Andy Harless

Do coalitions of the moderate left and the far right (that exclude the center-right) happen outside the US? Because that's basically what the Democratic Party was during most of the 20th century.

In my head I still hear John Lennon singing “Here…comes..the Shit…King”

There may be other mechanisms.

Opioid addiction is also a potential side effect of blood thinners, via a similar mechanism.

Liver damage is a potential side effect of blood thinners. The mechanism is that people have to avoid NSAIDs, so they end up taking too much acetaminophen. Doctors should consider this potential adverse effect when prescribing blood thinners.

For me the subjective probability that Tylenol increases the risk of ASD is slightly higher than the probability that JD actually fucked a couch; but the harm done by acting in accordance with the latter belief is minimal. Always be integrating your loss function over your posterior #ABIYLFOYP

We could end up with too few people to do the work (e.g., to care for old people) or too many people to do the work (e.g., AI takes all the jobs). I don’t expect either, but I’m more concerned about the adjustments needed for a stagnant population than those needed for advancing technology.

AFAICT, Starbucks was a bank pretending to be a coffee company, but closing a lot of stores destroys the value of its banking services, so it's just going to be a failed coffee company now.

Wouldn’t it be reasonable to make a counter offer, “To keep the government open, we’ll give you some of what you want, but not the part where you fund healthcare for illegal aliens and change everyone’s gender“?

Thinking abstractly about AI replacing humans, I think the big economic issue is whether the resources AI uses are underpriced. If labor is available, they'll ultimately find something for labor to do, unless it's too relatively expensive because some costs of non-human resources are unpriced.

AFAICT it would be in the political interest of the Republicans to do a TACO on the shutdown, because the Democrats will then be blamed for everything that goes wrong. Best case politically for Democrats is that Republicans change Senate rules, pass the CR, and then get blamed for premium hikes &c.

People tell me AI is crowding out residential investment, but they also tell me AI is taking everyone’s job. I don’t think both can be true, and I don’t think either one is true. Rather, AI is a distraction, and bad trade and immigration policies are just making things harder for everyone.

So…neurotypicalism is caused by a deficiency of acetaminophen during pregnancy. Am I getting this right?

I expect health insurers waste a lot of money requiring very expensive tests to qualify for less expensive treatments.

OK, since I’m retiring now, I’m updating my class consciousness from proletarian to rentier, and as such, I am going on strike against the bourgeoisie, refusing to finance any more of their dumbass projects until they offer me better spreads.

Right now, my money would be on June 2025 as the US business cycle peak, but I'd still keep an option on January 2025, just for poetic reasons. Trump inherited a softening economy and perhaps managed to push it over the edge within a couple of weeks.

Why is the yield curve still close to normal? Shouldn’t 2s10s be record steep by now?

Not sure I understand what the word “populist” means, but I gather it’s similar to the meaning of the word “dumbass”

Who said it was equivalent to a professional? It may meet or exceed human performance on some tasks, but I don’t think it was ever claimed (and surely not by OpenAI) that psychotherapy was one of those tasks.

AFAICT Trump is just making it harder for the Fed to cut rates. The Phillips curve has an expectations term, and bond yields have a risk premium, and every time Trump tries to tamper with the Fed, those terms get larger.

I know Vance is a jerk, but I keep reading (contra Vance "some kind of negotiation" remark) that WWII ended in unconditional surrender. I don't think that's true. You might want to ask Emperor Naruhito whether his grandfather retained the throne just because the Americans were so fond of him.

The People’s Republic of China isn’t a communist system; it’s Marx-branded fascism.

It seems the US is experiencing a demand-side recession that is being offset by a supply-side recession (due to tariffs and net negative immigration). This is broadly the same thing that happened with COVID, in which case it was manifested by first economic weakness and then inflation.

The screwiest thing about Trump's economic world-view is that he considers both *investments in the US* and *net purchases of US products* as gifts to the US (conversely deficits as stealing from the US). I think his head would explode if anyone ever managed to explain the balance of payments to him

A Goldilocks economy isn't really an option for the Fed right now. They seem to be trying to strike a balance between "try to cause a recession while pretending not to" and "be OK with persistent above-target inflation while pretending not to."

The US is in a weird situation wherever favoring free markets is now a left-of-center position.

I had lunch at the Fed once, and I thought the food was good, but whatever.

If you want to resist fascism, you should take your 401(k) out of the market (or at least put it in non-US stocks). Otherwise you have a beneficial interest in Trump‘s crony capitalism, and your fiduciaries arguably have a duty to play ball with him.

Well, maybe a 4th possibility (but it’s sort of a variation on the 3rd) is that they change the monetary policy framework to one that allows for a higher inflation rate in the short and medium run but glides to a credible path in the long run. In principle, I’m still a 2007 NGDPLT trajectory guy.

Maybe the US is already entering a recession.
Maybe there will be a recession in the next year or so.
Maybe the inflation that started with COVID disruption/recovery and is being confirmed by tariff effects will become endemic.
I don’t think there’s a fourth possibility.