“Price discovery” in commercial real estate today; remembering China’s Tien an Men catastrophe of 1989; human living standards by number of homo sapiens lives lived; very briefly noted; neither our co
Milhiser is simply wrong about the NY prosecution. Basically, Bragg charged that Trump violated a NY state election law during the federal election. He almost certainly violated federal law too, but Barr (corruptly) and Garland (incompetently) failed to prosecute.
I think Dan Drezner has it exactly right. It isn't as if we don't have ample examples from teh past. In this nuclear age, WWII would be an existential event. No time even for the super-rich to reach their expensive island bunkers (and for the few that do, there will be nothing for them to emerge to).
The data must be for cellphones using the cellular netwrok. But is this teh case for remote and hybrid workers working from home, using their wifi internet connections to make calls, order food, etc.? SF has definitely reduced its office occupancy rates, and this must be making some landlords desperate given the many [planted?] articles about how office work is more productive than remote work and employees should come back to the office. Middle managers are no doubt freaking out as it appears that their services are not really needed by motivated remote workers. A number of the calls I make to custmore service are clearly handled by employees at home rather than being in a call center. I think that is progress, and so my heart doesn't bleed for property owners.
If Joun Williams thinks the Fed should be reducing the EFFR, slowing QT or some other adjustment in its policy instruments, he should just say so, not garble his message with meaningless talk about monetary policy being "restrictive."
Ditto Chris Anstey & Enda Curran and "financial conditions."
I think you mean "it profit a man nothing to give his economy for a casino operation. . . but for a meme!"
The stodgy old BoC cut rates by 25bp on Wednesday, and of its three preferred measures of inflation, two (CPI-trim and CPI-median) have only just dipped below 3%. (The third, CPI-common, is down around 2.5%). They seem to take their 1%-3% inflation band more seriously than the Fed. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/indicators/capacity-and-inflation-pressures/inflation/
This thing that puzzles Nagel - you can't trust your senses, and you can't trust your reason - is as old as philosophy, and I don't see that Nagel has added anything interesting to the literature. Ada Palmer's Sketches of a History of Skepticism blog posts interest me far more. https://www.exurbe.com/sketches-of-a-history-of-skepticism-part-i-classical-eudaimonia/
Buddhist Economics (Claire Brown, Noah Smith): On a lighter note, that title reminded of our grad school class in Math for Economics. While teaching the Hamiltonian, the prof, who was, shall we say, a bit high strung, said (paraphrase): You know, only recently I was able to see the connection between the Hamiltonian and Zen Buddhism. One grad student then softly said, "How could you have missed it."
The Boltzman Brain argument is clearly for philosophers. There are all sorts of engineer jokes based on Zeno's paradox of motion with a punchline of the form "but the engineer can get close enough for all practical purposes". No, we cannot always trust our senses. They provide us with information useful for a broad range of practical purposes but may or may not reveal the truth for all values of truth. We all know that strange sensation one gets when one suddenly realizes that one's internal model of the physical world is incorrect. Sometimes it involves confusing one stretch of road with another. Sometimes it involves there being floor rather than another rung on a ladder or another rung instead of solid floor. It's the way it feels to update one's priors. I imagine most Boltzman Brains, if any exist, are familiar with it as well.
"Probably Trump is now a felon for the same reason that he is incredibly bad at presidenting:"
Hitler was lazy and not a good Chancellor. But he did have many followers and who did their jobs with typical German efficiency. The problem with both Hitler and Trump is that their decision-making was very poor. Ececuting poor plans however efficiently doesn't work. I believe Warren Buffett made an analogous comment about running businesses.
Noah Smith: The Quiet Rise of Desire Modification (using drugs).
Phiip K Dick was there many decades ago, with a wide variety of drug-induced mood and perceived reality changes. Are we about to live in his imagined worlds now?
Global Warming: The failure of policy makers worldwide to focus efforts on taxing new emissions of CO2 years ago harms some countries, and not generally the richest countries that are most responsible for the actual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, more than others. The US position at COP should reflect this.
Re Keynes: We could reduce the utility of the stock market as an indicator of GDP expectations by getting Treasury to create a GDP security. Let's observe those animal spirits directly, unobscured by other factors assenting asset prices.
