Category Archives: Uncategorized

This report out of Dallas has the fascination of a train wreck:

From WaPo:

America’s federal deficit will expand by about $800 billion more than previously expected over 10 years, primarily because of two legislative packages approved this year, pushing the nation further into levels of debt unseen since the end of World War II, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

The CBO also said that the impact of higher trade barriers, primarily President Trump’s trade war, could hurt economic growth amid widespread fears of a recession.

The United States was already expected to hit about $1 trillion in annual deficits next year, an unusually high number, particularly given that deficits normally contract during sustained periods of economic growth.

They just spat in the GOP’s holy water. I wonder if Trump will urge the GOP to get rid of the CBO as just another “deep state” entity.

Last night we were watching the news and saw a piece which caused a groan from both of us – the report of a study claiming fluoridation of water reduces the IQ of children born to mothers who have ingested that water as part of their diet. Kevin Drum saw it as well and doesn’t think much of it:

A 1 milligram increase in maternal urinary fluoride levels was associated with a decrease of 4.49 IQ points in boys and an increase of 2.40 IQ points in girls. This seems implausibly large, doesn’t it? But I can think of at least one crude way to check it. In 1950 virtually no water in the US was fluoridated. Today, fluoridated water reaches more than 70 percent of the population. At a minimum, this suggests that over the last 70 years the IQ levels of boys and girls (a) should have gone down, and (b) should have diverged by about 7 points. Has this happened?

In a word, no. Overall IQ scores in the United States have increased since 1950 and that steady upward trend has continued at least through 2014.

I don’t know where this study was published, and that can matter a lot. If you run into a anti-fluoridation proponent, this might give you a bit of ammunition.

I see the reins we keep on the banks are being released in order to permit them to pursue greater and greater profits, as noted by Politico:

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board voted 3-1 Tuesday to give big banks more leeway to make risky short-term bets in financial markets by loosening a landmark but highly contentious regulation known as the Volcker rule.

The FDIC and four other independent agencies have dropped their proposal to tie the rule to a strict accounting standard — a move that banks argued would have made it more burdensome by subjecting additional trades to heightened supervision. Instead, regulators will give banks the benefit of the doubt on a much wider range of trades, according to the text of the final rule.

And how do I feel about this? HAH! Last time we saw the banks making risky bets, we ended up in the Great Recession. Democrats are not happy:

The rewrite “will not only put the U.S. economy at risk of another devastating financial crisis, but it could potentially leave taxpayers at risk of having to once again foot the bill for unnecessary and burdensome bank bailouts,” House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in an email.

So I’m not alone. Fortunately, this is not the final say:

Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting on Tuesday signed the revised rule. Three other agencies — the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission — must still approve it.

The Federal Reserve may have, ah, reservations.

So how many more recessions will we have to go through before we get it through our collective heads that regulation is not a dirty word?

Libertarians would claim this is a self-correcting problem, that the survivors of the big crash will learn and not repeat mistakes, but I fear the chase of profits is turning out to be amnesia-causing.

Even Iceland’s approach to the Great Recession – they jailed their bankers – might not be enough.

Professor Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy points me at a curious case in which the plaintiff has moved to seal another of his case’s records, meaning they are not public, for no particularly obvious reason:

In 2017, Bonner lost a case in New Jersey state appellate court, Bonner v. Cumberland Reg’l High Sch. Dist. Justia.com, a site that (among other things) publishes online copies of state and federal court opinions, included that nonprecedential New Jersey decision; Bonner then sued in federal court, asking the federal court to order Justia to remove the opinion. Yesterday federal District Judge Peter G. Sheridan granted Justia’s motion to dismiss (Bonner v. Justia, Inc., 2019 WL 3892858):

Plaintiff seems to believe the New Jersey [appellate] opinion is his personal property…. Plaintiff seeks to prevent the [opinion] from being “reported, copied, distributed, shared, or by any other means used by anyone or any website.” “[T]he courts of this country recognize a general right to inspect and copy public records and documents, including judicial records and documents.” …

Plaintiff is proceeding pro se, and the Court should read Plaintiff’s complaint [here, amended] generously and hold it “to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” … [But t]he amended complaint is substantively meritless, as was the original complaint.

Plaintiff is essentially attempting to seal the Appellate Division’s Opinion, which—like federal court documents—[is] open to the public. There is a heightened public interest in disclosure of materials that are filed within the Courts, which outweighs private interests in confidentiality, as the Courts are funded by the public and in general judicial proceedings are not done in secret….

