Thought for the Day - 22 March 2026

Ya tink the petro problems are bad now? If Batshit J. Moron goes through with his latest psychotic excursion, obliterating Iran's electrical infrastructure, that 20% or so of petro stuff will never get to market. American farmers will have to go back to cow shit to fertilize. Not so much of that anymore.

Data Data Everywhere nor Any One to Trust

So, let's get in Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, and visit econ near its beginning, 1776. The field was then known as 'political economics', reflecting that Damn Gummint policy has both direct and indirect effects on the nation's economy. And, if your economy is big enough (the United States of Alabama, fur instance) or deeply embedded enough (OPEC, et al) in the global system, then all nations.

And so it was, until Samuelson screwed things up by plastering political economics with a slathering of mathematical lipstick. Then his colleague, Solow, went ahead and did much the same with math stats.

Unlike natural phenomena, which play by God's rules (more or less immutable; until we find we've deduced one or so incorrectly, see Einstein), humans write the rules of economies. And, of course, in most cases the stronger players write the rules on their behalf. And, so economics lost its way. They/we might bigly benefit from a text by a couple of real maths, von Neumann and Morgenstern on Game Theory:

Richard Stone (1948) Asserts that Unquestionably, for economists this book is the most important contribution that has appeared since J. M. Keynes's General Theory was published in 1936. It is concerned with the behaviour of individuals, and the coalitions which they may form in attempting to better themselves. It is directed therefore to the kinds of problem that are met with in the theory of value, and especially those that arise under conditions of duopoly, imperfect competition and the like.
[my emphasis]

As most know, econ is divided into at least two distinct types: micro and macro. The former generally deals with problems of The Firm, and the latter with problems of The Whole Damn Economy, and by default, what the Damn Gummint does, or doesn't do, to affect the nation's economy as a whole. Our Dear Friend Krugman is of the latter tribe. As am I.

The overriding problem for the macro tribe is data. Most of it is shaky, at best. Manipulated at worst. And, not always by malfeasance. As mentioned in these missives from before they existed, much of the macro data is samples. And, of course, sampling always has error; there's a good bit of theory about that in any math stats sampling text. And, of course, it's been widely documented that much sample data at the national level has been falling in response rate. On the whole, one might surmise that a data-driven macro policy agenda is on thinning ice. (Ayatollah 49% Don^© is licking his chops.) Take the recent oddity with the inflation number: our friends in the Damn Gummint put a foot on the scale. I guess they figured no one would notice.

Deep inside its monthly inflation report on Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said that the cost of legal services rose 1.8 percent in January. That was an unusually large increase, but not nearly as big as the double-digit gain that some forecasters were expecting.

The reason for the divergence: The agency, which is part of the Commerce Department, had changed the source of its data on legal prices, relying on wholesale prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics rather than the consumer price data it usually uses.

[T]he adjustment was enough to shave roughly a tenth of a percentage point off the monthly change in the core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index.

Which brings us to the obit of an unknown, to me anyway, economist, Christopher A. Sims. Who the hell cares about an obscure econ? Because he was emblematic of the curse of macro data in economic analysis.

Though statistical models of the economy improved, they still couldn't always provide reliable forecasts or guidance for policymakers. A notable failure was the 2008-9 financial crisis, which few economists saw coming.

Ahhh. The ones who did, and often not 'economists', knew that macro results are always, within non-primitive societies, driven by the Damn Gummint's laws and regulations. Some times by intention, and some times by inattention. What those who figured out where the USofA's economy was headed knew what Blythe Masters had unleashed. With no guardrails or barriers or laws or regulations to stop the tsunami from killing the global economy.

She is widely credited with creating the modern credit default swap, a derivative used to manage credit exposure to underlying reference entities.

Here's the CDS:

Some general criticism of financial derivatives is also relevant to credit derivatives. Warren Buffett famously described derivatives bought speculatively as "financial weapons of mass destruction." In Berkshire Hathaway's annual report to shareholders in 2002, he said, "Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counterparties to them. In the meantime, though, before a contract is settled, the counterparties record profits and losses—often huge in amount—in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen)."

