DONALD’S BLACK BART STRATEGY:

America Is Not an Economic Island (Desmond Lachman, November 27, 2024, AEIdeas)

Much as Trump might want America to go it alone behind high tariff walls, the fact of the matter is that the US economy is highly integrated in the world economy. As such, if Trump’s high tariff policy has the effect of tipping the European and Chinese economies into recession and of inviting trade retaliation, those economies troubles might come back to adversely impact both our economy and our financial markets. That could cause serious political trouble for Trump in the 2026 mid-term Congressional election.

One indication of how integrated we are with the rest of the world economy is the fact that exports currently constitute around 11 percent of our economy and a multiple of that number in the agricultural, aerospace, and pharmaceutical industries. Any marked slowing in the global economy or the resort by our foreign trade partners to retaliatory tariffs would be sorely felt in those industries.

Other indications of how interlinked we are with the rest of the world’s economy are the high percentage of the total earnings that our companies derive from abroad and the massive exposure of our financial system to foreign lending. It is estimated that foreign revenues comprise almost 30 percent of the S&P 500’s total revenues. Meanwhile, our banking system has literally trillions of dollars of foreign loans on its books. One only has to recall the shockwaves that the Asian, Russian, and the Eurozone economic crises caused to our financial system to recognize the importance of a healthy world economy for our banking system.

As we were painfully reminded during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, our economy is deeply intertwined with the global supply chain. We rely on imports of key raw materials like rare earth metals for electronics, renewable energy, and defense technologies. In addition, many consumer products, including automobiles, depend on components coming from abroad. This makes our economy highly vulnerable to retaliation by our trade partners in general and China in particular should they choose to withhold key materials or components needed for our production process.

IT’S A LIBERAL WORLD, THE ILLIBERAL JUST LIVE IN IT:

Neoliberalism didn’t Fail and isn’t Dead, Yet (Zachary Karabell, Nov 27, 2024, The Edgy Optimist)

[I]n 1999, when those protestors violently railed against globalization in Seattle, the value of global trade in merchandise was just over $5 trillion dollars. That was on a global GDP of about $30 trillion so trade was about one-sixth of that. In 2023, trade in merchandise was about $24 trillion on a global GDP of just over $100 trillion, making trade about a quarter that. Trade in services, which is hard to measure, is another $6-7 trillion at least, whereas in 1999, services trade was much more modest. While trade has dipped slightly in the past two years, it is now a far greater share of global economic activity than ever before.

Trade patterns are also morphing. It is no longer resource-rich countries selling oil, minerals, and commodities to the developed nations of the West and East Asia. It is now everyone selling something to everyone and everyone buying stuff from everywhere. The arrows used to be simple, with the developed world sending raw materials and the industrial powerhouses, and the U.S. most of all, selling finished goods to the world. Now the lines go from Africa to Asia, from Asia to Latin America, from Latin America to Africa, and Africa to Europe, and Europe to the United States, and the United States to everywhere. Hundreds of lines now link nations, peoples, and companies in unprecedented ways.

In the process of that explosion of commerce, the world became vastly richer, and average incomes across the world rose from about $5000 per person to about $17,000 per person in constant dollars (meaning inflation-adjusted). That tripling of income is directly correlated to trade, and hence to the very neoliberalism currently derided.

TOUGH BEAT FOR RENE GIRARD:

The First Christmas Tree (Henry Van Dyke)

“None of these things will please the god. More costly is the offering that shall cleanse your sin, more precious the crimson dew that shall send new life into this holy tree of blood. Thor claims your dearest and your noblest gift.”

Hunrad moved nearer to the group of children who stood watching the fire and the swarms of spark-serpents darting upward. They had heeded none of the priest’s words, and did not notice now that he approached them, so eager were they to see which fiery snake would go highest among the oak branches. Foremost among them, and most intent on the pretty game, was a boy like a sunbeam, slender and quick, with blithe brown eyes and laughing lips. The priest’s hand was laid upon his shoulder. The boy turned and looked up in his face.

