CONDITION: Great-Power War & Proxy War Return to the European Continent
And here we are:
Adam Tooze: ’Truly dangerous spiral: Brave Ukrainian resistance frustrates Russian attack -> Kiev refuses humiliating negotiations. Russia about to ramp up destructiveness of attack -> NATO members rushing weapons to Ukraine, EU/US announce major sanctions. What is Russia’s next move?…
First: The Federal Reserve Continues to Look Like It Has It…
A week ago I was saying that the Federal Reserve has launched itself into its triple jump, and the question is whether it will manage to stick the landing. A week ago I was very confident that the bond market, at least, believed in the Federal Reserve—the inflation expectations were still very well anchored and thus let the Federal Reserve had enormous policy flexibility to react month by month, and adjust the pace at which it tried to cool down aggregate demand so as to keep the recovery going at a strong pace. This looked to me like a big victory.
Now we face the prospect of a rather large supply shock, because if sanctions against Putin's Muscovy are to be truly effective they will have to bite in the energy sector. Yes, NATO could attempt to restrict itself to “cheap” sanctions—attempting to confiscate the wealth of oligarchs, and providing unlimited personal weapons to Ukrainian guerrillas and urban-warfare semi-guerrillas via Lend-Lease. And that might be enough: as the low-morale Muscovite army begins to bleed out via urban warfare, the power-brokers in Moscow really ought to see that the only rational thing is to call off the whole affair—the only question is whether Putin gets ahead of the parade and declares victory via an annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk (and some or all of Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson?) followed by withdrawal, or whether Putin’s close contacts turn out to be unusually brave and willing to make this a 1964 “we don’t need this leader and his hare-brained schemes” moment.
In my view, the right policy for the Federal Reserve would be to continue to prioritize recovery as long as 5 year/5 year inflation expectations continue to remain well-anchored, but to accept the employment-reduction costs needed to keep the anchor if the bond market begins to move. What’s that, you say, you are surrendering monetary policy to a potential bunch of vigilantes? Yes. But push the envelope a bit: require that the vigilantes actually show up, instead of letting fear that they might drive you into policies that your successors will greatly regret as much as Powell and Brainard now regret the missteps of late-Greenspan and Bernanke.
Why do I think that we should engage in this form of forward bond-market-expectations-of-inflation targeting? One reason is that bond-market expectations are the best read we have of inflation expectations, and that the near-consensus is now that persistent moderate inflation is overwhelmingly an expectational phenomenon. To look at anything else is to look in the wrong direction:
Emi Nakamura: Is the Phillips Curve Getting Flatter?
(Yes: these are both my Berkeley colleagues. There is a reason the Berkeley Economics Department punches massively, massively, far above the weight that its financial endowment fundamentals would justify. All those thinking about giving to an economics department—consider that our incremental funding-to-results ratio is easily 5 times that of the overendowed privates.)
A second reason is that the demand-side component of the shortfall between current employment and the pre-plague employment trend is now small: the rise in employment from 142 million at Biden’s inauguration to 149 million now—7 million in one year—is an extraordinary economic-policy victory that Biden, Yellen, Powell, and Brainard should be very proud of, and that we should not ignore going forward:
Alex Domash & Lawrence Summers: How Tight Are U.S. Labor Markets?: ‘(i) Unemployment is a better predictor of wage inflation than non-employment and (ii) vacancy rates and quit rates have substantial predictive power for wage inflation…. Vacancy and quit rates currently experienced in the United States correspond to a degree of labor market tightness previously associated with sub–2 percent unemployment rates…. Labor market tightness is likely to contribute significantly to inflationary pressure in the United States for some time to come…
Ryan Avent: History & the Power of Ideas: ‘Why averting the first world war would not have meant a 20th century of smooth sailing… <
Paragraphs:
Paul Poast: ’How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine play out? What is Putin’s end game? Four scenarios….. 1…. Putin seeks to establish a pro-Russian regime in Kiev… “supported”, indefinitely, by Russian forces…. 2…. Putin seeks to annex all of Ukraine into Russia…. 3: Imperial Overreach…. All of the “near abroad” is the next target. Scenario 4: Major Power War Putin specifically shifts his focus to the Baltic States…. Which scenario is most likely? It depends on two factors. First, are Putin’s aims Maximalist or Limited? Second, the operational ease of invading Ukraine…
Anthony Wilder Wohns & al.: A Unified Genealogy of Modern & Ancient Genomes: ‘Hundreds of thousands of modern… and thousands of ancient human genomes…. Every human genome contains segments from ancestries of varying ages. Wohns et al. applied a tree recording method… to generate a unified human genealogy…. This method allows for missing and erroneous data and uses ancient genomes to calibrate genomic coalescent times. This permits us to determine how our genomes have changed over time and between populations, informing upon the evolution of our species…
Caitlin Talmadge: ’Developments in the last 24 hours are heartbreaking and a preview of great brutality…. Putin’s pointed, not-veiled nuclear threats are really remarkable…. The Stability-Instability Paradox: the notion that mutual vulnerability (“MAD”) at the strategic nuclear level can actually make conflict more likely at lower rungs of the escalation ladder… us[ing]… strategic nuclear forces as a shield behind which they can pursue conventional aggression…. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, nor a U.S. treaty ally. But then neither is Taiwan. So if you think nuclear stalemate is going to keep the peace in the Strait, you would need to do some hard thinking…. It’s hard for me to see the Russian end game here…. Russia can steamroll Ukrainian regular forces, though I expect Ukraine can make this more costly than Russia has anticipated. Urban warfare is unkind…. But beyond that, what is military endgame? Regime change and then puppet government? Difficulties of indefinitely occupying a nation of 41 million should be apparent…
Become a subscriber to receive this ‘Stack in email; or pay, for extras-at-the-bottom and to support this effort—I would like to collect enough from it to hire an RA....