In essence, CDS et al, are just gambling vehicles which allow unconnected parties to bet on the health, or lack thereof, of companies. As the Great Recession proved, at values far in excess of the companies targeted. One might call the CDS as short-selling on one part LSD and two parts steroids.

So, was Dr. Sims an evil genius? Not entirely sure. He did get the nearly-Nobel in econ, though.

Thought For The Day -11 March 2026

If you really believe that blowing up an elementary school was a mistake, well here's the truth:
He's a fucking moron.
-- Rex Tillerson/2017

As many have opined: cruelty is the point. Blowing up an elementary school is just what Ayatollah 49% Don^© has in mind. We're the cops of the world, and we'll kill whoever we want. A malignant narcissistic psychopath on crack.

He admitted it on the record

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me."

If you believe he has any morality, then you're a Rex Tillerson person, too.

Thought For The Day - 6 March 2026

Now that BLS has told the truth: Ayatollah 49% Don^©'s self-aggrandizing bullshit has put the employment situation in the toilet, 92,000 job loss. He He He. Will the current (interim) director, William J. Wiatrowski get fired, too?

Reefer Madness [updated]

It was back in 1936 when "Reefer Madness" was produced. Now we have the modern version: "FDA Madness". Under the misdirection of Prince Bobby, it's a gang that can't shoot straight.

One of the latest fiascos is about Huntington's Disease. If you're an Olde Folkie, you surely know of Arlo Guthrie and "Alice's Restaurant" who was exempted from Vietnam because of the littering offense told in the song. Bet he didn't know that would happen. His father Woody, had (what was then called) Huntington's Chorea. Woody died in 1967. It is progressive and fatal and is yet without therapy for the disease directly (some symptom therapies exist). Two of Woody's daughters died of it. His mother died of it, from whom he inherited the disease.

It is classified as a Rare Disease, and FDA, at least titularly, has recently loosened the requirements on therapies for Rare Disease. uniQure is a drug company in the Netherlands and previously in Lexington, MA which has been developing a gene therapy. They recently published the results of a trial of the therapy, and claimed that the therapy reduced disease progression by 75% after 3 years.

Enthusiasm reigned and the stock price soared. Then FDA went on the warpath against both the therapy and the company. Now, the WSJ has a report, anonymously sourced, that FDA calls uniQure liars and the therapy worthless. Being the WSJ, one must be subscribed to read it up.

Federal Health Officials Attack Rare-Disease Drug, Say Company Lied

Fortunately, Fierce Biotech has a report which covers the main points of the battle betwixt uniQure and FDA.

The sticking point is simple: uniQure claims it has, in writing, approval for the trial while this FDA source claims that it never gave its approval and requires a (double?) blind, placebo controlled study for approval. Even before the recent 'loosening' of Rare Disease study requirements, given the small patient population typical of Rare Disease, running such trials is difficult; small patient pool and reluctance to take the chance of NOT getting the therapy. Moreover, in fatal diseases with no other therapy, is it ethical to demand standard structure trials? Mayhaps not.

The Fierce Biotech report mentions other Rare Disease

"Moreover, FDA, as a general rule, never makes such assurances. FDA will always say, 'Well, we have to see the data when we get it.'"

And that's, at best, a half truth. There are discussions with FDA about trial design as a matter of course. FDA has a separate, formal approach, called a Special Protocol Assessment. It's a semi-fixed agreement on the conduct of a trial, however FDA has been known to toss out an SPA if they change their mind.

As I was typing this out, the wonderful Adam Feuerstein made (a free!!) account of the fiasco available at STAT. Enjoy.

[update]
Well... that didn't take long. Vinay, exit stage right!! While, as I type, no one admits that he's the miscreant wrt uniQure, sure looks like the head of Usual Suspects.

The Totally Unhinged - part the third

It's considered bad form to begin an essay with "I...", so let's just say that I'm not surprised by the latest episode of the Totally Unhinged. Absolutely fucking predictable. When you're dealing with a degenerate psychopath, expect the most Unhinged.

President Trump said on Thursday that he should have a say in choosing Iran's new leader, in the most explicit statement he has made yet about his vision of the U.S. role in creating a new government in Tehran.

The NYT report references an Axios report which states

President Trump told Axios in an interview Thursday that he needs to be personally involved in selecting Iran's next leader — just as he was in Venezuela.

