The Hand That Rewrites the Premises
In a previous diary entry, I wrote that splitting the threshold over prosecution reform would not change the price. That sentence came back to me in this period from a different direction. On October 2, the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency opens its doors. Of its 2,874 authorized positions, 1,962 applicants—68.3 percent—applied through special hiring. The rest are to be filled through competitive career recruitment, and the appointment of the inaugural chief still drifts. Up to this point, it is an extension of the previous diary entry. The newly emerged fact lies elsewhere. The number this transition leaves behind is not only a manpower gap. While the Prosecution Service disappears and its authority is split apart, semiconductor exports exceeded 70 billion dollars from September 1 to 20, hitting an all-time high, and a full-September breakthrough past 100 billion dollars became likely. At the very site where the institution is being rearranged, the concentration of the real economy only deepens. While redrawing the threshold of the state machine under the name of reform, the list of what that country lives on is instead growing shorter. More important than where authority goes is what that country can decide with its own hands.
In this period there was one more scene answering that question. On September 28, Brent crude exceeded 108 dollars per barrel during intraday trading. It was right after Trump rejected Iran's conditional reopening proposal and hinted at the possibility of resuming attacks on Iran before the November midterm elections. Yet during the same period, crude oil passing through Hormuz was counted at 9.36 million barrels per day. That is 60 percent of the pre-war level. Ships passing secretly with AIS turned off—so-called dark tankers—kept that passage open. Blockade is a declaration, but transit is a practice. Blockade is spoken in the language of legality and illegality, and transit is spoken in the language of insurance premiums and surcharges. Where these two hold simultaneously, the boundary between smuggling and regular trade disappears, and only those standing on that boundary set the price. What we are seeing is not a recovery of global oil supply. It is the moment when it is revealed for whom this crisis is a cost and for whom it is a margin.
Here, the Bank of Korea's September Financial Stability Report is read again. In its September 22 report, the Bank of Korea presented a 2.7 percent forecast for consumer price inflation over the next year and warned that financial imbalances were accumulating in housing prices and household debt. Attached to that forecast was the possibility of renewed conflict in the Middle East as a variable. That variable has now materialized. If oil prices above 100 dollars continue for several days, the inflation forecast must be rewritten, the rewritten forecast shakes the base rate path, and the shaken rate path invalidates repayment plans for next spring that have already been set. The meeting room that decides how high prices will be is in Seoul, but the hand that rewrites the premises of that meeting room is in Washington and in the strait. This subordination is not a failure of prediction but a problem of conditions. As long as someone else's judgment is recorded as a variable, the solution to that equation is not ours.
So the two events of this period are not different events. During those five days when the Prosecution Service disappears and investigation and indictment split into two agencies, this country's prices, interest rates, and repayment plans were being recalculated according to whether passage through the strait was possible. One is the internal arrangement of state power, and the other is the condition of the place where that state stands. Unless the latter can be determined, no matter how the former is divided, no place will arise where workers determine their own share. In the previous diary entry I wrote that the price is determined beyond the split threshold, and this period has only shown that one more item for this month has been added to the accounting ledger beyond it. And the name of that item is someone else's election schedule. In ten days, the Prosecution Service will be gone; in five days, two new names will stand in its place; and after November 3, the price of the strait will be set again. Of those three dates, not one was decided by us.
In this period there was one more scene answering that question. On September 28, Brent crude exceeded 108 dollars per barrel during intraday trading. It was right after Trump rejected Iran's conditional reopening proposal and hinted at the possibility of resuming attacks on Iran before the November midterm elections. Yet during the same period, crude oil passing through Hormuz was counted at 9.36 million barrels per day. That is 60 percent of the pre-war level. Ships passing secretly with AIS turned off—so-called dark tankers—kept that passage open. Blockade is a declaration, but transit is a practice. Blockade is spoken in the language of legality and illegality, and transit is spoken in the language of insurance premiums and surcharges. Where these two hold simultaneously, the boundary between smuggling and regular trade disappears, and only those standing on that boundary set the price. What we are seeing is not a recovery of global oil supply. It is the moment when it is revealed for whom this crisis is a cost and for whom it is a margin.
Here, the Bank of Korea's September Financial Stability Report is read again. In its September 22 report, the Bank of Korea presented a 2.7 percent forecast for consumer price inflation over the next year and warned that financial imbalances were accumulating in housing prices and household debt. Attached to that forecast was the possibility of renewed conflict in the Middle East as a variable. That variable has now materialized. If oil prices above 100 dollars continue for several days, the inflation forecast must be rewritten, the rewritten forecast shakes the base rate path, and the shaken rate path invalidates repayment plans for next spring that have already been set. The meeting room that decides how high prices will be is in Seoul, but the hand that rewrites the premises of that meeting room is in Washington and in the strait. This subordination is not a failure of prediction but a problem of conditions. As long as someone else's judgment is recorded as a variable, the solution to that equation is not ours.
So the two events of this period are not different events. During those five days when the Prosecution Service disappears and investigation and indictment split into two agencies, this country's prices, interest rates, and repayment plans were being recalculated according to whether passage through the strait was possible. One is the internal arrangement of state power, and the other is the condition of the place where that state stands. Unless the latter can be determined, no matter how the former is divided, no place will arise where workers determine their own share. In the previous diary entry I wrote that the price is determined beyond the split threshold, and this period has only shown that one more item for this month has been added to the accounting ledger beyond it. And the name of that item is someone else's election schedule. In ten days, the Prosecution Service will be gone; in five days, two new names will stand in its place; and after November 3, the price of the strait will be set again. Of those three dates, not one was decided by us.