Arthur Bautzer

Tom Stevenson · Beyond Mesopotamia: Linear Elamite Deciphered Three things are necessary to decipher ancient writing. You need lots of examples of the script. You need a good...

‘The decipherer looks for clues: famous kings, place names, common titles. But these patterns are never enough on their own. At some point he must conjecture the meaning of a sign. There is an inevitable imaginative leap.’

@tomstevenson.bsky.social on Linear Elamite: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"We need to challenge the sharp lines between planning, prudential regulation, and monetary policy proper. In reality, every action taken by the central bank channels credit towards some activities, and away from others."

A graph of the French 10 Year bond yield

Spreads have widened a bit but French bond yields have remained very reasonable and stable, considerable strain is a big overstatement.

I agree an exclusive focus on the emissions of top income groups is a dead end, but that leaves open the question of whether the effort demanded from each income group ought to to be proportional to their emissions, which would still imply a larger effort for top deciles.

A graph of energy-related CO2 emissions per capita by income decile in selected countries and regions, 2021, showing higher income groups emit more CO2 per capita

I agree with your general point but GES emissions are very concentrated by income both between and within countries, see for example this from the IEA. Though maybe you disagree with their data? www.iea.org/commentaries...

The entire conflict between Potter and Bailey is about Potter losing rental income because of the new housing! In the alternate reality the taxi driver says he still lives in a Potter-owned slum.

You must have missed the scene where the guardian angel shows Bailey an entire neighbourhood was never built in the alternate reality without his S&L

Great paper for anyone interested in decision making under uncertainty. "The adoption of scenario analysis represented a shift away from quantification—it was a technique for addressing unprecedented events and discontinuities that were challenging to capture with data."

Do you think the banking policy has gotten any more coherent since the crisis?

This Climate Finance visualization is so handy, and upends a few assumptions I implicitly made about where the money was coming from and in what form www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/...

2030 manufacturing targets for net zero 2050 goals - everything but solar is looking a bit light

CEA with a great new post on manufacturing capacity to hit net zero targets - LOVE this figure

HT @climatefran.bsky.social

www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-...

Inside Foxconn’s struggle to make iPhones in India Chinese engineers are flying to India to train the next generation of iPhone builders.

I don’t see the author here but found this at the other place. Fascinating long read article about Foxconn seconding engineers from China to train personnel at its new factory in India (Chennai suburbs). restofworld.org/2023/foxconn...

Central Bank Independence and the Legacy of the German Past Cambridge Core - Twentieth Century European History - Central Bank Independence and the Legacy of the German Past

Simon Mee wrote a good history of German inflation culture where conflicts over deficit spending between an independent CB and governments feature. I assume after the ECB's creation responsibility for fiscal rectitude partially shifted from the CB to the state. www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

I’ve researched supply chains for a decade. It’s not usually a glam topic at workshops and I usually hear crickets but . .

Today, Biden creates cabinet level Council on Supply Chain Resilience” co-chaired by NSA & National Economic Advisor

www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo....

They hate it under that name but adopt similar policies under the "economic security" or "supply chain resilience" umbrella. Public investment and supply chain monitoring so that when stress comes back there's no need for price caps.

"Don't you know there ain't no devil, that's just god when he's drunk". the hole is for sobering up

A few months later Biden met with Ford, Schlesinger, Kissinger and others to discuss the final evacuation from Vietnam. Biden was reluctant to authorise any more military spending; Ford argued America should take in Vietnamese refugees. history.state.gov/historicaldo...

It got me digging through the wonderful Foreign Relations of the United States. One advantage of an old president is the fact he comes up in open archives, like in this conversation between Schlesinger and Ford. history.state.gov/historicaldo...

That Time Joe Biden Tried to Ban Military Keynesianism “It is not a proper function of the Department of Defense to make allowances for amounts needed to help stimulate the economy"

Great find by @timbarker.bsky.social. ourtime.substack.com/p/that-time-...

Great summary in one image of how you handle an eclipse - today - on a solar heavy grid. Nat gas up, batteries discharge, imports up. Solar down.

Ghost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets A little-known distributor in London sold thousands of engine components with bogus documentation. Carriers and repair shops are frantically hunting them down.

A massive fraud has left engine makers and airlines in a frantic race to stem the fallout. This is how fake parts made their way into planes around the world

Found it.

Adam Tooze's latest Chartbook is v. interesting (is he on here yet?) - particularly the correction he makes about German labour force participation post Hartz IV.
adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Going to post some archives into the void. Here's a bank investment committee in 1950 deciding treasuries would beat municipals in case of nuclear war, presumably because some of the issuers wouldn't survive to maturity