It would be one thing to assert that the USofA, working/negotiating with Iran's appointing mullahs should have some input, given that we blew up Dear Leader, and apparently, the second and third tier Ayatollah 49% Don^© choices. It's takes a boatload of chutzpah to demand his own self be the Decider.

And, by the bye, the two previous Supreme Leaders were chosen by a rotating council of 88. Kind of like our Electoral College. Ooops.

One might expect that Ayatollah 49% Don^© will, eventually, come around to demanding that Shah, Jr. be the New Dictator. After all, Shah Sr. was such a good fit with the oil and gas oligarchy.

And, of course, if the mullahs demur, Ayatollah 49% Don^© can just blow them up, too.

I don't know... what's the Islam for chutzpah?

The Totally Unhinged - part the second

Anyone with a functioning brain knew that The United States of Alabama had entered a New Dark Ages with Ayatollah 49% Don^©'s ascension to the Throne of Washington. The crowning of Prince Bobby at FDA was among the Unhinged appointments which led the way.

Now, the wonderful Adam Feuerstein posts a perfect example of Acts of The Totally Unhinged

The Duchenne muscular dystrophy [DMD] patient & advocacy community keeps a gene therapy and multiple drugs on the US market, stopping the FDA from taking action, despite failed confirmatory clinical trials showing no efficacy and questionable safety.

The Huntington's disease patient and advocacy community can't even persuade the FDA to allow a filing of a gene therapy, despite a positive clinical trial.

A bit of background. Under pressure from many patient/advocate communities to loosen up the approval process for rare and/or unmet needs, FDA did adopt some 'looser' regulations. DMD was among the recent cases where highly questionable drugs gained approval.

What Feuerstein is referring to is FDA's two-faced behavior: really stupid DMD drugs get approved on lousy data, but Huntington's developers get cut no slack even with actionable data. For myself, I smell the rancid odor of Baksheesh.

Thank you Ayatollah 49% Don^© for your attention to this matter.

Goldfinger

The Lamestream Media is all agog: what is Ayatollah 49% Don^©'s point in starting a war with Iran? He of "Peace President" propaganda?

"Wag the Dog" is all you need to know. That was specifically about a sex scandal, and so today. But the reason specific to today is the Rich Guys' need to extract value from The Rest of Us. And, in this case, fossil fuels, Ayatollah 49% Don^©'s major fixation. If the Strait of Hormuz gets really clogged, or essentially shut down... well Goldfinger didn't go to Fort Knox to steal the gold, but to leave it a radioactive dump for all time. In Ayatollah 49% Don^©'s mind (such as a lower brain stem might be), the future is burning stuff. American based stuff becomes, thus, more valuable if other supplies are sequestered. Bank shot.

Thought For The Day - 28 February 2026

The MAGA crowd, at least some, are having their ultimate wet dream, Middle East episode: Iran run by Shah Jr. For those not up on the history, Shah Sr. was installed by a CIA led coup which threw out a democratically elected leader, Mosaddegh. As always, the Big Guys That Matter just want the natural resources.

The cradle of democracy. My flat ass.

Kill All The Workers - part the second [update, yeah didn't take long]

In episode 1 was discussed the Wet Dream Supreme of the capitalist class wrt AI: send labour productivity through the roof, and keep all the attendant growth to themselves. None for the working classes.

Now comes new reporting on the declining birthrate. Ya know, The Musk Ox's present diatribe. Turns out, according to the report, that it's the dirty Redneck women who are opting out. All those college educated wimins keep popping them out. Who wooda thunk it? Anyone with a brain. Across the board, the main reason to have fewer (or no) little brats is the cost (short and long term). Ya cain't afford a Benz? May be ya cain't afford a drooler.

[R]esearchers found that teenagers and white women ages 20 to 24 without a bachelor's degree accounted for over half of the drop. College-educated women accounted for another 18 percent.

BTW, the same aspect is true of abortion: it's mostly married wimins with more than enough brats to suit them, thank you very much.

"One of the main reasons people report wanting to have an abortion is so they can be a better parent to the kids they already have," Professor Upadhyay says.

