The Wall Street Journal - 23.08.2019

A14| Friday, August 23, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Japan Is Adhering to Its Treaty With Korea

Your editorial “Protectionist Diplo-

macy Goes Global” (Aug. 3) describes

Japan’s update of its export-control

measures as “retaliation” against

Seoul’s handling of the issue of for-

mer civilian workers from the Korean

Peninsula during World War II. Let

me be clear that they are completely

separate issues.

Since 2004, Japan applied simpli-

fied procedures to exports of con-

trolled items to the Republic of Ko-

rea (ROK) on the assumption that

continuous consultations between the

relevant authorities of both countries

would ensure appropriate control.

Such consultations have not been

held in three years, despite repeated

requests from Japan. Meanwhile, sev-

eral inappropriate export cases to the

ROK were observed. This is why

Japan concluded it could no longer

maintain the simplified procedures.

This decision was made solely from

the standpoint of national security.

Separately, the issue of former ci-

vilian workers is undermining the

foundations of Japan-ROK relations.

The heart of the problem is whether

promises made between two sover-

eign states will be kept or not. In

1965 Japan and the ROK concluded a

treaty which provides that Japan

shall extend 500 million U.S. dollars

in grants and loans to the ROK, and

the problems concerning claims be-

tween the two countries and their

nationals are “settled completely and

finally.”

Last year the supreme court of the

ROK rendered judgments against Jap-

anese companies ordering them to

pay “compensation” to former civil-

ian workers. Japan’s repeated calls to

refer this dispute to arbitration un-

der the 1965 agreement were com-

pletely neglected by the ROK. We

strongly hope the government of the

ROK will take actions to remedy the

violation of the agreement.

TAKESHIOSUGA

Press Secretary

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan

Tokyo

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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“Sure I’d like to accomplish

something, but legislative gridlock

is my only source of security.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Incompetent Newark Turns to Feds on Lead

Your editorial “Newark’s Cry for

Trump” (Aug. 17) on the Newark lead

situation is on target, and a good anal-

ogy to the Flint, Mich., case. Both cit-

ies’ water suppliers did not follow the

EPA’s lead and copper regulation of

1991, and failed to monitor appropri-

ately and control the corrosiveness of

the water, at least in part of the city in

Newark’s case. New Jersey and Michi-

gan regulators who have the delegated

legal responsibility did not require the

water suppliers to meet the regula-

tions. Now the cities want a federal

government handout to replace con-

taminated service lines, which are not

the entire lead source.

A major source is old galvanized

plumbing in old homes. Older brass

water taps are another source. Will

the city want the feds to pay for that

too? It appears it is now adding phos-

phate to the water to stabilize it, a

standard, very successful practice for

many years in other locations, includ-

ing Washington, D.C. It would be inter-

esting to see what the data are on

blood lead levels in the areas in New-

ark receiving corrosive water com-

pared to other parts of the city. The

good news from Flint is that blood

lead levels were not significantly ele-

vated, primarily because virtually no

one drank the water, but Flint had Le-

gionellosis cases and deaths from in-

halation of water aerosols, probably

ingested during showering.

JOSEPHCOTRUVO,PH.D.,BCES

Washington

Maybe Newark’s previous mayor,

Sen. Cory Booker, was on to some-

thing when he compared himself to

Spartacus. The ancient Romans drank

leaded water also. It certainly would

explain a lot.

STEPHENBORKOWSKI

Pittsburg, Texas

Pepper ...

And Salt

California Fails Human-Waste Management

Regarding Charles Kesler’s “Califor-

nia’s Biggest Cities Confront a ‘Defeca-

tion Crisis’” (Cross Country, Aug. 17): I

am just back from a conference in San

Francisco and have no plans to return

to that once-beautiful city. The leader-

ship of the city seems to have lost

control of the streets, and the horrible

conditions, panhandling, screaming,

etc., were a topic of conversation

among many conference attendees. I

talked to one person who took a car

service even for very short trips, sim-

ply to ensure her personal safety. It

seems that city leaders need to decide

whether San Francisco still wants to

be a great destination for conferences

and vacations. Further, there has to be

a more compassionate and effective

solution to the tragedy of homeless-

ness than having thousands living on

the streets of our major cities.