Why was technological progress so slow during the Mediæval Age? We think we have a world population of 240 million in 800, and 500 million in 1500, with a stable level of real income per capita. Using my rule-of-thumb that the value H of the stock of discovered, developed, deployed, and diffused technology—useful ideas about manipulating nature and organizing humans—can be gauged by multiplying income per capita by population, that gives us an annual proportional rate of growth h of the value of this stock of only 0.052%/year. True, in the Dover-Circle economies our estimated h is 0.096%/year, as population within 300 miles of Dover grows from 8 to 25 million. But a good half of that wedge is simply a region poor and technologically backward in 800 catching up to the world average. (But then going beyond it in printing, gunpowder weapons, ocean-going ships, and precision metalwork.)
Here, from a poem of the early 1200s, is a clue:
John[?]: History of William the Marshal: The Tournament at Lagny-sur-Marne:
Sir Herluin de Vancy,
who was the Seneschal of Flanders,
had at least thirty knights with him,
outside the press of battle.
One of his knights galloped up
to inform his lord, Herluin.
“My lord,” he said, “in God’s name,
look over there, the King is on the point of being captured.
You take him and get the praise for it;
he’s already lost his helmet
and is much distraught by that.”
When Sir Herluin heard this,
his heart was filled with joy,
and he said: “He’s ours, I think.”
They all spurred on at a fast gallop
in pursuit of the King.
The Marshal was not idle,
instead he rode to meet them with lance in han
They clashed so violently
that his lance was completely shattered
as far as his horse’s hocks,
but I can assure you that he was soon upright again.
The fight homed in around him;
they attacked him, and he defended.
Everything he struck was broken and split,
shields were hacked to pieces, helmets staved in.
My lord William the Marshal performed so many feats
that nobody present had the slightest idea
what had become of the King.
Afterwards, the King, those who witnessed the event,
and those who heard speak of it,
said that never before had finer blows been witnessed
from a single knight, or known of,
as those dealt by the Marshal that day.
The bravest amongst them gave him high praise for this…
William Baumol (1990): Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive (Journal of Political Economy 98:5,1 (Oct.): 893-921 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2937617>)
When young Anglo-Norman William the Marshal (1146-1219), fourth son of a minor baron, in 1158 wants to become a young man seriously on the make, he leaves his father’s English backwater home near Newbury:
Where does he go? He heads for Tancarville, Normandy, and the high-status Norman household of William de Tancarville, Chamberlain of Normandy:
There he was trained to be a bully-boy, a soldier, a politician, and a professional athlete—“fighting” in tournaments before spectators for ransoms and prizes, and on his way to becoming first a knight-errant, then a sponsored tournament-fighting retainer, then Earl of Pembroke jure uxoris via his arranged marriage with Isobel de Clare, finally Regent of England for King Henry III Plantagenet, and “the best knight that ever lived” <https://archive.org/details/williammarshalkn0000pain>. Entrepreneurship, but a career of negative- or at best zero-sum entrepreneurship.
Back then, even (especially?) the Christmas Feasts could become episodes for zero-sum status war by other means:
The History Jar: Christmas with Henry II & His Sons: ‘1182. Eleanor of Aquitaine was not in attendance, having been kept a prisoner since she’d sided with her three elder sons in their first revolt against Henry [II Plantagenet] in 1173…. The Young King [Henry III] had semi-revolted against his father by waging war with brother Richard [Coeur de Leon] over Poitou. In the spring… his brother Geoffrey of Brittany would join up…. William Marshall, widely accepted as the hero of the age and all round trustworthy chap on account of his loyalty to a succession of Plantagenets, was facing accusations of adultery with none other than the Young King’s wife, Princess Margaret of France. And… [Chamberlain] William de Tancarville was insisting on his right to wash the king’s hands.
The great and the good were summoned to Caen for the celebrations. More than a thousand knights attended. William Marshall took the opportunity to challenge the Young King to bring out Marshall’s accuser—the non-too-subtle implication being that Marshall would then proceed to thrash them soundly. He volunteered to fight three accusers on three successive days and if he lost any of the knightly bouts then he would be deemed guilty of adultery through trial by combat.
Young Henry did not accept the challenge.
