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I don't think anyone, myself included, knows how to quantify the risk of something terrible happening due to Trump's unprecedented Presidential demeanor and the

by hsod 9y ago

I don't think anyone, myself included, knows how to quantify the risk of something terrible happening due to Trump's unprecedented Presidential demeanor and the associated erosion of institutions and norms. It's quite likely that many people, including the media, overrate that risk. On the other hand, many of the stories you read in the media are true. Discounting or ignoring them because you associate them with emotionality or hysteria would be fallacious.

candiodari 9y ago
I think the article is much more concerned with the fact that, for about 13 years now ("since" the great financial crisis, but starting before it) we have been running economic policy that would have been seen as lunacy in 2000 by ... well, by everyone. In fact, it pretty much still is. Free money is to capitalism what "let's just use a random function as a cost function" is to a neural network. It takes away the intelligence, the adaptation. It will explode, slowly. It does not make much sense, however, that the economy takes/took this long to crash as a result. We should (and do, according to quite a few economic journals, and that's in a way also what this article is complaining about) have an economy that doesn't make sense given the world we live in. That the connection between reality and our economic system acting on reality is getting looser and looser. There must come a point where it suddenly, violently stops working and vast shortages suddenly manifest everywhere. Just like any learning algorithm when you take away it's direction: it goes insane, and not in a way you can debate whether it's insane. Think epileptic seizure, not general weirdness.
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Free (or too cheap) debt is free money too. However removing this with current "market" pricing in the US is extremely hard. The market will actively work against any price reductions with all available economical and political pressures. Most developed countries have been running on huge excess public debt already. And in case of US there is not a lot to cut, unlike EU where a lot of public services got optimized. Education? Ha. The only budget that could be cut is police, army and intelligence. But not compatible with US ambitions of being the world power.

by hsod 9y ago

candiodari 9y ago

I think the article is much more concerned with the fact that, for about 13 years now ("since" the great financial crisis, but starting before it) we have been running economic policy that would have been seen as lunacy in 2000 by ... well, by everyone. In fact, it pretty much still is. Free money is to capitalism what "let's just use a random function as a cost function" is to a neural network. It takes away the intelligence, the adaptation. It will explode, slowly. It does not make much sense, however, that the economy takes/took this long to crash as a result. We should (and do, according to quite a few economic journals, and that's in a way also what this article is complaining about) have an economy that doesn't make sense given the world we live in. That the connection between reality and our economic system acting on reality is getting looser and looser. There must come a point where it suddenly, violently stops working and vast shortages suddenly manifest everywhere. Just like any learning algorithm when you take away it's direction: it goes insane, and not in a way you can debate whether it's insane. Think epileptic seizure, not general weirdness.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Free (or too cheap) debt is free money too. However removing this with current "market" pricing in the US is extremely hard. The market will actively work against any price reductions with all available economical and political pressures. Most developed countries have been running on huge excess public debt already. And in case of US there is not a lot to cut, unlike EU where a lot of public services got optimized. Education? Ha. The only budget that could be cut is police, army and intelligence. But not compatible with US ambitions of being the world power.