Reading
"At just 587,000 words, Tolstoy refuses to provide even the most basic information"
The post Peter Dutton’s Review of War & Peace: “Needs More detail” appeared first on The Shovel.
Apparently, the only thing people still value in this country is money. Ugh: Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans, a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds. The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, also finds the country sharply divided by political party over social trends such as the push for racial diversity in businesses and the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Some 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion was very important. That was down sharply from when the Journal first asked the question in 1998, when 70% deemed patriotism to be very important, and 62% said so of religion. The share of Americans who say that having children, involvement in their community and hard work are very important values has also fallen. Tolerance for others, deemed very important by 80% of Americans as recently as four years ago, has fallen to 58% since then.
Trump is once again scraping the bottom of the barrel: It reminds me of this… He only hires the best…
One question for David Krakauer, an evolutionary theorist and president of the Santa Fe Institute for complexity science.
The post Does GPT-4 Really Understand What We’re Saying? appeared first on Nautilus.
Happy National Whiskey Day! To celebrate I brought out my trusty 2-in-1 International Recipe Card Collection for Mixed Drinks and Hors D’oeuvre and found the Perfect Manhattan on card 65 from the Blends & Rye section. Mr. Sauce, Esq. is a fan of a Manhattan–it his most requested cocktail when he comes home from a longContinue reading 2-in-1 International Recipe Card Collection: Perfect Manhattan (1977)
Senior figures have warned that a tilt at the leadership is possible if she continues down her current path
The post Moira Deeming Narrowly Avoids Promotion appeared first on The Shovel.
Pope Francis: Ukraine war is “fueled by imperial interests of several empires.”
The post Blake Fleetwood: No Question, Ukraine Is Now America’s War appeared first on scheerpost.com.
Morale hazard can turn into a darker ‘moral’ hazard
Our current banking crisis -- and our government’s responsibility for and response to it -- underscore risks facing citizens and taxpayers backing up our banking system.
Government programs like deposit insurance and the Fed’s role as lender of last resort have been sold as “stabilization” schemes. But we are learning again some unlearned lessons from the past. Those lessons relate to two of the most important words in finance -- moral hazard.
Insured parties may take more risk, once they are insured. This isn’t necessarily immoral, just rational behavior reacting to the fact that they have insurance.
But at some point, ‘morale’ hazard can become ‘moral’ hazard, particularly if depositors and other creditors of banks are protected by the government and the public purse. Protected parties and their friends in high places may become willfully blind to downside consequences imposed on others, and use the government as a vehicle for gain for well-connected insiders while losses are socialized.
Donald Trump’s Waco rally this past weekend was, in the end, filled with echoes of...
Political figures claiming to stand against domestic violence are failing to implement legislation to protect women and children. read now...Those of you who have read this blog over the past two decades know how I feel about Newt Gingrich. I hold him just as responsible and Donald Trump and Roger Ailes for the dark turn the GOP took since the early 90s. (And yes, their over racism was always reprehensible.) His influence over this country’s politics cannot be overstated and it’s all bad. Al Hunt, who’s also been following this story for decades has written a piece about Newt and I hope people read it. It’s important to always remember that Donald Trump didn’t start this descent into fascism. Gingrich was an officer in the Reagan Revolution and he took it to its logical conclusion. He is now being feted as an elder statesman by the MAGA movement, which makes perfect sense: Newt Gingrich is having another rebirth: reported whisperer to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), quoted hundreds of times as the supposed wise man to all things Congress and Washington, an off-Broadway version of Jim Baker or Leon Panetta.
There needs to be a safe place for businesses to place their reserves and working capital
There are five main causes of the SVB collapse and the subsequent knock-on problems facing the US and global financial system: the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation obsession causing it to raise interest rates too high and too fast; the inherent fragility of banking which for centuries has periodically erupted in crises; inadequate regulation of this fragile system which often leads to high profits that accrue to bankers’ and their wealthy owners; the corruption and self-dealing that often result from banks’ insufficient supervision; and the lack of public alternatives for financial institutions and services that could perform many of the key functions of banking and finance with less risk and without the private financiers taking their cut. Some of the huge profits the financiers make from this system are funneled back to buy support from the politicians to prevent adequate regulation, and to secure bail-outs when the system crashes.
Low rating news channel Sky news Australia has called upon low polling Opposition leader the Dark Lord Peter Dutton to listen to them and follow their agenda if he wants to become PM. ”No one has their finger pressed as... Read More ›
Hospital epidemiologists are following the science. Is anybody else?
The delusional cult actually believes him. But that’s because of Fox news and the wingnut media: Needless to say, people all over the world were laughing — nervously — for four long years, aghast that we could elect such a cretin and terrified that he was going to make a terrible mistake. But I’m sure his cult didn’t know about it. All they heard was how magnificently he was doing and how much the whole world respected him. It is an Orwellian horror but thankfully, so far, it only affects a large minority of the public.
1 tablespoon instant minced onion½ cup milk1½ pounds ground beef1 slightly beaten egg½ cup quick-cooking rolled oats2 teaspoons salt¼ teaspoon coarsely ground pepperKitchen bouquet1 8-ounce can (1 cup) spaghetti sauce with mushrooms1 8-ounce can (1 cup) kidney beansButtered, toasted French bread slices Soak onion in milk 5 minutes; mix in ground beef, egg, rolled oats, […]
Featuring articles by James B. Thomson and Walker F. Todd, Claudia Sahm, Gerald Epstein, Ronnie J. Phillips, Anastasia Nesvetailova, Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., William Bergman, and Thomas Ferguson
After a bitter and bruising election contest, Humza Yousaf has won the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) leadership and become Scotland’s First Minister. His victory over his nearest rival, Kate Forbes, was far from convincing. Yousaf won 48.2 percent first preference votes to Forbes’ 40.7 percent. As neither candidate gained over 50 percent, the second preferences […]
There is a banking crisis. Again. Banking regulators were asleep at the switch. Again.
The present crisis is not a replay of 2007-08, which was centered around housing. In that crisis, lenders took on too much credit risk. Additionally, financial institutions relied on exotic financial products to protects, such as derivatives, to protect against risk. The products failed to do so. Lawmakers and regulators reacted by placing new constraints on credit risk.
Thomas Hoenig, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and former Vice-Chairman of the FDIC, argues that “Another Banking Crisis was Predictable.” In response to the last banking crisis, the Fed’s risk models were focused on credit risk, while Silicon Valley Bank’s portfolio was heavily exposed to interest-rate (“duration”) risk. Once the Fed began hiking interest rates, the value of SVBs assets began falling.
A federal government guarantee or 100% reserve banking? Which is better?
Not long after arriving to teach economics at Colorado State University nearly four decades ago, I was introduced to a retired economist living in Fort Collins who had a simple idea for solving the problem of bank runs: require banks to have the cash on hand whenever the depositor wished to withdraw. Lloyd W. Mints had been one of the founders of the Chicago School of Economics along with Henry Simons and Frank Knight. The proposal, which has a history going back to at least the early 19th century, has variously been called 100% reserves, full reserve banking, or the Chicago Plan for Banking Reform.
Yet more signs of TUC/Labour pressure as NASUWT puts pathetic government pay offer to teachers Teachers have reacted with fury after their unions asked them to ‘consider’ an appallingly insulting pay offer from the government. The proposed ‘deal’ consists of a one-off, unfunded payment of £1000 for the current year and a derisory, far below […]