“Here,” said the old man, with his voice vibrating as when a thick rope is strained by a ship swinging from her moorings, “here is the chosen one, the eldest son of the Chief, the darling of the people. Hearken, Bernhard, wilt thou go to Valhalla, where the heroes dwell with the gods, to bear a message to Thor?”

The boy answered, swift and clear:

“Yes, priest, I will go if my father bids me. Is it far away? Shall I run quickly? Must I take my bow and arrows for the wolves?”

The boy’s father, the Chieftain Gundhar, standing among his bearded warriors, drew his breath deep, and leaned so heavily on the handle of his spear that the wood cracked. And his wife, Irma, bending forward from the ranks of women, pushed the golden hair from her forehead with one hand. The other dragged at the silver chain about her neck until the rough links pierced her flesh, and the red drops fell unheeded on her breast.
A sigh passed through the crowd, like the murmur of the forest before the storm breaks. Yet no one spoke save Hunrad:
“Yes, my Prince, both bow and spear shalt thou have, for the way is long, and thou art a brave huntsman. But in darkness thou must journey for a little space, and with eyes blindfolded. Fearest thou?”

“Naught fear I,” said the boy, “neither darkness, nor the great bear, nor the were-wolf. For I am Gundhar’s son, and the defender of my folk.”

Then the priest led the child in his raiment of lamb’s-wool to a broad stone in front of the fire. He gave him his little bow tipped with silver, and his spear with shining head of steel. He bound the child’s eyes with a white cloth, and bade him kneel beside the stone with his face to the cast. Unconsciously the wide arc of spectators drew inward toward the centre, as the ends of the bow draw together when the cord is stretched. Winfried moved noiselessly until he stood close behind the priest.

The old man stooped to lift a black hammer of stone from the ground,–the sacred hammer of the god Thor. Summoning all the strength of his withered arms, he swung it high in the air. It poised for an instant above the child’s fair head–then turned to fall.
One keen cry shrilled out from where the women stood: “Me! take me! not Bernhard!”
The flight of the mother toward her child was swift as the falcon’s swoop. But swifter still was the hand of the deliverer.

ARBITRARINESS IS THE ENEMY OF JUSTICE:

Dead Tape: Annual Federal Paperwork Hours Consume Equivalent Of 14,983 Human Lifetimes (Nov. 20th, 2024, Forbes)

The ICB’s “Paperwork Reduction Accounting” appendix indicates that 10.5 billion hours were required to complete paperwork from 39 departments, agencies and commissions—up from 10.34 in 2022. A table below depicts these.

The bulk—6.657 billion hours—is attributable to the Department of the Treasury (up from 6.603 in 2022). The runner-up Department of Health and Human Services clocks in at 1.59 billion hours (compared to 1.65 billion in 2022; here we do find reduction). Past years’ cross-governmental paperwork-hour tallies appear below, by fiscal year.

2015: 9.865 billion hours
2016: 11.442
2017: 11.529
2018: 11.357
2019: 10.998
2020: 11.618
2021: 9.974
2022: 10.34

Despite the emphasis on ease of access to programs, paperwork hours are considerably higher today than the 7.2 billion at which they stood back in 2000. There are far more programs today, although the Government Accountability Office (GAO) affirms we don’t know how many.

IT WON’T BE EASY, YOU’LL THINK IT STRANGE:

If Javier Milei is successful, the world will talk about the Argentinean miracle”: An Interview with Marcelo Duclos (José Papparelli, November 26, 2024, European Conservative)

I would say that the most important thing is something that at first glance nobody notices and yet is key for the economy: the fall in the so-called “country risk” index. That is, the decrease in the indicator that measures the probability that a nation will default on its financial obligations, such as the payment of its external debt. This also means that the economic measures begin the capitalisation of the Argentine economy. However, the average worker does not yet perceive this. The important thing is that this macroeconomic consolidation will inevitably put an end to the fiscal deficit at the national level, with an historic adjustment in unnecessary spending and without resorting to printing banknotes to end the deficit and inflation. This represents another momentous change whose central objective is the promotion of economic development and the strengthening of the competitiveness of various economic sectors. In other words, in the macroeconomy, there is a fundamental correction of issues that today seem intangible, but that will be reflected in the daily lives of Argentines in a very short time.