It’s worth noting that public access to judicial records is one of the keys to monitoring for incompetent or unworthy judges, and so simply acceding to his request was not an option. The importance of that monitoring for the health of society is too great. Naturally, there are exceptions.

But it’s also worth remembering that these rules come from the pre-Web era, an era where one had to either visit the Court or know do a bit of work in order to request the records. In this era of online records, the satisfaction of idle curiosity is, sometimes, a little too easy.

In the end, I have no dispute over the judge’s decision. But it does bring up the subject of just how hard it’s become to drop out of society – and whether or not it’s a legitimate interest of society’s members. Most of me says that, yes, it’s legitimate, but there’s a small part of me that wonders.

Politico notes the latest President Trump maneuver:

To hear President Donald Trump and his allies tell it, the federal investigators who spent the past two years investigating the president are about to go down. …

They’re expecting all of this to come from a spate of Justice Department probes reviewing the full scope of the Trump-Russia investigation, which culminated earlier this year with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

“This was treason. This was high crimes,” Trump said during a recent Fox News interview with Sean Hannity. “This was everything as bad a definition as you want to come up with. This should never be allowed to happen to our country again.”

These hyperbolic expectations have legal experts, even some who are often sympathetic to the president, skeptical that the final product can equal the Trump-fueled rhetoric.

Keep the base worked up, deepen their paranoia, and don’t let them think. Don’t give them a reason to read the Mueller report. Use the same tactic to attack your enemies as a warning to never attack again.

The resentment of the Trump base, brought on by the rapid and sometimes illicit, in their eyes, changes sought by progressives, not to mention progressives’ attitudes, and deepened by far-right pundits building a political movement, makes them quite vulnerable to taking these charges seriously, even if Trump’s allies express doubt that they’ll amount to anything. Why? Because he’s fighting back, and that’s what the base hungers after most. The fact that he’s clumsy and ineffective is immaterial because they never learn that he’s ineffective; the news doesn’t reach them, or is swallowed up by the next controversy.

All Trump has to do is keep them convinced he’s winning. If a recession hits, then he may have a problem. That’s why he’s trying to cast aspersions on Fed Chair Powell, even though a recession is the result of many factors, most beyond the President’s control.

They say you can pop the seeds just like popcorn.

Long-time readers are aware that I don’t view the end-goal of capitalism to be the accumulation of money, wealth, or even garden gnomes. From investors to CEOs, I have often said that the customers and employees come first, and if you can’t take care of them, wiggling your way to a profit regardless is so much a transgression that you might as well call it as secular sin: it hurts, rather than helps, society.

And now I have some company. A pack of CEOs from companies such as American Airlines, American Express, and others are at least signing a letter suggesting that they believe there’s things more important than their profits out there. Here’s the letter, minus the signatures:

Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity. We believe the free-market system is the best means of generating good jobs, a strong and sustainable economy, innovation, a healthy environment and economic opportunity for all.

Businesses play a vital role in the economy by creating jobs, fostering innovation and providing essential goods and services. Businesses make and sell consumer products; manufacture equipment and vehicles; support the national defense; grow and produce food; provide health care; generate and deliver energy; and offer financial, communications and other services that underpin economic growth.

While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders. We commit to:

• Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
• Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.
• Dealing fairly and ethically with our suppliers. We are dedicated to serving as good partners to the other companies, large and small, that help us meet our missions.
• Supporting the communities in which we work. We respect the people in our communities and protect the environment by embracing sustainable practices across our businesses.
• Generating long-term value for shareholders, who provide the capital that allows companies to invest, grow and innovate. We are committed to transparency and effective engagement with shareholders.

Each of our stakeholders is essential. We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.

Do they mean it? I guess we’ll find out. But it’s encouraging to see what might be considered thought leaders finally getting out the information that maximizing profits cannot be the be-all and end-all of corporate life – or it’ll be the end of corporate life. Some appear to have realized that the bumpy road ahead may be partly due to the past actions of their companies.

Not everyone agrees this is a good idea. WaPo claims, but I could not find, that the Council of Institutional Investors issued a statement:

… an association of pension funds, endowments and foundations, said it “respectfully disagree[s]” with the statement, adding that it “undercuts notions of managerial accountability to shareholders.”

