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The inverted yield curve
Strange times indeed. Yesterday the Fed raised its key rate to 5.5 percent, the highest level in over 20 years. Not, mind you, that the rate is especially high by historical standards. Yet given the weirdness of the the times in which we are living, the central bank’s continued push to fight inflation is remarkable.…
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Heat Waves, Fact and Fiction
At the beginning of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, ostensibly a novel about the near future, a deadly heat wave hits northern India. Everyone but Frank, one of the story’s protagonists, perishes. The tragedy then becomes a pretext for the seeding of the upper atmosphere with silver iodide and other chemicals to…
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“Proof” of an Anthropocene
Scientists working for the International Anthropocene Working Group (IAWG) believe, well, that “the Anthropocene epoch” is really a thing. In other words, the newest epoch signifies a geological break with the Holocene after which human technological impact on the planet is irreversible. And now the group claims to be very close to proving that we…
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Weather Weirdness
The catastrophic flooding in the state of Vermont is only the latest evidence of a vastly changed climate. What is truly remarkable is that in this instance most of the affected areas are not even near a river or a coastline. So what is going on? The floods in Vermont are likely a result of…
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Student Debt — What to Do?
Oh boy. Now the Supreme Court ruled against President Biden’s plan to forgive about $400 billion of college debt outstanding. This is a huge problem. Consider that millions of borrowers have gone deeper into debt since Biden last year announced his plan. You might say that that was foolish or irresponsible. But it would ignore…
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The Folly of Environmental Valuation
I read a letter in today’s Financial Times urging the EU to require balance sheets to “account” for nature. It follows an op-ed on a related topic from a few days ago, and a number of other recent arguments promoting environmental accounting. Let me get this straight. After more than thirty years of mostly ignoring…
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Amazon as Rent-Seeker
The US Federal Trade Commission is now suing Amazon on grounds that it is duping customers into unknowingly signing up for its Prime service and “sabotaging” their efforts to unsubscribe. I know, shocking, right? Unfortunately, undue attention to Amazon’s abuses conceals a broader and troublingly pervasive rent-seeking pattern. Economists classify as “rent” any activity aimed…
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Requiem for Globalization?
Interesting to see Patricia Cohen in today’s New York Times (p. 1) deem “newsworthy” globalization’s retreat. Like many others, she emphasizes Covid, the Russia-Ukraine war, and US-China tensions. Yet in doing so she ignores more fundamental problems. First is the myth of “open markets and liberalized trade.” This is what for decades we have called…
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What Fungi Can Teach Us
Why mention a book about mushrooms and mold in an economics blog? Many of Shekldrake’s insights are transferable to the world of humans and illustrate how orthodox economics falls short. For instance, we are not individuals but rather “communities” (of fungi, bacteria, viruses, etc.) — a slightly different take on Harari in Homo Deus, which…
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Merlin Sheldrake in the NYT
Surprising but heartwarming to see Merlin Sheldrake, recent author of Entangled Life, being featured in the New York Times. If you haven’t read his work, here is the rare case of a scientist with a sufficiently broad perspective to qualify as a visionary who also happens to be a gifted writer. Sheldrake’s book is indeed…
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