DANAR.HERMANSON

Marietta, Ga.

Human waste, discarded needles,

rats, soiled clothes, a variety of other

body fluids—the perfect storm for re-

activation of long-eradicated lethal ill-

nesses. The “homeless” are potentially

unwitting bioterrorists.

LEOGORDON,M.D.

Los Angeles

San Francisco’s homeless are appar-

ently well fed. European cities provide

public toilets in their downtown areas,

with an attendant to assure cleanli-

ness and privacy. San Francisco’s in-

habitants apparently prefer to step

carefully.

ANDREWRUTTER

Tucson, Ariz.

Online Cheating Threatens Colleges’ Value

Two cheers for Tawnell D. Hobbs

for bringing up the issue of online

cheating in distance-learning classes

at our colleges and universities

(“Schools Go After Online Cheating,”

U.S. News, Aug. 13). As a retired

community-college teacher, I saw

this crisis emerging years ago. Yet

all too often college administrators

are loath to stop it because it would

hurt enrollment. Even worse,

though, is the effect that it has on

academic standards because stu-

dents will take the easier online

courses, with the result that class-

room-based course enrollment de-

clines. In a curious way, an eco-

nomic “Gresham’s law” is at play,

when the easier online courses drive

out the harder, classroom-based in-

struction. Needless to say, this con-

tributes to the diminished value of a

college degree.

MICHAELC.PETROWSKY

Austin, Texas

At University of Maryland Global

Campus, we have recognized the

need to take steps to thwart cheat-

ing and develop a comprehensive

approach to promote integrity. It is

an approach that reimagines aca-

demic integrity—an exceptional

learning environment in which stu-

dents have virtually no incentive to

cheat. We are also deploying sophis-

ticated tools, including bots that

crawl the internet looking for and

taking down our proprietary assign-

ments and assessments, artificial in-

telligence to detect each individual’s

distinctive writing style and biomet-

ric tools to continuously verify that

all students are who they say they

are. We are collaborating with our

peers to fight this corrosive threat

to academic integrity.

ALANDRIMMER

Chief Academic Officer

University of Maryland Global

Campus—Adelphi, Md.

Rotary Is Also a Service Club

Your editorial “The Killers in Our

Midst”(Aug.5)referstoRotaryIn-

ternational as a business and social

club. We are overwhelmingly a ser-

vice club that also includes business

networking and good fellowship as

its principal components. For exam-

ple, along with our partners, the

World Health Organization, the Cen-

ters for Disease Control and Preven-

tion, Unicef and the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation, we are so very

close to the eradication of polio

world-wide.

ALDENCUNNINGHAM

Carlisle, Pa.

A 100-Year Treasury?

S

ome $16 trillion in securities around the
world are trading at negative yields.
Austria earlier this summer issued a 100-
year ultra-low-yield bond.
Germany this week sold 30-
year bonds that pay no inter-
est; investors lent the country
money for three decades for
nothing. Maybe it’s time the
U.S. Treasury capitalized on
the unusual monetary times to lower its financ-
ing costs.
Treasury posted a note on its website last
Friday saying that it will conduct “broad out-
reach to refresh its understanding of market ap-
petite” for 50- or 100-year bonds. The Obama
Administration noodled over the idea but wor-
ried about the reputational risk for U.S. credit
if longer-dated securities met weak demand.
That wasn’t long after the debt-limit fight
caused a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating,
but now investors are piling into Treasurys in
a flight to quality.
The Obama Treasury Department also feared
that a 50- or 100-year bond would compete with
and drive down prices (and raise yields) for 10-
and 30-year Treasurys, causing U.S. govern-
ment borrowing costs to rise and the yield
curve to steepen. At the time the Federal Re-
serve was trying to flatten the yield curve to
push investors into riskier assets and stimulate
consumption via a “wealth effect.”
Secretary Steve Mnuchin floated the idea
again two years ago. But the Treasury’s Borrow-
ing Advisory Committee, which is comprised of
large financial institutions and broker dealers,
said it “does not see evidence of strong or sus-
tainable demand for maturities beyond 30
years.” Note the wordsustainable.
Over the years many countries and even some
companies have launched small batches of long-
dated securities. In 2010 Mexico raised $1 billion
in what at the time was the world’s largest 100-
year bond offering. Belgium and Ireland in 2016
raised €100 million with 100-year bonds. Canada
floated a 50-year bond in 2014.
Countries have discontinued long-term bonds
when market conditions turn less favorable, and