A carefully chosen phrase, don’t you think? As if shareholders and their profits are primary. I’d be careful with that particular entity. They appear to be all about the money – no surprise, of course, given that they’re investors.

I’m glad I never started a company. The tension between profits and trying to render good service to the customer would have driven me nuts.

From WKYT of Lexington, KY:

A parent took a photo of one of Fayette County Public Schools’ “In God We Trust sign,” and it was in the form of a dollar bill.

Brittany Pike shared the photo on social media, which our reporting partners at the Lexington Herald-Leader report was taken at Athens Chilesburg Elementary School.

This comes during the first school year where public schools have to display “In God We Trust” prominently in areas including a cafeteria or entryway. The bill was passed in the Kentucky General Assembly during the 2019 regular session.

Bill sponsor Brandon Reed, R – Hodgenville, is accusing Fayette County Public Schools of playing “political games.”

“It is extremely disappointing to see Fayette County Public Schools spend time searching for silly loopholes to a law that passed with broad support from both Democrats and Republicans and received over 70 votes in the House of Representatives,” Reed said. “Many districts across the state have chosen the avenue of creative student artwork, which my bill expressly allowed for and would come at little to no cost to our schools.”

An utterly brilliant way to humiliate the wannabe-theocrats who sit in the Kentucky legislature, isn’t it? I’m sure they’re trying to hide behind the lack of pantheon-specificity, but in the end those children of an agnostic / atheistic nature or parentage are still disadvantaged by this sort of empty propaganda.

I see the Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting that the dollar bill vitiates the pressure on those kids, according to Pike herself:

“This school year Kentucky began requiring schools to place “In God We Trust” in the building. I absolutely love living in a school district that wants to follow the law while also ensuring EVERY student feels welcomed back regardless of religious beliefs. Thank you so very much Fayette County Public Schools for simply posting a dollar with ‘In God We Trust.’ My kids don’t feel awkward or excluded for not believing in any God.”

I hope she’s right.

In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, the law is no exception. On Balkinization, Sandy Levinson meditates on the intellectual mettle of SCOTUS:

For better or worse, incidentally, those students who arrive at law school “insufficiently” trained in economics, are in effect forced to pick up skills in basic economic analysis, given the pervasiveness of “law-and-economics” in every aspect of the contemporary legal curriculum, including constitutional law. But this is not at all true, say, of picking up the skills necessary to analyze complex data and statistical argument. (Ans so we get the suspender-snapping prideful illiteracy of Chief Justice Roberts, who dismisses such argument as “gobbledygook” irrelevant to understanding the realities of contemporary gerrymandering, etc.) And, frankly, even those students who took some American history as undergraduates are increasingly likely to know only American social history. As important as that is, one can still lament that fewer and fewer students are really familiar with what today seems a decidedly old-fashioned knowledge of American political history or even American i(or more general) ntellectual history insofar as that almost necessarily focuses on books written by highly literate members of elites who could get their scribblings published.

It is often painful enough to read debates among the justices about the meanings of past precedents. See, e.g., the shouting match between Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer about Brown in Parents Involved (where I believe Breyer was clearly correct, for what that’s worth). It is excruciating, though, to read debates among the justices about controverted aspects of our history, as in the opinions of Scalia and Stevens in Heller. As I wrote at the time, neither opinion would have been admissible as a paper in a half-way rigorous seminar on legal history at a major university. It appears clear that the same is true of Gorsuch’s musings on the facts of Schechter, even though he had read a single book, by Amity Schlaes, from which he drew his description of the case. …

One of Mark Tushnet’s most famous descriptions was “the lawyer as astrophysicist,” referring to the belief among the smart people who become successful lawyers, that they can master any subject, however arcane, in a weekend of intense study. (This is linked, I suspect, to the belief that our favorite political candidates can truly master the arcana of complex public policy simply by being “briefed” in some of the details of the subject. What does one really need to know, for example, in order to posit a belief in “Medicare for All” (via single payer or using private insurance, as in a number of European countries), as opposed to tweaking Obamacare (or, indeed, repealing it and beginning with something brand new?) It is easier to presume that our favorites can indeed master the relevant materials than to come to terms with the fact that they really know very little about the subjects in which they are called upon to make crucial decisions. (And when it’s Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, making the decisions, we might well wish instead to have chimpanzees throwing darts at boards!)