Is there something that the citizens can perceive today in concrete terms?

Of course, inflation control. We have to take into account the government’s very important monetary correction that put an end to the state’s sources of financing through monetary issuance. We must remember that we had a president, Alberto Fernández, who said that inflation was caused by “demons.” The question of uncontrolled price increases is key, and I can say that, in Argentina, the problem of inflation is now history. Logically, the question of updating tariffs and services has meant that people have had to realise that things are worth what they are worth, and that has its consequences.

Now, when almost every day goes by with purchases not increasing in price, the moment of truth has arrived and, finally, reality ends up imposing itself. Another example is the overnight solution of the rent crisis, with the repeal of the law that fixed the market price—paradoxically, the opposite of what Sánchez and the communists did in Spain! This is also tangible for Argentines.

GIVE THE PARADIGM, GET THE MATH:

Mathematicians Just Debunked the ‘Bunkbed Conjecture’ (Joseph Howlett, Nov. 24th, 2024, Wired)

Unexpectedly, three mathematicians have now shown that a well-known hypothesis in probability theory called the bunkbed conjecture falls into this category. The conjecture—which is about the different ways you can navigate the mathematical mazes called graphs when they’re stacked on top of each other like bunk beds—seemed natural, even self-evident. “Anything our brain tells us suggests the conjecture should be true,” said Maria Chudnovsky, a graph theorist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new work.

But they were wrong. Last month, a trio of mathematicians announced a counterexample, disproving the conjecture. The result offers fresh guidance on how to approach related problems in physics about properties of solid materials. But it also taps into deeper questions about how mathematics works. A lot of mathematical effort is spent trying to prove conjectures true. It’s lonelier to try to pull them apart. The team behind the new work failed many times before they finally found their counterexample. Their story suggests that mathematicians may need to question their assumptions more often.

THE BEST SPORTS STORY IN THE WORLD:

Sudan, football and the ‘worst humanitarian crisis on earth’ (Adam Leventhal, Nov 24, 2024, The Athletic)

Football pitches around Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and in the neighbouring city of Omdurman have been used as burial grounds for the dead rather than games. The 19-month conflict has caused what is, according to the United Nations, “the worst humanitarian crisis on earth”.

“The numbers are so large that you can’t even get your head around the scale of human suffering,” the United States’ special envoy for Sudan, Tom Perriello, told reporters this week. “The numbers are astronomical…(and) the death toll is probably more than anything that’s been estimated.”

People from Sudan have found themselves fighting for peace but also for attention, as conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine dominate headlines.

Sudan’s football team have been forced into a nomadic existence, playing “home” games in South Sudan (which became its own nation in 2011), Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Libya. But they have achieved remarkable results: Sudan have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) starting in Morocco in December 2025 and are top of their group competing to reach the World Cup, a tournament they have never played in before, in the United States, Canada and Mexico in 2026.

CLASSICIST:

Requiem for a Punster: Leonard Slatkin Pays Tribute to P.D.Q. Bach (and Peter Schickele) (Chris King, November 22, 2024. Common Reader)

Leonard Slatkin: Peter Schickele was a composer, first and foremost. He played the bassoon and the piano as well. He had written, among other things, the music for a show back in the early sixties called O Calcutta that was a little bit like Hair, and these other sort of hippie-inspired things where it was very short, momentary flash of full nudity onstage, very shocking back in the early sixties. He wrote the music for a film called Silent Running with Bruce Dern, which was about the impact of pollution on the environment and outer space. He was part of a group called The Open Window, that combined classical music with pop genres of the time.