the U.S. could test demand with an issue or two.

In 2017 Austria floated a €3.5 billion 100-year

bond at a yield of 2.1%. Demand was so hot that

Austria offered another 100-

year issue this summer to raise

€1.25 billion at a 1.17% interest

rate—a mere 50 basis points

above the yield on its 30-year

bond. Germany’s 30-year bond

sale wasn’t fully subscribed but

still raised more than $900 million with an effec-

tively negative interest rate.

Investors, especially insurers in Europe and

Japan, are ravenous for high-quality govern-

ment securities with positive yields as negative

interest rates spread around the world. The

worry that a 50- or 100-year Treasury bond

might crowd out the 30-year is less salient now

than it was a couple of years ago.

The term premium that investors demand for

holding longer-dated securities has been shrink-

ing since 2014, and the yield on the 30-year

Treasury last week dipped below 2% for the first

time. Even if Treasury issued a 50- or 100-year

bond with a 3% coupon, the yield would only be

50 basis points above the average interest rate

on U.S. public debt last year.

In the 2000s before the recession, the aver-

age interest rate on federal debt hovered be-

tween 5% and 6.5%. Monetary policy has signifi-

cantly eased since then around the world, but

interest rates won’t stay low forever.

The U.S. has debt of $15.7 trillion held by the

public—the kind it has to repay on pain of de-

fault—and won’t be able to continue ringing up

trillion-dollar deficits without investors de-

manding a heftier premium for the risk. The Con-

gressional Budget Office forecasts that federal

government debt as a share of GDP will grow to

144% by 2049 from 78% today and interest costs

will go to 5.7% of GDP from 1.8%.

Budget prognosticators aren’t clairvoyant,

but 50- or 100-year bonds would almost cer-

tainly reduce the government’s financing costs

over the long term. The Trump Treasury can do

taxpayers a favor by gradually stretching out the

average duration of federal debt and reducing

the chances of steep future tax increases.

With demand high,

now is the time to float

a really long bond.

What ‘Red Flags’ Really Look Like

T

he debate over red-flag laws, which let
police impound a person’s guns if a legal
process determines he poses a threat, is
playing out mostly in the ab-
stract. How about a few real-
life stories? An academic pa-
per this week presents 21 case
studies from 2016-18 in which
California’s law was used “in
efforts to prevent mass shoot-
ings.” Here are three:

• Local police got a warning
  from the FBI about a 22-year-old man. He was
  an associate of someone recently charged with
  aiding a Syrian jihadist group, the Nusra Front,
  which had encouraged terror attacks. The two
  men once flew to Turkey on one-way tickets. A
  month earlier the 22-year-old began working at
  a shooting range, but he was fired. His manager
  told the FBI that he didn’t like customers but en-
  joyed handling the guns.
  The man had recently bought an “AK-47-type
  rifle,” and California’s 10-day waiting period was
  set to expire soon. In a few weeks nearby public
  events were expected to draw crowds of 50,
  or more. Local police got a short-term red-flag
  order to block the gun purchase, and after a
  hearing a one-year order was issued.


• Police were tipped off by school officials
  that a 14-year-old boy had praised mass shoot-
  ings. He used campus computers to search fire-
  arms and terms like “white power.” Taken to a
  psychiatrist, the student said he was joking.
  The boy’s father owned a rifle and a pistol. A
  short-term red-flag order was obtained, and the
  two firearms were relinquished. After a hearing
  a one-year order was issued.


