News and notes from around the interweb:
- Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam hasn’t been able to use credit cards as a result of U.S. sanctions
She laughed in the face of U.S. sanctions, imposed over actions taken against the media and free elections, since she has no property or accounts in the U.S. However the regulatory reach of the U.S. is far and wide. Visa, Mastercard and American Express can’t easily circumvent U.S. authority.
There’s a certain irony of course in U.S. extraterritorial application of law as a response to Hong Kong’s new security law which is itself being applied extraterritorially.
- Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to be remade with Will Smith and Kevin Hart.
- Southwest Airlines turns down goverment-subsidized CARES Act loan, since they’ve had no problem accessing private capital. Government should be a lender of last resort – if at all – not first resort. They’ve proven that financial markets haven’t stopped working, so there’s really no role for government here at all – except to keep funding airlines no sane investor would keep alive. Why should taxpayers step in to prevent airline investors from taking a haircut?
- Around the world most large airports are privately run. The U.S. is an anomaly with socialized airports. Selling airports would be an easy win to solve local budget problems and even fund long term liabilities like pensions and generate new revenue for infrastructure investment.
- Data on why it’s time for airlines to stop flying to some of the cities they used to serve
- Southwest has always cracked down on services that would check you in automatically for flights 24 hours prior to departure, in order to get you the best boarding priority. However you can automate it yourself with a browser extension
I have no sympathy for the repressive policies of the Chinese government and its Hong Kong minions, but I wonder if the eventual result of the use of sanctions to forbid access to US financial services or, as in the case of Huawei, will be to speed up the development of competitiors outside the US. Surely, the Chinese will do everything they can to develop the know how to circumvent the Huawei sanctions and they are already trying (with very limited success so far) to supplant the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. There may be a long term set of very unpleasant unintended consequences developing. Not a certainty, but a much greater possibility than it was four years ago.
I know this is a travel blog and hopefully my response to Jerry can be classified as “somehow related” to travel. While IMO, your analysis is absolutely correct that “there may be a long term set of very unpleasant unintended consequences developing”, I will still place my faith and trust in this country. While the US has its fair share of problems, which currency will/can we trust? The euro was designed to compete with the dollar; look at the mess Europe is currently in. The pound has been sliding since the sun began setting on that empire. The world knows the yuan is being manipulated. It’s no wonder that Microsoft, Telsa, Facebook and Apple are US founded companies (despite the fact that Elon Musk was born in South Africa). Try developing the four mentioned companies in Russia, China or elsewhere in the world and see what the governments will do to claim full credit for those innovations. The freedom of thought and expression is also unfortunately causing the US to lead in the number of deaths in this pandemic. As with everything, there is a balance of power.
The share of USD payments has gone up in recent years! The yuan will never work as a global reserve currency unless their system of governance changes. You need trust…