The success of that concert at Town Hall really put him on the map. He would appear on The Today Show; he would be on late-night chat shows. This invention of the last and least of J.S. Bach’s children was giving a kind of comedic bent to the stuffy world of classical music. Even if you didn’t know anything about classical music, you could come to these concerts and you would be rolling on the floor, because all of the references he would make to different music. At the same time he would invent instruments, all these things that were crazy. But it was very funny, and it really caught on—the public really embraced it.

When I came to St. Louis in 1968, we had this idea to do a concert at the Zoo, and we commissioned Peter to write a piece which was called A Zoo Called Earth, and at the end of the piece there was a march where many animals came out. The piece has become almost a staple of children’s concerts these days. It was also one of the first classical music pieces to deal with the environment because it had to do with an alien who comes to visit and thinks, well, if you’ll take better care of your planet, maybe we will come back and visit again.

I commissioned a symphony from Peter which we premiered in Washington. Then I would conduct for P.D.Q. Bach concerts that Peter would do around the country and many of them here. Peter would usually arrive late for the concerts, and he might come in swinging on a rope from the balcony, Tarzan-style, and then crawl his way to the stage. With this most disheveled-looking manner you could possibly imagine, he would then proceed just to totally entertain the audience.

He also had a fantastic radio show called The Schickele Mix, which, in a way, was an inspiration for me when I started doing The Slatkin Shuffle. It is based on the idea that you don’t need to categorize music. You just need to find ways to juxtapose it in both ways that work and ways that don’t. And Peter was really good at that as well.

So, this marvelous person, terrific composer, we decided, since he passed, to do a concert to honor him.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

Even People Who Hate AI Art Appear to Actually Prefer AI Art in a Blind Test (frank Landmore, 11/23/24, Futurism)

To the untrained eye, it seems that AI-generated images are more than just passable; in some cases, they seem to match up to the old masters themselves.

That at least appears to be the findings of a recent blind test conducted by the blog Astral Star Codex, which found that the readers who took part incorrectly distinguished between AI images and human art 40 percent of the time.

But perhaps the most striking takeaway was that overall, the participants slightly preferred the AI creations to human ones, with six of the top ten most-liked images being AI-generated, and the top two slots going to the AI paintings.

This preference was even the case among participants who identified as having a profound distaste for AI illustrations — perhaps demonstrating the unnerving capabilities of the technology.

SO MUCH DONE, SO MUCH YET TO DO:

Is the US national debt a risk to investments? (Brian Levitt, 7/03/24, Invesco)

The US is a very wealthy country. For example, the total US household net worth is over $150 trillion, which is close to five times the size of the nation’s debt.5 From that lens, the debt level may not seem as troubling. It may be one reason to explain why the nation is generally viewed by markets as a good creditor.

With $34 trillion in liabilities and $200+ trillion in assets, the US federal government has far more assets than many realize.1 Rather than measuring debt as a percentage of GDP, which is primarily an income measure, measuring debt against total assets paints a far more solvent picture. If all the US government land, buildings, and natural resources were combined, the country would likely have more than $200 trillion in assets. While not all are liquid, they certainly paint the US as a much better creditor than many would believe.

Given that Treasuries are one of the safest and most liquid assets in the world, it’s unlikely investors will lose their appetite for US debt. The federal government owns 20% of US debt, making it the largest single holder.2 Since this debt is just money the government owes itself, however, it has no effect on overall government finances. More than 40% of US debt is owned by US savers, pensions, mutual funds, and financial institutions, who hold Treasuries for safety, yield, policy requirements, or regulatory reasons.2 While it’s true that more than 20% of US debt is held abroad, it’s not heavily concentrated in one country. The largest foreign investors include Japan and the UK, where yields are historically lower than they are in the US. 2

The debt, like the Border, is only an aesthetic matter, not an economic one. But the aesthetics make people believe government isn’t functioning well. Some showy but trivial “fixes” would be worthwhile in that context.