What's especially stupid about The Musk Ox and his ilk: they are all foaming at the mouth to get the bestest worker killing AI that there is. Of course, that only works for one, or may be two, such. At scale, The Musk Ox and his ilk will kill the economy. Eccles was right. What Eccles didn't forsee is a top heavy service economy which caters to the 1%. Much less an economy that does nothing else. Who needs a proletariat?

Such an economy, and its adherents, ought to thank all those young lower class wimins for doing the hard part: reducing the number of future idlers and welfare queens. I mean, if the under class DID keep breeding like rabbits, and still got Uncle Sugar's support and Medicaid and the like, the Right Wingnut Stasi would have much larger kill quotas each year. I mean, does the United States of Alabama really need more banjo picking albinos?

[update]
That didn't take long. Block (nee, Square) just axed 40% of its workers. White collar folk. Educated folk. We're all disposable now. Stop making more of us!!!!!

The Totally Unhinged - part the first

And so we begin a new series: The Totally Unhinged. And we begin, appropriately, with Huckabee Daddy. His chat with Carlson has been reported widely, One such.

The US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has said it would be "fine" if Israel took control of a vast swathe of the Middle East, drawing a swift rebuke from regional and other majority-Muslim states.

Suggesting even nominal support for Israeli sovereignty over much of the Middle East is an unprecedented departure from American foreign policy. It also goes well beyond what much of Israel's far-right is willing to call for publicly.

Nearly every Middle Eastern country aside from Israel condemned Huckabee's comments in a joint statement on Sunday.

In an interview with US conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, the ambassador was asked about his understanding of a biblical verse suggesting that land including parts of Egypt, Syria and Iraq had been divinely promised to the Jewish people.

Carlson said that according to the Old Testament, the boundaries would be "basically the entire Middle East."

He continued: "Does Israel have the right to that land?"

"Not sure we'd go that far," Huckabee said in reply. "It would be a big piece of land."

Carlson then pressed him: "Does Israel have the right to that land?"

"It would be fine if they took it all," Huckabee responded, before adding: "I don't think that's what we're talking about here today."

It was Karl Marx who opined: "Religion is the opium of the people". It is nutballs like Huckabee that proves him right. And, of course, it is why the diests Founding Fathers chose to separate Church and State. It reared its ugly head during the Second Great Awakening (oft times linked here), not long after the Founding.

The BBC (and some others) included this more explicit bit about the extent

In the interview, released on Friday, Carlson pressed the ambassador on his interpretation of a Bible verse which the host claimed suggested Israel had a right to the land between the River Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq.

Huckabee said "it would be a big piece of land" but stressed that "I don't think that's what we're talking about here today".

Now, it must be remembered that the Israelites held sovereignty over a small bit of the current Middle East for about 200 years, 3,000 years ago. And the only explicit "statement" of this essentially infinite sovereignity is just the Old Testament. The Israelites wrote the book that gave them the Middle East. Or, to put it yet another way: Native Americans held sovereignty over the North American continent continuously for at least 10,000 years before White People invaded. Don't they have a much stronger case for recompense? Yes?? Oh, right. They're heathens.

Thought For The Day - 20 February 2026

Well... boy howdy!!! The Gang of Six didn't prevail. The three most rabid members dissented, to be expected. What is hilarious is that The Trippy Three complain

[Kavanaugh] noted discussion at oral arguments about how such a refund process was likely to be a "mess."

Well... it was Ayatollah 49% Don^© who made the mess. "Clean up on aisle 666!!" Any fifth grader knows from his/her Social Studies class which branch has taxing and tariff power. It ain't El Jefe.

Thought For The Day - 15 February 2026

NASCAR is primitive car racing, at best. I'm a Formula 1 junky since Jimmy Clark. But, I'll generally peek in at the Daytona 500 now and then. A car race that only turns left is dumb. Pebble Beach is much more interesting, at least today. Go Scottie!!

Which brings up MAGA, dontcha know?? Last time I peeked, Toyota held the top 4 places. A few dozen or so laps to go, but c'mon. NASCAR is moonshine racing, not anything resembling sophistication. Ayatollah 49% Don^© should make yet another EO and ban foreign cars. drivers, and owners from the sport. This is AMERICA after all!!! Be true to your school.

