Powell is the only one standing up to Trump

Madmen in authority, who hear voices
in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some
academic scribbler of a few years back.

 

On Morning Joe of 22 August they said again that Trump is always critical of Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed. They did not indicate that Presidents are ordinarily not like that to the head of the Fed. They did not mention that the Fed being "independent" was a decision made on purpose, to protect the economy from a president who might try to usurp power from every nook and cranny of government. 

Based on the MSNBC show, you'd think Trump's behavior was totally normal. It isn't. 

 

Jerome Powell is the only one left in the federal government who is standing up to Trump. You cannot imagine how much respect and admiration I have for Powell.

As part of that same segment, Morning Joe had Christine Romans on, talking about the economy. I remember Romans from the Lou Dobbs days, when Dobbs was just starting to get strange and taking the news personally, well before Dobbs went to FOX. 

But even FOX didn't work out for him. Good job, Dobbs. I count you as one more victim of our failing economy.

Anyway, Christine Romans pointed out that what's going on in the economy now is Trump's doing. It's Trump's economy now. "Trump's tariff economy," she called it.

She's right. It's all on Trump. And the "Trump effect" has only just begun. You think things are bad now? You just wait.

HOW CAN I DISAPPEAR THAT DAMN BUTTON?

Apparently new in Blogger, a round, pale-blue button that will "automatically insert google search links" into the text you are writing in the Blogger Editor.

Sounds like the generation of garbage, to me. But then, that's probably what Google thinks I'm doing, generating garbage.

The first time I tried it, it added this link to my words "round, pale blue button" -- a Google Images page showing... well, you can guess.

Blogger Help from vinay sati says

• This is a new Blogger beta feature, not part of AdSense.
• Blogger scans your post content and automatically turns certain keywords/phrases into links pointing to a Google Search results page.
• The purpose is to give readers more context if they want to explore related topics.

Well, a page full of images of pale blue buttons is not "context" for what I had written. So that's an AI failure, far as I'm concerned.

 vinay sati also says

• The feature is optional and currently in beta.
• It will not apply by default unless you choose to enable it in your Blogger dashboard under “Try new beta features.”
• If you test it and don’t like it, you can simply disable it again from the same menu.

First, I didn't know what the Blogger "dashboard" is, so I had to google that. Yeah, I use it all the time, but I didn't know it was called "dashboard".

Second, apparently it DOES apply by default, as there it is on my screen, ready and waiting for me to accidentally brush up against it.

Third, maybe I could disable the thing, and hide it, if the dashboard had a "Try new beta features" section. 

But thanks, vinay, for trying. 

Anyway, now I've wasted an hour or more of my Dwindling Time Remaining.

J.W. Mason on Recovery from the Next Downturn

"The problems of providing public goods and stabilizing the macroeconomy will not go away just because the federal government steps back from solving them."

- J. W. Mason in "Recovery from the Next Downturn May Depend on State and Local Governments"

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes

Google's AI Overview: Munich Agreement

The Munich Agreement, signed on September 29-30, 1938, was an agreement between Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, allowing Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly German population. This agreement, reached without the participation of Czechoslovakia, is largely seen as a failed attempt at appeasing Adolf Hitler and preventing another world war, which it ultimately failed to do. 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

Background:
Hitler was aggressively expanding German territory, targeting the Sudetenland, which he claimed was rightfully part of Germany.

The Agreement:
The Munich Agreement essentially ceded the Sudetenland to Germany, with the understanding that Hitler would make no further territorial demands in Europe.

Key Players:
The agreement was signed by Neville Chamberlain (UK), Édouard Daladier (France), Adolf Hitler (Germany), and Benito Mussolini (Italy).

Czechoslovakia's Exclusion:
The Czechoslovakian government was not invited to the negotiations, leading to a feeling of betrayal and abandonment.

Appeasement:
The agreement is a prime example of the policy of appeasement, where Western powers sought to avoid war by conceding to Hitler's demands.

Short-lived Peace:
Despite Chamberlain's declaration of "peace for our time," the agreement did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. Within a year, Hitler had annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland. 

Consequences:
The Munich Agreement is often viewed as a significant foreign policy blunder, demonstrating the dangers of appeasing aggressive dictators.

The above link to this AI Overview text may turn up somewhat different text.

The phrase used as the title of this post is often attributed to Mark Twain.

Since Trump these days has a role like Neville Chamberlain, I googled neville chamberlain appeasement. The AI Overview told me this:

Neville Chamberlain is primarily known for his policy of appeasement, a diplomatic strategy that involved making concessions to aggressive powers to avoid war. In the 1930s, Chamberlain, as British Prime Minister, pursued appeasement towards Nazi Germany, hoping to avoid another devastating war after World War I. This policy is most famously associated with the Munich Agreement, where Britain and France allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. While Chamberlain believed this would bring "peace for our time," it is now widely viewed as a failure that ultimately emboldened Hitler and contributed to the outbreak of World War II.

 

What is to be done to avoid World War 3? I'm sure I don't know. 

How Trump got elected

On my Test Blog (from 2021) in a post titled "About 8 results", evidence that a Google search for Keynes's phrase "the greatest age of the inducement to investment" turned up 8 results.

Here on this blog (in 2023) a post showing that a Google search for my phrase "debt and civilization" turned up 9 results.

On this blog yesterday, a post showing that my Google search for Milton Friedman's sentence (showing how easy it would be to create a depression) turned up 6 results.

Almost no one is satisfied with our economy these days. But you wouldn't know it from the search results noted above. 

You want to know how Trump got elected? Everyone thinks they know what's wrong with our economy. But only about 6 people know, 8 or 9 at most.

6 results

Perhaps the most important sentence, now certainly the most urgent, in Milton Friedman's Money Mischief:

"There is strong evidence that a monetary crisis involving a substantial decline in the quantity of money is a necessary and sufficient condition for a major depression."

I googled it. Got 6 results -- and one of them was mine. There is very little interest in that particular sentence from Milton Friedman. 

(Item 9 in the Conclusion of Chapter 2. Page 48 in my paperback copy.)

Algorithmic Collusion

If you have access: Bloomberg at

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-30/wharton-experiment-finds-dumb-ai-bots-collude-to-rig-markets

The "Read the research here" link: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34054