Milhiser is simply wrong about the NY prosecution. Basically, Bragg charged that Trump violated a NY state election law during the federal election. He almost certainly violated federal law too, but Barr (corruptly) and Garland (incompetently) failed to prosecute.
I think Dan Drezner has it exactly right. It isn't as if we don't have ample examples from teh past. In this nuclear age, WWII would be an existential event. No time even for the super-rich to reach their expensive island bunkers (and for the few that do, there will be nothing for them to emerge to).
Cellphones as a proxy for the local economy.
The data must be for cellphones using the cellular netwrok. But is this teh case for remote and hybrid workers working from home, using their wifi internet connections to make calls, order food, etc.? SF has definitely reduced its office occupancy rates, and this must be making some landlords desperate given the many [planted?] articles about how office work is more productive than remote work and employees should come back to the office. Middle managers are no doubt freaking out as it appears that their services are not really needed by motivated remote workers. A number of the calls I make to custmore service are clearly handled by employees at home rather than being in a call center. I think that is progress, and so my heart doesn't bleed for property owners.
If Joun Williams thinks the Fed should be reducing the EFFR, slowing QT or some other adjustment in its policy instruments, he should just say so, not garble his message with meaningless talk about monetary policy being "restrictive."
Ditto Chris Anstey & Enda Curran and "financial conditions."
I think you mean "it profit a man nothing to give his economy for a casino operation. . . but for a meme!"
The stodgy old BoC cut rates by 25bp on Wednesday, and of its three preferred measures of inflation, two (CPI-trim and CPI-median) have only just dipped below 3%. (The third, CPI-common, is down around 2.5%). They seem to take their 1%-3% inflation band more seriously than the Fed. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/indicators/capacity-and-inflation-pressures/inflation/
This thing that puzzles Nagel - you can't trust your senses, and you can't trust your reason - is as old as philosophy, and I don't see that Nagel has added anything interesting to the literature. Ada Palmer's Sketches of a History of Skepticism blog posts interest me far more. https://www.exurbe.com/sketches-of-a-history-of-skepticism-part-i-classical-eudaimonia/
Buddhist Economics (Claire Brown, Noah Smith): On a lighter note, that title reminded of our grad school class in Math for Economics. While teaching the Hamiltonian, the prof, who was, shall we say, a bit high strung, said (paraphrase): You know, only recently I was able to see the connection between the Hamiltonian and Zen Buddhism. One grad student then softly said, "How could you have missed it."
The Boltzman Brain argument is clearly for philosophers. There are all sorts of engineer jokes based on Zeno's paradox of motion with a punchline of the form "but the engineer can get close enough for all practical purposes". No, we cannot always trust our senses. They provide us with information useful for a broad range of practical purposes but may or may not reveal the truth for all values of truth. We all know that strange sensation one gets when one suddenly realizes that one's internal model of the physical world is incorrect. Sometimes it involves confusing one stretch of road with another. Sometimes it involves there being floor rather than another rung on a ladder or another rung instead of solid floor. It's the way it feels to update one's priors. I imagine most Boltzman Brains, if any exist, are familiar with it as well.
"Probably Trump is now a felon for the same reason that he is incredibly bad at presidenting:"
Hitler was lazy and not a good Chancellor. But he did have many followers and who did their jobs with typical German efficiency. The problem with both Hitler and Trump is that their decision-making was very poor. Ececuting poor plans however efficiently doesn't work. I believe Warren Buffett made an analogous comment about running businesses.
Noah Smith: The Quiet Rise of Desire Modification (using drugs).
Phiip K Dick was there many decades ago, with a wide variety of drug-induced mood and perceived reality changes. Are we about to live in his imagined worlds now?
Global Warming: The failure of policy makers worldwide to focus efforts on taxing new emissions of CO2 years ago harms some countries, and not generally the richest countries that are most responsible for the actual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, more than others. The US position at COP should reflect this.
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/cop-28-and-counting
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/legal-remedies-for-climate-change 1
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/legal-remedies-for-climate-change 2
Re Keynes: We could reduce the utility of the stock market as an indicator of GDP expectations by getting Treasury to create a GDP security. Let's observe those animal spirits directly, unobscured by other factors assenting asset prices.