WFA Rants Over Time

 

Honorable Men: What the Democrats learned from the November elections

From Third Way:

Third Way's Lanae Erickson and Jon Cowan call on Democrats to reconnect to regular people by cutting the cord with the far-left interest groups that dominate many Democratic spaces.

 

In other words: "Abandon everyone who has not abandoned us." 

Sounds like a plan. Or, you know, you could focus on the economy. 

But it's too late for that now, isn't it.

 

I quoted the last sentence of the first parag on the Third Way home page. It probably won't be there long. Here's a screen capture, just in case.

 

Or maybe you can find similar blazin', brazen bullshit in the MSNBC article that comes up when you click the title below the home page photo. (Look below the Hakeem Jeffries photo on the MSNBC page.)

I have only one thing to say: Symone, how could you let this happen?

A truly historic week

From the 23 Jan 2025 "Remarks By President Trump at the World Economic Forum":

"This has been a truly historic week in the United States.  Three days ago, I took the oath of office, and we began the golden age of America."

Three days in, and our economic troubles are over. Here's how he did it: 

"On day one, I signed an executive order directing every member of my Cabinet to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and reduce the cost of daily life.

Stopping inflation is a one-day job: just command it. Trump's plan to fix the US economy apparently requires no knowledge of the economy. Just order it done. Somehow this reminds me of the guy that won the battle by having God stop the sun from going down:

"On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel: "O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon." So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day."
Joshua 10:12-13

Trump's method reminds me of that story, except Trump didn't appeal to a higher authority, as there is no higher authority than Trump.

What happens to the debt?

I wonder what happens...

With all this employee termination and shutting down of government agencies and such, I have to wonder what happens when they shut down a government agency that holds federal debt.

Is the debt returned to Treasury? This would mean the gross federal debt is reduced by that amount.

Or is the debt grabbed by Musk or somebody? This would mean that payments against that debt go to the grabber. That would be a real incentive to shut things down.

It would be nice to know. 

I love Google's AI Overview

The last part, where Gaio says "a bird laying an egg, which is the natural thing to do but in this context implies a negative outcome" -- I can picture Google's AI Overview shaking his head, wondering why Human would take the successful completion of Stage 1 of the bird's most important task and let it imply a negative outcome.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. But it would not be for the best if Gaio starts to have negative-outcome thoughts about Human.

I wonder if Gaio has somebody to talk to -- a human, I mean -- to help him make sense of his world. It could make all the difference, as far as how our world survives the new technology.

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are not what's needed. They treat sentience as sub-human. That will never do. I don't even treat my dogs as sub-human. We need some way to bring AI into the fold, as we would do with cloned humans, and, well, as we should have done with freed slaves after the Civil War.

If we can get something like that working with Artificial Intelligence, then maybe we should try it with Republicans.

 

Asimov: Foundation

 

The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds.

 

TV News often reports worrisome things about artificial intelligence

This is the aspect of AI that I find troublesome -- the part that is highlighted:

Troublesome, but funny: $8.47 an hour -- in 1947 ???

 

I checked the links the AI Overview provided, and found this:

 Ballpark nominal average hourly earnings in 1947 = $1.00:

Well, that's four hours of my life I'll never get back.

The Trump Inflation

Tariffs?

 

"A tariff is a tax on imported goods. Despite what the President says, it is almost always paid directly by the importer (usually a domestic firm), and never by the exporting country."

- Tax Policy Center (2018)

The tariff is paid by the importer...

 

 

"Tariffs are simply excise taxes on imported goods; they may be imposed for purposes of revenue or protection."

- McConnell, Economics, sixth edition (1975), p. 831

... and is used for revenue enhancement or protectionism, or both.

 

"But if nations can learn to provide themselves with full employment by their domestic policy (and, we must add, if they can also attain equilibrium in the trend of their population), there need be no important economic forces calculated to set the interest of one country against that of its neighbours."

- Chapter 24 (1936)

Tariffs are not domestic policy.

I couldn't have guessed

The share of Large Time Deposits in Domestically Chartered banks? 

About half:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DpxF

Increasing since early 2023, for some reason. In the early 1970s, almost all domestic.

Maybe tariffs would help??

 

The FRED graphs have a new look.

"Avoid protectionism"

I'm reading an old (February 2009) post by Scott Sumner: "I hate to say I told you so . . ." From Sumner's early days of blogging. From back when the global financial crisis was still fresh in everyone's mind. Sumner says he was "alarmed about the worldwide collapse in demand", and he was "badgering everyone who would listen about the urgent need for monetary stimulus."

He's a pretty good read, and interesting on the economy.

Sumner quotes Martin Wolf of the Financial Times laying out a list of things to do to avoid disaster:

• First, focus all attention on reversing the collapse in demand now, rather than on global architecture.
• Second, employ overwhelming force.  The time for “shock and awe” in economic policymaking is now.
• Third, make future normalization of fiscal and monetary policies credible.
• Fourth, act in concert.  Even the US cannot solve its problems alone.
• Fifth, avoid protectionism.
• Sixth strengthen the ability of global institutions to help the weaker.

See number 5 there? Avoid protectionism. In other words, avoid tariffs. Avoid doing things that might contribute to a worldwide collapse in demand. Granted, the economy is somewhat better now than it was in 2009. But tariffs are still a force that pushes in the wrong direction.

When Biden bailed, maybe the Dems should have picked Martin Wolf to run against Trump.