p.s. for Site admins... I'm getting an error with every post (thought post completes): Warning: Undefined variable...

Also curious to see that Gold is dropping too -- although, it had already reached $3.2k from $2k over the past year -- so people riding the wave?

Bitcoin is also down... I mean, if you can't flee to safety in imaginary currents of electric, where *can* you flee to safety?

Double clicking into this... I'm not sure what you're seeing reported is true? Seems Japan holds about $1T total and in Feb reduced it's holdings by (variously reported) $50B - $200B - because yields were increasing.

To whom did they sell them?

As of 1.24 pm DOW seems to be bumping along at 38k with a little excitement around a false rumor of a 90-day pause causing the market to perk upwards until rumor popped.

Wasn't sure what to expect... personally felt that another 5% drop would've signaled a lot more pain to come. There's still time...

But I'm also not sure what to make of a 15% overall drop with a floor of 38k. (If that's the case).

My own sense was that we wouldn't know how to interpret things until this coming Friday - or the first set of financial institution failures. But, if it's just a 'correction' with a slow moving recession...?

"he says he would come more often if he could buy and smoke pot at the theater. “How fun would that be?” he says. “They have a bar here so that people can relax and enjoy a drink.""

You'd quite literally have to have a different building... pot invading public spaces is already creating a backlash... you'd nuke non-pot screenings anywhere and any time in your theater. Plus, there's a pretty big lack of awareness comparing (or not comparing) the externalities of Pot vs. Alcohol.

It's a content saturation problem... there are too many alternatives to films. And films as a medium don't offer that much of an upgrade over 4k viewing.

If there's a 'new thing' it will be something along the lines of immersive theaters like you get in a 90second ride at Disney Hollywood.

Heh, I'm not entirely sure I get the comment even if I get the gist? Seems any plan by Trump can be ill-conceived and poorly executed regardless the time allocated for preparation.

Yeah; I think you are right that he sees the American Empire as a thing that was being managed to the benefit of a few; he's using populist language to reorient the goods of empire to a new few and perhaps along the way share some spectacles and low value gluten. It's rather crass, but sharing the benefits of empire was always an option we mostly pretended didn't exist.

This WaPo article is making the rounds from (anonymous) inside sources on how the 'tariff' formula was picked.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-reason-advisers/

There's also additional (anonymous) reporting on some of the pre-negotiations with other nations... the operative point (IMO) is this: "“It’s not clear what they want to achieve,” the diplomat said."

Putting the two things together... the article suggests that negotiations were unclear on what was needed -- i.e. Tariff reductions or barriers to trade or both and what would happen if they did them. In the end, those 'concessions' were fruitless because the formula Trump selected wasn't one of the ones that factored tariffs and barriers.

And, implied is that now none of the states know exactly how to get out of the box because changing the trade imbalance is downstream of lots of other things and not something govts can simply control by negotiations.

On this 'liberation day' I'm reminded of Norm's clip about going to war ... with the World.

Maybe just start with a hemisphere or some ripe continent spoiling for a fight and see how that goes first.https://t.co/Qque9xdxQ2

— Marchmaine (@Marchmaine) April 2, 2025

I take your point; Part 3 is where the votes are.

But the reason why Cass (and others) are at least interesting to follow is that the goal of Economic Policy shifts for them *isn't* a friend/enemy reward/punish model... it's a game referee model and the goal is to stop ignoring rules infractions because they benefit the current order (in the short term)... changing the rules *always* causes some disruption somewhere. Changing the rules stupidly (as Cass is implying about Trump) will bring about more and stupid disruptions (and by implication - somewhat unnecessary).

But in the end, the point isn't tariffs or no-tariffs, its addressing the lies about the rules - and who benefits from them.

It's not the very best Jon Stewart clip... but as far as digesting a pretty boring speaker (Cass), it has some value.

I think JB is wrong about McCain/Romney and I don't think he's GHWB... so let me see if I can break it down by the good 'ole stool analogy.

Leg 1: Economics/Libertarians
* He's explicitly taking down the Free Market fundamentalists... Markets are good, but markets are basically all about games/rules/incentives. There is no invisible hand.

Leg 2: Foreign Policy/Neo-cons
* He's explicitly acknowledging a multi-polar world order, and the goal isn't maximal containment, but strategic alignment; which means honey/carrots/sticks and the willingness to use whichever is needed. Pax Americana comes with duties from those who participate. But the era of hegemony is over and over-extension will lead to losing our allies in the medium term.

Leg 3: Social/So-Cons
* He's not a bootstrap conservative; he thinks the 47% has been ill-served by the economic policies of Leg #1 and that arbitraging labor *isn't* a comparative advantage in trade; the market should have rules that benefit families and the state has a role in making policies that protect and advance civil society.

None of those things are 'conservative' in the old Republican synthesis kind of way.

But, what Steward missed (this is pretty common) is that challenging the old consensus doesn't mean that the Left's solutions are vindicated -- he's got different ideas from Romney/McCain/Clinton/Obama/Pelosi/Trump/McConnel that he's peddling.

Basically everyone thinks he's wrong about everything, but from different angles. And that's ok.

I think the premise that someone like Cass is working with is that Trump and Musk *aren't* on-board. This isn't a Trump/Musk explainer.

