BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-04-26 We
Math and π; computer manufacturing construction; soft landing hopes; human cognition; the Terra-Luna collapse; fake Republican proposals for the long-run budget...
ONE VIDEO: Þe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics:
ONE IMAGE: U.S. Computer Manufacturing Getting into Gear:
MUST-READ: An Economy in Super Shape:
Emily Stewart: Is this a soft landing or the start of a recession?: ‘If the economy avoids a recession, it will be in spite of the Fed, not because of it…. Let’s say the glass is half full here for a minute: I don’t think a lot of economists are waking up in the morning and doing a little dance thinking about how awesome the economy is and how it’s going to stay that way forever. But in a lot of ways, the current panorama isn’t terrible. At 3.5 percent, the unemployment rate is as low as it’s been in decades, and the Black unemployment rate is at its lowest point ever. The labor force participation rate is by and large back to where it was pre-pandemic. Unemployment claims are ticking up, but they’re still low; the economy’s still adding jobs, but not as many as it was. People with disabilities and with criminal records have been pulled into the job market. Many low-income workers have reaped the benefits of a tight labor market…
Very Briefly Noted:
Paul Krugman: These are the inflation measures that matter: ‘Expectations, I’ve been convinced by Joseph Politano… that the best … measure is… the Atlanta Fed’s index of business inflation expectations…
Masoud Saatsaz & Abolfazl Rezaei: The technology, management, and culture of water in ancient Iran from prehistoric times to the Islamic Golden Age…
Paul J. Davies: First Republic Shows How Not to Build Confidence: ‘Bank’s stock dives after executives decline to answer questions on earnings call…
Joseph Politano: America's Industrial Transition: ‘US Manufacturing is Slowing—Excluding the Record Spending on Semiconductor Fabricators and Tech Manufacturing Plants…
Steve Randy Waldman: ‘Cory Doctorow: “Amazon's "main 'advertising' business is… payola… extracting $31b/year from its merchants to make its shoppers' experience worse… danegeld to Amazon…
Noah Smith: Someone has to run the fabs: ‘Egalitarianism is important but we neglect STEM education at our peril…
Sharon Ghaffary: AI is actually kind of fun…
Peter Gleick: ‘Any tweet now with science, data, and facts about #climatechange is now swarmed by climate-denying trolls, bots, and idiots because science, data, and facts scare the hell out of them, and because Elon's Twitter now promotes them. What a cesspool…
Vittoria Elliott: FaceBook Made BuzzFeed, Then Killed It: ‘The digital publisher grew fat off the back of Facebook’s fickle algorithm. Battered and bruised, it’s now going back to where it all began…
Max Fisher: The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World…
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Adam Mastroianni: Help there's a dead CEO in my head: ‘I got covid and it changed my theory of consciousness…. How psychologists have talked about conscious thought…. A properly functioning CEO…. Last week, I got covid and it assassinated my CEO…. My CEO seems to be circumvented a lot. He gets subdued when I’m sleepy, turned off when I’m in the zone, and bypassed entirely when I need to react quickly. This never seems to be his call; something else disappears him…. Often, our conscious merely issues consultant-like suggestions…. My conscious experience—my sensation that there’s a little guy in my head directing everything—isn’t quite right. The consultant… is sort of off to the side, stepping in wherever he’s invited. He serves at the pleasure of the rest of the brain…. That idea brings me great peace. Being in charge all the time blows. But if the conscious part of me is just trying to help various brain departments do their jobs better and then leave them alone, that’s way less pressure…
Jiageng Liu, Igor Makarov & Antoinette Schoar: Anatomy of a Run: The Terra Luna Crash: ‘Terra, the third largest cryptocurrency ecosystem after Bitcoin and Ethereum, collapsed in three days in May 2022 and wiped out $50 billion in valuation. At the center of the collapse was a run on a blockchain-based borrowing and lending protocol (Anchor) that promised high yields to its stablecoin (UST) depositors. Using detailed data from the Terra blockchain and trading data from exchanges, we show that the run on Terra was a complex phenomenon that happened across multiple chains and assets. It was unlikely due to concentrated market manipulation by a third party but instead was precipitated by growing concerns about the sustainability of the system. Once a few large holders of UST adjusted their positions on May 7th, 2021, other large traders followed. Blockchain technology allowed investors to monitor each other's actions and amplified the speed of the run. Wealthier and more sophisticated investors were the first to run and experienced much smaller losses. Poorer and less sophisticated investors ran later and had larger losses. The complexity of the system made it difficult even for insiders to understand the buildup of risk. Finally, we draw broader lessons about financial fragility in an environment where a regulatory safety net does not exist, pseudonymous transactions are publicly observable, and market participants are incentivized to monitor the financial health of the system…
Biden Administration: Talking Points on CBO Score of the McCarthy Legislation: ‘75 percent of the savings… come from deep cuts to veterans medical care, education, research, public health and public safety… cutting non-defense discretionary programs nearly in half by 2033…. The bill would increase the deficit by $120 billion… [as it enables] wealthy people and large corporations can cheat on their taxes. And the estimate shows that the bill’s Medicaid and SNAP cuts would exactly pay for allowing this additional tax evasion. Tax cuts and corporate give-aways House Republicans are advancing separately would wipe out the bulk of the savings…. As Speaker McCarty reaffirmed last week, House Republicans are proposing separately to extend all of the Trump tax cuts without paying for them…
Mark Zandi & Bernard Yaros: Debt-Limit Drama Heats Up: ‘X-date, when the Treasury will run out of the cash needed to pay the government’s bills on time, may hit as soon as early June. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy… we assess the macroeconomic consequences of the Speaker’s debt limit legislation…. In the Clean Debt Limit scenario, real GDP is expected to grow 2.25% in the year compared with 1.6% if Speaker McCarthy’s legislation becomes law. While the economy skirts recession in both scenarios, recession risks are uncomfortably high…
Regarding occupied Emily Stewart's piece:. My grandson's job market experience is quite consistent with the rosy picture of the economy. He is a recent high school graduate, working and attending school part time. Since graduation , he has had for jobs. Two he departed in short order. One he still occupies. The other job he left to relocate. This pattern was common in the 1960s. Job-hopping, even from city to city. Jobs were assumed available. We're not quite back to the Sixties, but I have hope that music will get better.
Re the opening of the video, W. W. Rouse Ball records it as follows.
"De Morgan was explaining to an actuary what was the chance that a certain proportion of some group of people would at the end of a given time be alive; and quoted the actuarial formula, involving p [pi], which, in answer to a question, he explained stood for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. His acquaintance, who had so far listened to the explanation with interest, interrupted him and exclaimed, 'My dear friend, that must be a delusion, what can a circle have to do with the number of people alive at a given time?'"