I suppose I shouldn’t be entirely surprised, given my and others’ remarks on discouraging opinions by Alito and Kennedy. The failure of the Court to refer to experts and avoid their own preconceptions and biases, however, will reflect poorly on the Court when later versions of the Court overrules those decisions decisively. Ideological zealots may think they’ve fared well, when in retrospect, they fail the test of time.

Complexities of modern life may exceed the capacity of any single human mind to plumb all the depths, and that’s why we have experts and group research.

My cousin & non-profit management expert Scott Chamberlain continues to express astonishment at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Board of Trustee’s management style – or lack thereof:

“Some trustees say that prudence requires them to hold onto the $60 million endowment in case it’s needed to bankroll a future replacement orchestra. ‘The endowment trust was created to support the BSO or its accredited successor,’ Chris Bartlett, chairman of the Baltimore Symphony Endowment Trust, wrote in an email. (The emphasis on ‘or’ was Bartlett’s.)”

Wow. So that’s where the money is going. The trustees looking ahead to funding a newer, different orchestra.

Or to clarify, the trustees are choosing to withhold much-needed funds from a respected, venerable, 103-year old orchestra—choosing to actually force financial hardship on an organization they are charged with protecting—and when it folds, they’ll maybe support some sort of new orchestra that arises from the ashes.

This is monstrous.

Again, I don’t dispute that trustees have to take the long view. But they are supposed to take the long view of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra—the entity the endowment was created to support. Not the long view of some hypothetical group that may or may not exist in the future.

There are so many things wrong with this picture. Let’s start with the most basic, obvious questions:

• Would a new orchestra actually arise from the ashes? Isn’t that a hugegamble to take? Back during the Minnesota Orchestra lockout, many folks asked the musicians why they didn’t just create a new orchestra of their own? The answer was made clear again and again—it is supremely hard to create an orchestra from scratch. It requires a significant staff to get it up and running. It needs a place to rehearse and perform. It needs HR expertise to hire musicians. It needs significant capital to pay salaries, healthcare right from the start… or no one will come to work for it. And so forth. Why go through all that time, trouble, and expense when… there’s already an organization that has all these things?

I wonder if management is made up of conservatives matching the new definition of conservatives, and if the musicians are all liberals?

If you have an interest in symphony orchestras or non-profits in general, Scott is an excellent resource.

In support of my prediction that Big Ag will do well as the trade war with China heats up comes from AgMag:

Farm bailout payments designed to offset the impacts of President’s Trump’s trade war have overwhelmingly flowed to the largest and most successful farmers, according to [Environmental Working Group’s (EWG)] analysis of the latest Department of Agriculture data.

EWG today released updated data on payments made through the first two rounds of the Market Facilitation Program, or MFP. Through April, total MFP payments for 2018-19 were $8.4 billion. …

EWG’s analysis of the data found:

• The top one-tenth of recipients received 54 percent of all MFP payments.
• Eighty-two farmers have so far received more than $500,000 in MFP payments.
• One farm, DeLine Farm Partnership, of Charleston, Mo., has so far received $2.8 million in MFP payments.
• The top 1 percent of MFP recipients received, on average, $183,331. The bottom 80 percent received, on average, less than $5,000.
• Thousands of residents of the nation’s largest cities received MFP payments.
• MFP payments continue to leave out minority farmers.

As of 30 July. While these results do not appear to have been properly scaled – for example, a primitive scaling would be on a per-acre basis – I do not doubt that the larger concerns would also be on top of just about any reasonable scaling. The ability of larger concerns to gather up this compensation comes from both political connections and simply having the resources to recognize and collect these government handouts.

I talked a little recently about Turchin’s observations of the farmlands emptying out as the demographic cycle enters the disintegrative phase as the land owners concentrate more and more land in their hands, and I think this is another step along the way for the American farmer.

I haven’t mentioned our tomato crop much this year, but, yes, it’s doing well.

Taller than me, yep.

Psephologists:

Psephology (/sɪˈfɒlədʒi/; from Greek ψῆφος, psephos, ‘pebble’, as the Greeks used pebbles as ballots) is a branch of political science, the “quantitative analysis of elections and balloting”. As such, psephology attempts to scientifically explicate elections. [Wikipedia]

Noted in an email:

Polling disaster: Australian psephologists are facing a barrage of criticism for their failure to predict the Coalition’s  election victory.

