Reading

Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 20:00
Alice Crundwell and William Bennett Accurate measures of the number of firms at risk of failure are becoming increasingly important for policymakers, as corporate insolvencies are continuing to rise and interest rates are expected to remain higher than over much of the past decade. The share of vulnerable firms is often assessed by looking at … Continue reading Stressed or in distress? How best to measure corporate vulnerability
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 19:17
. Mainstream economists have always wanted to use their hammer, and so have decided to pretend that the world looks like a nail. Pretending that uncertainty can be reduced to risk and that all activities, relations, processes, and events can be adequately converted to pure numbers, have only contributed to making economics irrelevant and powerless […]
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 19:13
So Cosma Shalizi and I have an article (messy pre-print) coming out Real Soon in Communications of the ACM on democracy, polarization and social media. And Nate Matias, who I’m friends with, has forceful objections. I’ve promised him a response – which is below – but am doing it as a blogpost, since I think […]
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 15:57
Today (February 21, 2023), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Wage Price Index, Australia – for the December-quarter 2023, which shows that the aggregate wage index rose by 4.2 per cent over the 12 months (up 0.2 points). In relation to the December-quarter CPI change (4.1 per cent), this result suggests that…
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 11:30
I was hard on Stewart for his “both sides” opening show. I don’t think we need any more of that. But this? Oh yeah: Update: Here’s Mary Trump responding to Stewart’s thin skinned response to the criticism he received for last week. I think she’s got a point: I’ve been to some wonderful places in my life, but this weekend I found myself somewhere I never expected to be — living rent-free in comedian Jon Stewart’s head. Stewart was back for his second show on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and apparently felt the need to respond to my very real concerns over his dangerous both-sides-ism last week, when he equated President Biden and Donald. I criticized him for erroneously elevating my uncle by claiming, “We’re not suggesting neither man is vibrant, productive, or even capable.” Any honest, objective person knows this is completely false — Donald is neither productive nor capable, while, President Biden is both of those to an impressive degree.
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 08:30
Biden is fine there and it’s nice to see him mingling with an average family and chatting about their lives. But what’s most interesting is the family itself — a dad raising two boys on his own, living a middle class life trying to build a future for his kids. He’s a school principal and the boys are average all-American teenagers. It just seems so … normal. I guess I need to be reminded of that sometimes. Anyway, here’s today’s Hopium from Scott Rosenberg. (There’s a lot more and you can subscribe here.) Trump is not winning the election, or favored, and analysts simply must stop claiming he is – They way our post-Dobbs electoral success and increasingly powerful grassroots is being overly discounted and Trump’s strength as a candidate is being exaggerated has begun to feel a lot like the false red wave media narrative of 2022. Take a look at these four independent polls of registered voters (not adults) released in the past week.
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 07:00
I agree with Josh Marshall on this. The brouhaha over Ezra Klein’s article agitating for Biden to drop out at this late date has been overwhelming and it’s not helpful. The idea of choosing a new candidate at the conventions is downright fanciful. Not gonna happen. I like Ezra. We are friendly acquaintances and he’s done a ton of good work so I’m not inclined to slag him. But he’s wrong about this and Josh Marshall has the best essay explaining why: A number of you have written in to ask about Ezra Klein’s audio essay “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden: It’s requires them to embrace an old-fashioned approach to winning a campaign.” Is it a good argument? Does it change the equation? What do I make of it? Just for the purposes of cutting to the chase: my answers are “not really,” “no” and “not much.” But Klein is a smart, articulate guy and sitting at the top of the Times op-ed page he has vast influence. So I wanted to break the argument down into its moving parts.