So Marshall then suggested that if no one would fight him they could cut off one of his fingers and then have the fight. Unsurprisingly this resulted in a stunned silence. Now, what should have happened is that Marshall should have been declared innocent of the crime that no one was naming on the spot because quite clearly his accusers weren’t prepared to put themselves in danger’s way. However, the Young King didn’t do what protocol required.
It should also be added that some historians believe that Marshall’s biography makes much of the accusation because he was actually guilty of being ambitious and greedy and he was trying to make the adultery smear into a scandalous smokescreen for his real activities (think more along the lines of “Game of Thrones” than Sir Walter Scott). Marshall announced that he was being denied justice. Henry II gave the knight safe conduct and Marshall left in what can only be described as a bit of a righteous huff… it also gave him an excuse to leave his lord… yes, that’s right… the same lord who was just about to rebel against his father.
Marshall did not rejoin the Young King until he was dying of dysentery and he’d sought permission not only from Henry II but also Philip of France.
Make of it what you will.
Meanwhile William de Tancarville, who was a hereditary chamberlain, insisted on his hand-washing rights. Apparently the king was just about to have his hands washed when Tancarville pushed his way to the front and grabbed at the silver basin that the chamberlain was using. The person who had been about to wash Henry’s hands kept hold of the basin and I suspect that much sloshing about ensued until Henry told the bloke with the basin to hand it over to Tancarville, who then made a great show of ensuring that Henry had clean hands–ceremonially speaking of course. And then he proceeded to pocket the basin that had held the water for the king’s clean up, as well as the basins employed for the handwashing of the princes.
It turns out that the silver basins were a perk of the job, which would perhaps account for why the first handwasher-in-chief wasn’t keen on letting go of it in the first place.
Good will at the Christmas Court at Caen in 1182 seems noticeable only by its absence. By January the king and his sons were heartily fed up of one another and took themselves off for a spot of perennial Plantagenet family fisticuffs–de Tancarville siding with the Young King…
By contrast, when young William Gates (1955-) in 1975 wants to become a young man seriously on the make, he leaves Harvard College for Albuquerque to write software for the Intel 8080 microprocessor. Entrepreneurship—but not negative- or even zero-sum.
Gillian Kenny has a tweetthread about William the Marshal’s wife, the 26-years-younger Isobel de Clare, suo jure Countess of Striguil & Pembroke:
Gillian Kenny: ‘Recently watched (or tried to) the 2010 Robin Hood with Russell Crowe and Ironclad with James Purefoy. Both films feature William Marshal (or a version of), acclaimed as the greatest knight of his age but... let's be honest, he couldn't have done it without his Irish wife.
Who was she? She was Isabel, daughter of Richard de Clare (Strongbow) and Aoife, the daughter of Diarmait MacMurrough—the king of Leinster who, when deposed, sought Strongbow's help to reclaim his power. Strongbow got hold of Leinster through her. Then William Marshal married the heiress Isabel around 1189 when she was a teenager and he was a LOT older. They seem to have been happy though, and William was aware of what he had gained through her (so much land). There's a famous poem about him and in it he says "as we well know: I have no claim to anything here save through her".
Anyway, she was young, rich and tough. In 1207-08 she was in Ireland, alone and pregnant and sorted out a rebellion. She commanded the defence of Kilkenny castle and ordered a man to be lowered from the walls to alert her followers rather than give in. Then she demanded that the leading unruly baron submit to her and give his son as a hostage for his future good behaviour. She had also forced the other rebel knights of Leinster to come to terms and surrender their children or brothers if they had none, to her. The rebels were adherents of King John who had detained her husband in England but Isabel's actions foiled all plans. The king had to impart the “good and welcome news” to her anxious husband of her victory in Leinster and her own “good health and spirits".
Isabel knew how to hold a grudge too The Marshal once he was back in charge forgave the rebels and returned the hostages she had taken. “Once the countess was informed of this, I can tell you that she was not at all pleased, for they had done her many a wrong and hurt".
She wasn’t just about kicking rebel arse though. She is reputed to have directed the erection of a motte at Old Ross in Wexford. She along with the Marshal also founded the town of New Ross in 1207 as well as lots of castles, churches and boroughs. A slab found in St. Mary’s Church in New Ross appears to have been a cenotaph made in her memory (she was buried in Tintern Abbey). Or it may have been a heart burial. Anyway, she liked New Ross.
She died shortly after her husband. Her distress at his sufferings and death are described: “it was observed that the countess could not walk without danger of coming to grief, for her heart and body, her head and limbs, had suffered from her exertions her weeping and her vigils”.
She also had TEN children too, though, which can take a toll on a body.
And yes she was very sad but even until the end she was getting shit DONE. Arguing at court over her lands, travelling all over the various lands belonging to her, and just continuing to be a complete badass woman.
She is buried in Tintern Abbey in Wales.
A woman who embodied the cultural exchange of late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Ireland, and whose wealth enabled her husband to become a power player. And who seems to have been written out of many narratives about him
