Trump and the Fed
“Feel the market, don’t just go by meaningless numbers,” said the donald yesterday after the Fed raised the interest rate by a quarter point. I wonder if he said something similar when he demanded gold plated faucets in the Taj Mahal casino after being told by his accountants that the level of debt he was incurring for the project was unsustainable and would go bankrupt. Maybe he said, "Forget the meaningless numbers and don't worry about the debt. I love debt. If we go bankrupt the only ones who will suffer will be the subcontractors and they can't afford to sue me."
The Federal Reserve is being managed by people you do understand numbers and their implications. They operate on facts and not feelings. But having facts requires reading and studying the situation. It requires focus and a background body of knowledge. We don't pick children to manage the Fed because they don't have enough education to do the job correctly. It is difficult to understand how a child got elected president. Perhaps the comedian who said, "In America anyone can be elected President....that's the problem," said it best.
Now for a change of pace. I need to stop being so negative. My cynicism is dragging my mood down. When this happens I pick up Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now, read some and I feel better. The subtitle is 'The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress.' Throughout the book he quotes reliable numbers that reflect how much better the quality of life for humans on our planet has become because of the application of reason to the discoveries of science to produce technology that has made life easier and longer, and, many would argue, more fun. Trump is a swerve backwards and to the right, a theo-conservative populist swing induced by the economic recession of 2008. This was another situation when someone didn't look carefully at the "meaningless numbers," Almost all recessions have been followed by populist uprisings and tribal-nationalistic chants; chants that last until all the chanters get tired of chanting and simply go back to work making the world a more pleasant place and forgetting about their ideologic blaming of the guy next door.
Read Pinker if you are feeling negative about Trump and Mitch McConnell. When I was working in the emergency room and was asked to sew up a facial laceration, I always did it very carefully. I put in subcutaneous stitches to fill in any gaps beneath were the scar eventually would be so that it wouldn't sag into the hole and leave a shadow. I put small stitches in the skin and made sure the skin edges were lying flat and not bunched up. After I was done and stood back to look at my handiwork, the wounds often looked small, but while I was sewing them they looked huge. Giving intense concentration to the daily grind of travesty in the White House, makes it seem huge, but, I hope, once we stand back a dozen years and look at Trump we will see a small white scar on the face of the American Presidency, and not a gaping infected wound.
I am not enough of a historian to give an accurate estimate of the influence of Nietzsche as a cause of the Second World War. Ideas gain influence based on their truth and hence their ability to predict. Fascist nationalism and Trumpian populism are failed ideas because they produce no benefit to people as a whole. They will fade away for now but will probably rise another few times in the ongoing story of the human race. Science, reason, and humanism are ideas that will only grow stronger as their ability to assist us in solving our problems grows more obvious. Eventually truth wins out because it works.
I feel better now....
The Federal Reserve is being managed by people you do understand numbers and their implications. They operate on facts and not feelings. But having facts requires reading and studying the situation. It requires focus and a background body of knowledge. We don't pick children to manage the Fed because they don't have enough education to do the job correctly. It is difficult to understand how a child got elected president. Perhaps the comedian who said, "In America anyone can be elected President....that's the problem," said it best.
Now for a change of pace. I need to stop being so negative. My cynicism is dragging my mood down. When this happens I pick up Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now, read some and I feel better. The subtitle is 'The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress.' Throughout the book he quotes reliable numbers that reflect how much better the quality of life for humans on our planet has become because of the application of reason to the discoveries of science to produce technology that has made life easier and longer, and, many would argue, more fun. Trump is a swerve backwards and to the right, a theo-conservative populist swing induced by the economic recession of 2008. This was another situation when someone didn't look carefully at the "meaningless numbers," Almost all recessions have been followed by populist uprisings and tribal-nationalistic chants; chants that last until all the chanters get tired of chanting and simply go back to work making the world a more pleasant place and forgetting about their ideologic blaming of the guy next door.
Read Pinker if you are feeling negative about Trump and Mitch McConnell. When I was working in the emergency room and was asked to sew up a facial laceration, I always did it very carefully. I put in subcutaneous stitches to fill in any gaps beneath were the scar eventually would be so that it wouldn't sag into the hole and leave a shadow. I put small stitches in the skin and made sure the skin edges were lying flat and not bunched up. After I was done and stood back to look at my handiwork, the wounds often looked small, but while I was sewing them they looked huge. Giving intense concentration to the daily grind of travesty in the White House, makes it seem huge, but, I hope, once we stand back a dozen years and look at Trump we will see a small white scar on the face of the American Presidency, and not a gaping infected wound.
I am not enough of a historian to give an accurate estimate of the influence of Nietzsche as a cause of the Second World War. Ideas gain influence based on their truth and hence their ability to predict. Fascist nationalism and Trumpian populism are failed ideas because they produce no benefit to people as a whole. They will fade away for now but will probably rise another few times in the ongoing story of the human race. Science, reason, and humanism are ideas that will only grow stronger as their ability to assist us in solving our problems grows more obvious. Eventually truth wins out because it works.
I feel better now....
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