I have not commented on President Trump’s reported interest in having the United States purchase Greenland, which is currently a part of Denmark, but I had actually thought it was a rare example of outside of the box thinking by our otherwise third-rate President. However, Professor Stacie Goddard may not agree with me, as she writes on WaPo’s Monkey Cage:

Trump’s musings over Greenland are part of his larger tendency to see territory as a tradable commodity, particularly in dealing with the Middle East. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary debates, candidate Marco Rubio chastised candidate Trump for treating Palestinian aspirations for statehood as a “real estate deal.”Jared Kushner’s plan for Middle East peace relies on territorial exchanges between the Palestinians, Jordan and Egypt. Trump’s March tweet recognizing Israel’s control over the Golan paid little attention to the symbolic claims at stake.

This is a dangerous approach to territorial conflict. As recent events in Kashmir make clear, nations are still prepared to shed blood and treasure to secure national claims. Understanding the symbolic value of territory is key to managing this and any future territorial disputes.

In other words, Trump’s real estate approach to Greenland may be the tip of the melting iceberg.

I’m a little concerned over her statement because context matters, and when it comes to nationalism and territorial matters, context is a big deal. What, for example, if Greenland was part of Belgium, would the Greenlanders consider themselves Walloons or Flemish, and would they feel so deeply linked to a non-homogenuous country? What if, say, Russia had retained the Ukraine after the Soviet Union breakup – would the ties that bind be made of metal or dissolving silk?

I fear there may be a certain amount of unwarranted generalization occurring in Professor Goddard’s thinking in a world where context and specificity overwhelms the abstract rules that people searching for explanations would like to find. Speaking as a software engineer, I love those rules spawned by generalization, too – but I know sometimes generalizations are hideously false.

From Business Insider via my Arts Editor:

It would be interesting to have a graphic representation of the percentage of the state population speaking that language at home. I mean, are we talking sub-1%? 10%?

Just what percentage of the total population is seasoning for the apocryphal pot?

In a NewScientist review of three books on economic distress (“The global economy is broken, it must work for people, not vice versa,” 3 August 2019), I ran across a curious semi-quote that made me wrinkle my nose:

More than a decade on, people are still hurting. They often can’t find employment, or the scant work they can find offers little security or pay. They have no prospect that their living conditions will be ameliorated. Rightly, many of these people blame the “learneds” who failed to predict the crash. For example, a limo driver told [David Blanchflower, author of Not Working: Where have all the good jobs gone?] that people voted Brexit because “ordinary people had no hope”. How can we have hope when policy-makers haven’t learned from their mistakes?

No doubt they didn’t mean the politicians, but I could not help but see the professional politicians, such as to see Rep Gohmert (R-TX), or Rep Nunes (R-CA), or for that matter, the late Senator Proxmire (D-WI)^[1], as a “learned” made me laugh.

And, you know, it’s not that bad a thing to not be an expert in everything. That’s why we have accredited experts and testimony and all that boring thing. Indeed, one of the most important skills of a professional politician is knowing when an “expert” is an expert, and when the expert is just a con-man, or someone with a hidden agenda, and then be able to pick up the salient points of the testimony from that worthwhile expert and implement them in public policy.

So, to a considerable extent, “wonks” like the execrable former Speaker Ryan (R-WI), whose ideology overrode any expertise he might claim to have, were a deterrent to good government; indeed, Republicans of his ilk might claim there is no such thing. They see society and the economy as self-regulating, which is ahistorical.

It was an interesting review to read. It almost made me want to go out and read the books.

¹ Senator Proxmire had an annoying habit of handing out his Golden Fleece awards to NASA programs.

Munificent:

1. extremely liberal in giving; very generous.
2. characterized by great generosity:
   a munificent bequest. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “When local news goes away, citizens suffer. Gannett’s megamerger will probably just inflict more pain.” Margaret Sullivan, WaPo:

GateHouse’s approach to its newspapers in recent years has made Gannett look almost munificent by contrast. And although Gannett’s name will be attached to the new company, GateHouse’s business practices seem more likely to prevail.

I generally find “single issue voting” to be a reprehensible practice by citizens who are responsible for selecting a leader who shares the responsibility of the safety and prosperity of a country, so when I read this WaPo opinion piece by Log Cabin (i.e., LGBTQ) Republicans Robert Kabel and Jill Homan endorsing President Trump on the grounds that he’s been good for the LGBTQ community, I shook my head at another pair of folks walking down that treacherous, yet so easy path. After all, evaluating a single issue is so much easier than synthesizing a few dozen issues and Trump’s responses to them before coming to a conclusion. Unfortunately, the fact that it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s right.

