be the world leader in economic freedom, raking as #1 in the index created by The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation in 1995, State interventionism appears to be excessive when it comes to housing policies. There is very little space for private actors to take part in this market. This paternalistic trait is also very much reflected on the way the government exerts a sort of social control. For the sake of forming sustainable and cohesive communities, HDB imposes some cultural mix and ethnical quotas harmonization in each building as 40% of the nation’s population is composed by non-natives. Only 3.5 million inhabitants out of the total 5.8 million were born in Singapore. The resident population is predominantly of Chinese (75%) origins, followed by Malays (13%), Indians (9%) and others (3%).”