Folks like Rubio have flirted with these non-orthodox ideas (they go broader than simple tariffs) but as Cass says, Politicians are lagging indicators -- they rarely lead the way. Cass mentions a few other folks on the economic side with whom I believe he has a direct line.

So yeah, that's what makes some of the Stewart interview 'funny' to watch, Cass doesn't have a mission to trash Trump... so he just let's Stewart's jokes roll over him... and he's pretty clear that he thinks Trump/Musk are not competently executing whatever plan it is they think they are executing (that's the point of the article). But his audience isn't Trump/Musk/McConnel or any of the Old Republicans or MAGA cultists... he explicitly says the targets are 40-under.

Post-Trump is pretty explicit in his by-line...

Come for the Jon Stewart fun, stay for the autistic nerd talking about the new-center-right economic policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgEQeLR-M0g

To me, Cass is interesting for his Pre-Post-Trump positioning...

I think he fumbled a couple answers ... I don't think he quite gets across his message that NATO doesn't have to be destroyed to become renewed/reordered effectively (it kinda gets tacked on at the end after he meanders a bit); and I think he's too circumspect 'implying' what he pretty much says, which is that the Trump Admin is poorly run and even if you enact some policies that *could* be good, if you do them haphazardly and without a clear outline of what other countries can do to amend behaviors to bring trade into alignment... then you aren't doing good policies at all. Or, per usual, the Trump Admin undermines everything it touches. It's pretty clear that his long-term Post-Trump objective is tied to younger parts of the party... but he doesn't define his future goals as either supporting Trump nor directly taking Trump to task for botching things up.

He addresses this second point directly in this essay (probably written after the interview, I assume) where he critiques the administration for not articulating the point, direction or correction behind tariffs. So, if you were looking for a steelman on the Point/Purpose of Tariffs if handled by a competent administration, this is your article.

https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/americas-three-demands

As a supervillain origin story, he tells how he was the guy tasked by Mitt Romney(!) to look at the China trade policies... and turns out, there was a bit of a gap between theory and reality. This is before (I think) Autor's China Shock came out. So out of the Romney Bain Capital labs ...

My 17yo daughter went to see Snow White last weekend... when she got back I asked, 'So, was it woke?'

'Worse,' she said, 'It was boring.'

I suppose that's what they mean by underperforming as word of mouth gets out.

That isn't the operative part of the monologue. The part that resonated with a *lot* of vets (WW2, Korea, and Vietnam) was the part we'd now call his PTSD breakdown.

"Nothing is over, Nothing!" is the line that set's up the monologue.

But JB's point stands, Rambo is built around this 4 minute monologue vs. quips.

https://youtu.be/oLBMqORKWSg?si=003HXWOA4hRo-ZQE

"If there’s a speech you remember from Stallone, it’s a surprisingly heartfelt"

Hadn't thought about that, but yeah... Stallone's Rambo is built around the monologue he gives to Col. Trautman.

Forgot to add that this would effectively mean that the Sox play without a DH all year, right :-p

I certainly appreciate the idea of trade-offs with certain rules; but I suspect that the Players Association would strike before ever letting pitchers to hit again, plus I'd expect them to balk (so to speak) at the perverse incentive of making Starters pitch even if they are out of gas possibly leading to more injuries.

That said, I *do* like the rule change requiring relievers to face minimum number of batters... I could see maybe trying some expansions around that ruleset.

We had 80yrs of inefficiency that made the game lively *and* HR friendly.

Since then we've seen batting averages drop 30 points, strikeouts/game go from 2.5 to 8.5 and walks go up by 1/game and HR go up 1/game. While the total runs per game is exactly the same at 4.39 (odd coincidence between 1920/2024 - but variance is low)

Which is just to say that we've optimized for Walks/Strikeouts/HR at the expense of putting balls in play.

One small bright side is that making the bases 3" larger increased stolen bases per game by 50%... which puts it on the higher side in the ebb/flow of SB over time.

That why I started with 'lower the mound' ... the biggest 'bad' trend in baseball is the Strikeout. The overall bad trend is fewer balls in play - which makes the game less interesting to watch... overall. But yes, HR are fun and if we lowered the mound without doing anything else? We'd get even more of them and more walks.

So... expand the parks, keep the ball lively and batted around the park more and lets see what happens.

Otherwise it's just the long march of Earl Weaver through the baseball institutions.

"That hitters were unwilling or unable to do that is part of the problem."

Should've lowered the mound instead.

Just not sure what to do with Three True Outcomes baseball. If I'm being serious and waving a magic wand? Need to make the ballparks bigger.

More ground to cover for fielders and fewer homeruns = more hits on contact... and if every ball can't be launched for a HR... then also lower the mound to address strikeouts. But, we all know what the chicks think about the longball.

But I do like the pitch clock and ending the OCD batter rituals.

Heh, I see what you're doing; it's funnier to play Chait saying this straight.

To be fair to David's original point, I expect the Tesla firebombers really have their shit together.

The guy from Inglorious Basterds was in there too?

Man, talk about bad OpSec.

Edit to add: On the plus side, can we all not stand back an appreciate how far we've come from an insecure home email server to using state of the art dual encryption?