But the desperation of Kabel and Homan to endorse their President leaks through in this paragraph:

And it is not merely policies specific to LGBTQ people that have been good for our community. The president’s tax cuts have benefited LGBTQ families and helped put food on their tables. His opportunity zones have helped create new LGBTQ-founded small businesses. The administration’s aggressive negotiations on trade deals have preserved LGBTQ jobs. His hard line on foreign policy has protected LGBTQ lives. What benefits all Americans benefits the LGBTQ community, as we cross every racial, socioeconomic, religious and cultural divide.

It’s entirely reasonable to ask whether or not those same policies benefit those groups opposed to LGBTQ protections and rights, and realize that, yes, they do. In other words, Trump’s policies, celebrated above by Kabel and Homan, may actually benefit their cultural opponents – anti-LGBTQers, to be explicit – more than they benefit the LGBTQ community.

The hand is not faster than the eye.

Kabel and Homan conveniently skip over the favor shown by Trump and Pence for religious organizations in general, attempting to give them the right to discriminate against anyone they can justify under the religious rubric. The disdain, even loathing, a number of religious organizations have shown for the LGBTQ community is the sort of thing that strains the fabric of society, because at this point the denial of these rights and protections are seen as unjust in a rational society, and perhaps the bedrock of American society is not obeying the arbitrary interpretations of obscure religious tomes, but the devotion to justice, however flawed that devotion has been, by significant portions of American society. The fact that we’ve fallen hideously short doesn’t mean that we accept it, but that we need to improve ourselves.

We fought a war over that.

So Kabel and Homan can attempt to celebrate Trump and Pence for what is ultimately a celebration of irrationality and cruelty, but I do not think I can join them in that.

In my opinion, if you’re going to propose a radical new theory about reality, you really need to get the known details right. Donald Hoffman is the proposer, suggesting that we scarcely glimpse reality at all – just enough to survive, really – but then he throws in this whopper in an article in NewScientist (3 August 2019, paywall):

The objection that a lion must be objectively real because anyone who looks over there sees a lion that we can all agree looks like a lion – so it isn’t unique to our subjective experience – isn’t a valid one, either. Humans agree about what we see because we have all evolved a similar interface. The interfaces of some other species, such as prey mammals, may have icons for lions that are similar to ours, and that guide actions similar to ours, such as keeping far away from them.

Excuse me, but I haven’t evolved anything tangible. My species certainly has, but that collective evolution makes our sensory apparatus – or interface – more or less identical, with the exception of those still changing, either randomly (and therefore irrelevantly), or in response to evolutionary pressures.

The balance of the article postulates that there’s something deeper than reality going on out there. I find what they’re talking about to be congruent with my on-again, off-again theory that we’re all in a computer simulator which features a late-resolution feature at the quantum level.

A brow wrinkler:

For Americans accustomed to paying 4 or 5 percent mortgage rates, let alone the double-digit figures consumers endured in the early 1980s, the new loan from Denmark’s Jyske Bank might seem inconceivable.

The Danish lender last week started offering home buyers 10-year mortgages at an interest rate of -0.5 percent. That means borrowers over a decade will pay back a little less than the amount borrowed, not including one-time fees.

This highly unusual condition may be good for Danish home buyers, but economists say it’s an alarming sign for the global economy. Several major governments and more than 1,000 big companies in Europe are now able to effectively borrow from global financial markets at a negative interest rate. For Jyske Bank, that means it can turn around and lend money at a subzero interest rate, too. …

“This is the ultimate indicator that something is fundamentally wrong with the world economy,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The escalation of the trade war is making it worse.” [WaPo]

A related article on the potential of a world-wide recession is here.

Neither article touches on a concern of mine, however: Monopolies.

Look, the field of lending money is a market like most others. That is to say, supply and demand are the primary drivers of prices in the market. In the lending money market, prices are denoted in interest rates, where the higher the interest rate, the higher the price.

Supply of money to lend comes from several sources, from common bank deposits to bonds to CDs (certificates of deposit). Each takes your money and lends it out to those who need it, eventually returning it to you plus a stated percentage worth.