• A group of children, ages 11 to 15, told police
  that a 62-year-old woman had threatened to
  “blow their heads off.” They seemed to think she
  pointed a gun at them, but it turned out to be a
  paper-towel roll covered in duct tape.
  When police arrived, she admitted to also
  having a revolver in the house. The officer got
  a short-term red-flag order, took the gun, and ar-
  rested the woman for making a criminal threat.

She kept saying that she wanted to “teach those

kids a lesson” and “go to their homes to finish

off each one of them.” After a hearing a one-year

order was issued.

iii

These examples are a small

subset. California had 414 red-

flag cases from 2016-18, the

paper says. Its seven authors

have so far obtained court re-

cords for 159. The 21 thumbnail

sketches they offer leave im-

portant questions unanswered.

Did the father whose guns were handed over

suggest that he was unable or unwilling to se-

cure them from his 14-year-old son? How many

of these people were thought dangerous enough

a year later that the order was renewed? In a

counterfactual world without these orders, the

authors admit, “it is impossible to know whether

violence would have occurred.”

Still, the particulars are a challenge to critics

of such laws, some of whom charge that Califor-

nia’s process amounts to a seizure scheme. In a

state of 40 million people, 414 cases over a few

years doesn’t sound like an abusively high rate

of red flags.

Most of the 21 examples include specific

threats: “I’m going to come and hunt you down”;

“if I pull the trigger on one person” then “I’m not

stopping there until I’m caught”; “Rip [name de-

leted] high school.”

Due process is vital whenever a constitutional

right, including the Second Amendment, is cur-

tailed. There are legitimate arguments over how

heavy the burden of proof should be, particularly

for emergency orders granted before a full hear-

ing can be held.

More research and experience are warranted,

and red-flag laws are no panacea for mass shoot-

ings. But only 17 states have these laws today

and, if reasonably drafted, they appear to be a

step forward: gun control for the dangerous and

unstable. The genius of federalism is that the

states can see what works, and useful lessons

can be drawn and spread.

He consorted with a

jihadist, flew one-way to

Turkey, and later bought

an ‘AK-47-type rifle.’

Socialism in Two Countries

T

he Chicago Teachers Union is taking
fire after a trip to Venezuela by a four-
member delegation made the head-
lines. Critics say it was inap-
propriate for the union group
to meet with officials from
the beleaguered Nicolás Ma-
duro government, criticize
U.S. sanctions on the Cuba-
backed regime and praise its
socialism—all while traveling under the Chi-
cago Teachers Union banner.
Yet in one sense the visit is fitting: The CTU
really does admire Venezuelan socialism. The
CTU president re-elected in May is Jesse Shar-
key, formerly of the International Socialist Or-
ganization.
During the trip to Venezuela, one member
of the CTU delegation endorsed dictator Ma-
duro’s superiority over former Chicago mayor
Rahm Emanuel: “Through major economic
hardships, Venezuelan President Nicolás Ma-
duro never closed a single public school or a
single health clinic”—this, she said, in “stark

contrast” to Mr. Emanuel’s record.

Since the trip made the headlines, the

union has tried to distance itself from the del-

egation, noting the CTU did

not finance or sponsor the

trip. But the group described

itself as a CTU delegation,

raised money that way and

was featured on the union’s

official Twitter account. Plus

they were clearly expressing the spirit of their

union, which in March passed a resolution

calling on the U.S. to “cease all threats, mili-

tary mobilization and interference in the eco-

nomic and internal politics and affairs of the

Venezuelan people.”

In other words, the CTU delegation knew

exactly what political and economic system it

regards as a model. As awful as they are, Chi-

cago’s public schools have not reached the

level of desperation the collapsing system in

Venezuela has. But if the CTU is allowed to

keep putting its socialist ideals into practice,

Chicago may get there.

A Chicago Teachers

Union delegation takes a

road trip to Venezuela.

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