Block Island News

We've been going over to the Island for at least a couple of decades, generally in what's called "Shoulder Seasons", which translates to very early Spring and very late Autumn. Not so many silly tourists around. Turns out, the Native Block Islanders have been conducting an annual census for longer than we've been going over. To attempt to get a more or less accurate count, deep off season was chosen. Not too many day hopping mainlanders. Near as I can find, one doesn't have to show some form of Block Island (aka, New Shoreham, RI) ID to be counted. But, to discourage day hoppers from mucking up the count, said count is conducted after that last boat leaves.

Did I mention that the appointed day is Groundhog Day?? Well, yes it is. And, no, Block Island has no indigenous rodents of that description. Small detail. So, as one might expect of the Frequent and Enthusiastic Visitor, there is a yearning To Be Counted. We do "own" a small parcel of Block Island, but not enough to live in all year. So, it'd not be really cheating to Be Counted. OTOH, getting to the Island on 2 Feb. is dependent on the weather. Alas, pretty shitty this year. And all of the ones preceding. Or so I remember it. And one needs to find accommodation, of course. Not all that many open year round.

Not all years is the count published in the Block Island Times in a timely manner. But we mainlanders do get it

Almost 3

Well, another missed opportunity to catch up with Kent State. Here. American Stasi on parade. This is exactly what the Trump Base want.

By The Numbers - part the ninety eighth

Frosty the snowman...

The weathercritters are saying that much of Florida will have low temps at or below 32° over the weekend. So... is this the usual? Or has the freqency of freezing temps in Fla. lower than it used to be?

The star attraction is the 1894/95 Great Freeze. Some mentions elsewhere use this event(s) as proof that climate change is bogus!! While there have been ongoing freezes since then, some of which reside in my own long-term memory, this was a (so far) unique event. The wiki piece states that Orlando fell to a record 18°; my Google Weather app says that Orlando will bottom out at 26° on Sunday.

Here's a table for Orlando 32° days from 1892. Just from eyeballing, it's 'true' that the frequency (overall) has markedly decreased from 1892 to now. Who wooda thunk it? Although the volatility (by which I mean the range of 32° days for spans of years is now narrower), also from just eye-balling, appears greater now than way-back-when. That would conform to the results reported below. Here's the top ten years (5⁺ days in a year)

2010
1989
1985
1981
1977
1970
1958
1938
1935
1928
1927
1918
1908

1938 and earlier lead by a nose.

2010, oops, has the most at 12. May be we can find out why.

There's an old saying among the weather geeks: if you know where the jet stream is going, you know what the weather will be.

In general, may be. Here's a report from MIT (bastion of liberal bias), which describes how the northern jets are affected by climate change (global warming). In a nutshell: it's the historical overall temperature difference between polar air and mid-latitude air. The greater that difference, the jets move (more or less) in a circle around the North Pole at latitude well above the good old USofA. The jets don't fall south, allowing polar airmass to visit the lower 48. It's established that the Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet. As the temperature difference narrows, the jets get hinky. The lower 48 gets uncomfortable. You can thank climate change.

NOAA's latest report. Why Ayatollah 49% Don^© forgot to scrub this, I don't know. Get it before it goes.

The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic.

By The Numbers - part the ninety seventh

As many readers will know, I've grown accustomed to some of Dr. McElhone's adages, high among them: "it is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer." And, no, I don't attribute that to the Good Doctor. It's been around for ages; I just first heard it from him.

Which brings us to some obvious. Here is a report on MAHA and the attack on vaccination.

But a different way to think about it is this: as another attack on the country's threadbare social safety net by health libertarians whose strategy for making America healthy again appears straightforwardly to mean letting more of the country's weak and vulnerable suffer and die.

I've long since forgotten where it came from, but the gist of Trumpism is just this: cruelty is the point. And also The Rich damn sure ain't rich enough. Which bring us to the other bit of obvious

In some Southern states, such as Mississippi and Alabama, life expectancy is more than half a decade shorter than in Northeastern states, including Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.

Look by county and the disparities are even starker, with life expectancy over a decade shorter in large swaths of Appalachia than in the upper Midwest. That's about the same as the life expectancy gap between Liechtenstein and Bangladesh.

