Reading

Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 12:00
The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One. Continue reading »
Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 11:00
Boris Epshteyn has risen to the role of top “legal” adviser “He’s a killer”. He also seems to be corrupt. Shocking, I know: Boris Epshteyn has had his phone seized by federal agents investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his election loss. Lacking any track record as a political strategist, he has made more than $1.1 million in the past two years for providing advice to the campaigns of Republican candidates, many of whom believed he could be a conduit to Mr. Trump. A cryptocurrency fund with which he is involved has drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors. And he has twice been arrested over personal altercations, leading in one case to an agreement to attend anger management classes and in another to a guilty plea for disorderly conduct. As the former president faces escalating legal peril in the midst of another run for the White House, Mr. Epshteyn, people who deal with him say, mirrors in many ways Mr. Trump’s defining traits: combative, obsessed with loyalty, transactional, entangled in investigations and eager to make money from his position. Mr.
Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 10:49
Pathetic lack of vision exposes Labour’s lack of substance The absolute lack of vision, backbone and political imagination of Keir Starmer’s Labour has been exposed yet again, after some details of tomorrow’s budget were leaked to the media. Jeremy Hunt’s budget looks set to be the usual Tory vapour and spin – but still more […]
Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 09:30
They’ ve all be blathering “woke” every other work in the past week, but this takes the cake: These guys really love this word, don’t they? Do you think Larry Kudlow has any idea what “woke” is? Apparently, they all believe that this word is magic that explains everything. Just spit it out and everyone gets that whatever perceived problem we have in this world is caused by “wokesters” who aren’t going along with the white supremacy these people are pushing. That includes the military and bankers now. Who’s left?
Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 08:37
Let’s get the up-or-down part of this review over with quickly: Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson is a poorly written, mostly vacuous rumination on mathematical modeling, and you would do well to ignore it.

Now that that’s done, we can get on with the interesting aspect of this book, its adaptation of trendy radical subjectivism for the world of modeling and empirical analysis....
While I have not read the work that Peter Dorman is criticizing, it appears to me that he ignores a major factor affecting economics, science and human knowledge as a whole. That is the ontological, epistemological, and ethical dimension, as well as work in philosophy (foundations) of science, logic, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. 
Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 08:13

Join us on Thursday, March 16 at 1pm ET / 10am PT, for our regularly scheduled call to chat about all things Drupal and nonprofits. (Convert to your local time zone.)

No pre-defined topics on the agenda this month, so join us for an informal chat about anything at the intersection of Drupal and nonprofits.  Got something specific on your mind? Feel free to share ahead of time in our collaborative Google doc: https://nten.org/drupal/notes!

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Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 08:00
I don’t pretend to understand all the nuances of this crisis and I’m withholding judgement until we see how it all shakes out. But this is someone who knows a lot and is always worth listening to: ​So the Feds stepped in to protect all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, even though the law says that deposits only up to $250,000 are insured and even though there was a pretty good case that allowing big depositors to take a haircut wouldn’t have created a systemic crisis. S.V.B. was pretty sui generis, far more exposed both to interest risk and to potential runs than any other significant bank, so even some losses for larger depositors may not have caused much contagion. Still, I understand the logic: If I were a policymaker, I’d be reluctant to let S.V.B. fail, merely because while it probably wouldn’t have caused a wider crisis, one can’t be completely certain and the risks of erring in doing too much were far smaller than the risks of doing too little. That said, there are good reasons to feel uncomfortable about this bailout. And yes, it was a bailout.
Created
Wed, 15/03/2023 - 07:07
Bond Economics
What We Learned: Something Is Seriously Wrong With Silicon Valley
Brian Romanchuk

Notes on the Crisis
Every Complex Banking Issue All At Once: The Failure of Silicon Valley Bank in One Brief Summary and Five Quick Implications
Nathan Tankus

The Big Picture
All the Things We Do Not Know About SVB
Barry L. Ritholtz is co-founder, chairman, and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC.

ECNS (Chinese official English news service)
China Daily (Chinese state-sponsored media)