Demand is market-specific, and demand for lent money usually^[1] has to do with investment. What drives investment about, though? Two things:

Survival. When faced with larger, dangerous rivals in their market, firms will quite often invest research, facilities, and that sort of thing in order to grow their market offerings and survive their competitors’ depredations, and those investments are often funded through borrowing. This scenario is rarely susceptible to influence by politics, public or corporate, although it’s worth noting the defense industry can use politics to survive an otherwise intractable market position.

Grow profits. Firms driven by the need to grow profits will often invest, again in research, facilities, etc, and often will use borrowing to finance those investments. But what drives this need for growth in profits? Primarily investors looking to profit from their holdings. Interestingly enough, top level executives at most large companies have managed to insulate themselves from these demands through incumbency and general success, so these demands need not be necessarily met.

In a monopoly situation, the Survival reason diminishes and can approach zero. I think we’ve seen a great deal of consolidation in many industries, and the fact of the matter is that many markets have become dominated by monopolies, some of them government-run – meaning they don’t have to borrow money.

That, in turn, reduces general demand for lent money, and thus low, and even negative, interest rates. While it sounds like madness, it may be a way for lenders to lock-in customers for future profits; loss leaders, so to speak.

All of this leads, in a way, to meditations on What is a healthy economy, anyways? Is it the perpetually growing, perpetually higher profits that we’ve seen in the past, intermittently interrupted by recessions and depressions? Or is there a healthy steady-state economy in which profits are relatively static?

And what if it turns out that this is a long-term trend? Look for banks to get a little desperate as profits from lending continue to dry up. After all, the boardroom insulation from investor demands isn’t perfect, and if profits begin to drop, then the top level executives may be replaced, which will lead to more desperation.

The addiction to ever-increasing profitability may be hard to break.

¹ A notable exception is the practice of borrowing money to pay a corporate dividend. While I’m sure there are legitimate reasons for the practice, I can’t think of any; among the illegitimate, morally speaking, reasons is ego.

This legal brief, submitted by Senator Whitehouse (D-RI). et al, concerning litigation over New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. the City of New York that will come before SCOTUS, has caused a bit of a ruckus. Here’s one of the passages which are atypical of briefs written for the Court:

Parties and lawyers seeking to shape the law through affirmative litigation might once have been reticent to openly promote their political agenda in this Court. No longer.

Confident that a Court majority assures their success, petitioners laid their cards on the table: “The project this Court began in Heller and McDonald cannot end with those precedents,” petitioners submit. Pet’rs’ Reply at 2. Petitioners identify no legal question on which the circuit courts of appeal disagree. They do not suggest the court below “so far departed from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings” to require this Court to exercise its supervisory power. Indeed, they do not suggest this withdrawn municipal regulation presents any “important question[s] of federal law that . . . should be . . . settled by this Court.” Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States, Rule 10 (2017). They simply want a majority’s help with their political “project.”

To stem the growing public belief that its decisions are “motivated mainly by politics,” the Court should decline invitations like this to engage in “projects.” See Quinnipiac Poll, supra note 2 (showing fifty-five percent of Americans believe the Court is “motivated mainly by politics”).

Petitioners’ effort did not emerge from a vacuum. The lead petitioner’s parent organization, the National Rifle Association (NRA), promoted the confirmation (and perhaps selection) of nominees to this Court who, it believed, would “break the tie” in Second Amendment cases.3 During last year’s confirmation proceedings, the NRA spent $1.2 million on television advertisements declaring exactly that: “Four liberal justices oppose your right to selfdefense,” the NRA claimed, “four justices support your right to self-defense. President Trump chose Brett Kavanaugh to break the tie. Your right to selfdefense depends on this vote.” Id.; see Laila Robbins, Conservatives Bankrolled and Dominated Kavanaugh Confirmation Media Campaign, The Hill (Oct. 19, 2018).

NRA spokespersons were similarly blunt: “The NRA strongly supports Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court because he will protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said Chris W. Cox, the NRA’s top lobbyist. Press Release, NRA-ILA, NRA-ILA Launches Major Advertising Campaign Urging Confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh (Aug. 7, 2018). “It’s critical that all pro-Second Amendment voters urge their senators to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”

And etc. National Review’s David French is livid:

I just finished reading of the most astonishing legal briefs I’ve ever read. It is easily the most malicious Supreme Court brief I’ve ever seen. And it comes not from an angry or unhinged private citizen, but from five Democratic members of the United States Senate. Without any foundation, they directly attack the integrity of the five Republican appointees and conclude with a threat to take political action against the Court if it doesn’t rule the way they demand. …

The implication is plain. The conservative justices are doing the bidding of their “corporate and Republican” masters. Their principles are malleable; only the results matter, and the results are dictated by the men and women who supported their confirmation and fund the litigation before the Court. “This backdrop,” the senators argue, “no doubt encourages petitioners’ brazen confidence that this Court will be a partner in their ‘project.’”

On ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser is entertained – I think:

The brief itself is less a legal document than a declaration of war. Though parts of it argue that the high court lacks jurisdiction over this case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, the thrust of the brief is that the Supreme Court is dominated by political hacks selected by the Federalist Society, and promoted by the National Rifle Association — and that if those hacks don’t watch out, the American people are going to rebel against them. …

The decision to lock Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland out of the high court, and the decisions to muscle Judges Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh onto that court, are the kind of tactics that exposes the molten core of partisan politics at the heart of the Supreme Court’s high-minded rhetoric.

Neither Gorsuch nor Kavanuagh, moreover, possesses even the second-hand democratic legitimacy that normally attaches to presidential appointees. Both men were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote, and were confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the country.

The judiciary, Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, has “no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever.” Its power flows entirely from the widespread sense that its decisions are legitimate. Courts “may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

In other words, Republicans may come to find that by seizing control of the judiciary through constitutional hardball, they did so much damage to their prize that it is no longer worth having. The Whitehouse brief is an early warning sign that Democratic elected officials are, at the very least, ambivalent about whether they should obey courts that are increasingly seen as illegitimate. If those courts push too hard, that ambivalence could harden into something that will do permanent damage to judicial power.

Which reminds me that my belief that the judicial system should and must be isolated from the whims of popular sentiment has an implicit assumption: that the judges are not biased in their judgments. If that assumption is false, then the lack of a popular mechanism for removal of a justice, in the face of a partisan Senate controlled by a faction unwilling to do its duty, leaves the nation at risk of losing its respect for the judiciary.

Thus, Millhiser’s conclusion may be prophetic: the harder the Republicans squeeze their prize, the less valuable it becomes while damaging their reputation as well.

This will be a case worth watching if it actually generates a heated response from the conservative bloc.

Because my Arts Editor really liked this ditty by Tori Kelly.

For all of President Trump’s tough talk on China, I just had to laugh when I saw this:

The White House on Tuesday said it would delay imposing tariffs on Chinese imports of cellphones, laptop computers, video game consoles, and certain types of footwear and clothing until Dec. 15, significantly later than the Sept. 1 deadline President Trump had repeatedly threatened.

The announcement, which came from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, ensures that Apple products and other major consumer goods would be shielded from the import tax until at least December, potentially keeping costs on these products down during the holiday shopping season.

The announcement moved stocks sharply higher. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed close to 500 points, or nearly 2 percent, on the news. The stock prices of Apple, Best Buy, Mattel and Macy’s were among those that rallied on the announcement. [WaPo]

For a President who’s repeatedly accused his predecessors of mendacious politicking, he sure seems to be trying to beat them in this category. He discovers that trade wars are not easy to win and refuses to take his medicine – instead, giving good cheer to the Chinese.

Alas and alack, however, today also saw a big slide in the major market indexes as we achieved – perhaps an improper adjective – an inverted bond yield curve:

The bond market is flashing a big neon caution sign.

Yields on 10-year US Treasury bonds dipped below the yield on the US 2-year bond Wednesday. It was the first time the 10-year yield was below the 2-year yield since 2007 — just before the Great Recession. Both were hovering around 1.58% as of late Wednesday afternoon.

In another worrisome sign, the yield on the 30-Year US Treasury fell to a record low Wednesday of about 2.01%.

This is significant. When shorter-term rates are higher than longer-term bond yields, that is known as an inverted yield curve. The 3-month US Treasury already inverted versus the 10-year this spring. Yield curve inversions have often preceded recessions and are a sign of just how nervous investors are about the immediate outlook for the economy. They are demanding higher rates for short-term loans, which is not normal. [CNN/Business]

An interesting contrast to a recent WaPo article on the evangelicals, who cite the roaring economy as a subsidiary reason to vote for Trump. It would appear that investors have their doubts about Trump’s ability to keep the economy going. His tendency to stir pots without trepidation – a seldom used herb these days – can leave one with an unnecessarily upset stomach when you least expect it.