So, the Rich plutocrats have convinced the victims of their evil that the problem is really the God hating Blue States. Stupid people just never learn. And that's also the point. Boeing has found out the hard way that assembling airplanes in North Carolina with marginally educated knuckledraggers is a lose-lose situation. And, of course, that's just the latest in a continuing saga of FUBAR, all in the name of union busting.

As has been written here a few times: who'll make the neat stuff if Trumpism drags the Blue States down to Shitholeville?

O Canada

Once again President Caligula and his horse faced wife are at it again. Yet again with Greenland, obviously part of the USofA. I mean, it's just 22 miles from Ellesmere Island, across the Nares Strait. It's almost in Canada, anyway. And President Caligula and his horse faced wife have proclaimed Canada as our 51^st state. Bank shot. Both are President Caligula and his horse faced wife's property. An all-weather, members only, golf club would be another feather in their caps.

Obituary - part the second

Well, once again: That Didn't Take Long.

Ayatollah 49% Don^© has managed to stir up Our Allies to the point that they're actively seeking to visit the USofA with (almost) financial ruin. Dumping a bunch of Treasuries, in and of itself wouldn't kill the USofA in a nano-second, but takes the Rest of The World one step closer to stripping the US Buck of Reserve Currency status. And that, as explained in Episode 1, puts USofA Debt into Zimbabwe Land. That's not good eats. Bretton Woods gave the USofA the luxury of paying its foreign debts by printing its own currency. No other country could/can do that. Think about that for an hour or two.

So far, European officials have signaled Greenland's sovereignty is a red line that's not up for compromise, while the Trump administration isn't budging either on its stance.

But the U.S. has a key vulnerability the EU can exploit, according to George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank.

"Europe owns Greenland, it also owns a lot of Treasuries," he wrote in a note on Sunday.

Holding those bonds helps balance America's massive external deficits, and Europe is the world's biggest lender to the U.S.

And, I'll bet, you thought that was China? Guess not.

The European hoard is said to be 12.6 Trillion Dollars worth. At least until it isn't.

According to the US Treasury, Japan is the largest single country holder, at $1,202,600,000,000 nominal last November. China is third with $682,600,000,000.

How difficult would it be to dump the US Buck as reserve currency and choose the Euro or Renminbi? General view is: will take more than Ayatollah Don^©'s infantile behavior. Me? I'm not so sure. He's clearly on a crusade to make America 19^th century again. Back when we were a third world country: a few Marie Antoinettes and the rest cake eaters. Only shitkickers would vote for such an idiot. And Batshit J. Moron means to intimidate all those Blue City Voters to stay home on Election Day. We'll see.

Don't believe Mammy Yokum? Go look at a county level vote map from 2020. See all those Blue Dots? That's what's had Batshit J. Moron going batshit since forever. Only stupid shitkickers want him. Discrete state/precinct maps, like this (haven't found a USofA one yet, but at least one dataset exists for the adventurous) show what Batshit J. Moron is up to in yet more detail.

He could just about end American Dominance just because he's so stupid. It ain't how many nukes ya got, it's whether you control international finance. But he's a failed (6 times that we know about) real estate knucklehead, and nothing more. It's a sure bet that he thinks Bretton Woods is a fine merlot. Only tyros drink merlot.

Kill All The Workers

There's that famous line from Shakespeare

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers

Capitalists follow a more inclusive motto

The only thing we do, is kill all the workers

So, may be that's the Achilles Heel of AI, as currently implemented. That's the conclusion, if you read between the lines.

Signaling the scale of capital that he believes he needs, OpenAI has committed to spending $1.4 trillion on data centers and related infrastructure.

The thing is: few if any of the pundits have grasped the import of even AI, as currently implemented. Throughout the history of the industrial revolution, capital has made money only by replacing labor. It has no intrinsic value. So, the $64,000 question - is there $1.4 trillion of labor up for redundancy? If you suck $1.4 trillion (plus profit on that expenditure) of buying power out of an economy, what are you left with? It would appear that AI, as currently implemented, proves at long last that the Luddites were right. After all, capitalists are in the labor rendundacy business. And, on the whole, they have no clue that the arithmetic has to add up if the economy/society is to survive.

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption; mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.
-- Marriner Eccles/1951

And just to add a bit of snark: Führer Trump is using the Fed renovation project to kneecap Powell. Part of that renovation is the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building.

Pollyana on LSD - part the third

Well, friend Tom Friedman has jumped the shark. Again. This recent essay is so ahistoric as not to be believed. After all, this is an educated almost geezer who should have his facts in hand. Apparantly not.

It evinces the sin of omission.

Because after talking to people in the U.S. oil industry, it is clear to me that if Trump wants to see U.S. companies invest billions of new dollars to repair Venezuela's oil infrastructure, the first thing they will tell him is that they need a return to the rule of law in Venezuela.

Like hell, that's what they want. They always want a benevolent (to them) dictator who'll keep wages at subsistence and the coveted resource at nada. Rule of law? Ha Ha. Only if the dictator and bidnezzmen get to make the law.

So, it seems, he's never heard of the original Banana Republic?

In 1911, Zemurray conspired with Manuel Bonilla, an ex-president of Honduras (1904-1907), and American mercenary Lee Christmas, to overthrow the civil government of Honduras and install a military government friendly to foreign businesses.

The mercenary army of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, led by Christmas, effected a coup d'état against President Miguel R. Dávila (1907-1911) and installed Bonilla (1912-1913). The United States ignored the deposition of the elected government of Honduras by a private army, justified by the U.S. State Department's misrepresenting Dávila as too politically liberal and a poor businessman whose management had indebted Honduras to Great Britain. This was a geopolitically unacceptable circumstance in light of the Monroe Doctrine.

United Fruit, et al, were happy.

Or the CIA's destruction of Mosaddegh in Iran? It was all about the oil, of course. So we got the Shah, a compliant dictator. The oil companies were happy.

On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état orchestrated by the United States (CIA) and the United Kingdom (MI6). A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mossadegh nationalized and refused to concede to western oil demands. It was instigated by the United States (under the name TP-AJAX Project[8] or Operation Ajax) and the United Kingdom (under the name Operation Boot).

Fact is, bidnezzmen always would rather a compliant dictator, who keeps labor at subsistence wage and free access to the desired resource.

Dumb and Dumber - part the third

Was watching ESPN, waiting for Tony and Wilbon, and an advert that I thought I'd seen earlier in the week, happened again.

OK. So the theme of the advert is: we see an auto assembly line coming at us, and the robots (no humans on the line, just a couple looking on) are smashing the windshields and other bits and pieces.

Cut to the advert, for Indeed, and it's calling for COBOL coders to fix the problem!!!!!!!!! C'mon man!!!!!! How possibly dumb could Indeed be????????? At least java, more likely C++, may be Rust, Fortran in a pickle. Since it's robots, could well be some robot assembler. COBOL??? No way on God's green earth.

So, OK, that was off the top of my head. Much of these musings come to be that way. So, to be fair, I looked to the Great Google, and found this site.

C/C++
Python
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Hardware Description Languages (HDLs)
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I wouldn't think Python would be a candidate for such real time work, but who's to know? As expected, no COBOL to be found. The world has not ended.

Obituary

It is just possible, though not welcome, that Führer Trump and his brown shirts will turn the USofA not great again, but a second or third rate country.

Understanding how that could happen depends on knowing how it is that the USofA became the biggest gorilla on Mother Earth. And, no, it isn't because of some assumed superior racial/ethnic identity.

It's because the USofA was the only developed country that exited WWII nearly entirely unscathed. These essays have mentioned Bretton Woods some times in the past.

The new economic system required an accepted vehicle for investment, trade, and payments. Unlike national economies, however, the international economy lacks a central government that can issue currency and manage its use. In the past this problem had been solved through the gold standard, but the architects of Bretton Woods did not consider this option feasible for the postwar political economy. Instead, they set up a system of fixed exchange rates managed by a series of newly created international institutions using the U.S. dollar (which was a gold standard currency for central banks) as a reserve currency.

If you read the whole page, you'll find that Bretton Woods agreement wasn't cast in stone, and changes have happened over the years. What remains the same, so far, is the Uncle Sam's Buck is still the international reserve currency. Trust me on this: that status is the ultimate global power. Nucular bombs aren't. Reserve currency is.

In 1973, OPEC decided it had had enough, and threw a bomb into the clubhouse. Still, Uncle Sam's Buck survived.

So: you'll know that the USofA is Just Another Country when the rest of the countries no longer recognize Uncle Sam's Buck as the international reserve currency. We'll be just like Zimbabwe.

There still must be some commonly accepted currency, after Uncle Sam's Buck leaves the stage. Might be the Euro, might be the Renminbi. In any case, it won't be Uncle Sam's Buck. With Führer Trump's and Miller's increasing bellicose actions, it won't take long for the Rest of the World to say Adios, Amigo to Uncle Sam. Go fuck yourself Sam.

The US Buck dies. RIP.

Sui Generis

Today's (dead trees) NYT has a clash betwixt Bruni and Stephens. As usual, the MAGAnaut lacks the insight to name the simple fact: countries/economies which run on extraction of natural resources are always Fascist. And not even countries, even right wingnut parts of countries.

And, of course, Stephens lays the condition in Venezuela to 'socialism', when the fact is Maduro was/is just another right wingnut tin pot dictator. Just like Führer Trump. Or Führer Trump's idol, Putin.

Walk back the BoM of any product, and there you will find some number of natural resources plucked from the belly of Mother Earth. The issue becomes a problem when most, if not all, of the state's GDP is that extraction. It then becomes a much more tractable problem for the dictator to control a single sector of the economy, and, as often as not, in a relatively small part of the state. Texas is the perfect example.

I expect that Führer Trump is planning to garrison the oil fields down there, and let the rest of the country go to Hell.

Of course, an economy highly, if not wholly, based on pulling stuff out of the belly of Mother Earth will die when the stuff runs out. And, of course, when the 'owners' of the extracted resource feel the heat as new technology makes the resource less profitable. Führer Trump has it in for any non-fossil fuel source of electricity. I wonder why? Could it be he intends, like any good dictator, to siphon off much of the oil revenue to TRO? It has at least 500 entities now. What's a couple more hidden in that deep state?

Windfall

For those campers licking their chops over the promise, implicit though it may be, that snagging all that Venezuelan oil for our own selves will appear as much lower prices at your local gas pump? Guess again.

There is a precedent in natural gas. The fossil fuel industry just ships it overseas for yet more moolah.

The new administration's plans to unleash American gas without restrictions would significantly hurt the economy here at home and expose U.S. residents to the volatility of the global gas market, the study shows. Natural gas prices could skyrocket by more than 30%. The average American household could see its energy bill rise by over $100 by 2050.

Of course, that study was done and released under Sleepy Joe (who hates the fossil fuel cabal, of course). Did they get the facts wrong? I doubt it. But Führer Trump will find some mindless RFK-nicks to claim that both LNG export and trans-shipping Venezuelan crude elsewhere (Russia? China?) Makes America Great Again. And the shitkickers who are his base will eat it up.

Deja Vu All Over Again - part the eleventh

Does anyone recall when the USofA went into Haiti to "save it"? Didn't work. We left and paramilitary gangs have taken over.

Just saw headline on MSCommieNews "Paramilitary gangs patrolling streets in Caracas". I guess the MAGAthugs have no interest in learning from history.

Thought For The Day - 4 January 2026

Now that the cat is out of the bag: oil was the sole reason for invading Venezuela, how long until Führer Trump takes over Alberta, home of all that oil sands? May as well leave the other worthless provinces to those fags in Ottawa.

With proven reserves of 166 billion barrels, Alberta's oil sands, in the Fort McMurray region, possess the third-largest oil reserves in the world, behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Come to think of it, isn't Alberta trying to secede? Yes, yes it is. And this isn't a new contention!! Extractive economies hate, just HATE, any effort at conservation or progress. Hell, with all the Cowboy Esprit these days, makes one wonder when the horse and buggy will be mandated in Blue Cities? Give them all that horseshit to clean up.

Pollyanna on LSD - part the second

Stupid is as stupid does:

A 1994 U.S. military mission in Haiti that deposed a military junta and stabilized the country required some 25,000 personnel. Venezuela is about 33 times larger than Haiti, or roughly twice the size of California.

And, of course, Haiti has turned out to be such a perfect solution.