Tariffs ON. Tariffs OFF. Then ON again. Then OFF.
It's hard to keep up with this madness.
#politics
Last night I watched the entire State of the Union speech for the first time. What can I say, I'm getting older. The absence of a historical perspective makes it impossible to perform a solid comparison. That said, a few things stood out.
- Vocabulary. It was wider and more natural than the usual spiel in front of cameras. Perhaps members of Congress are held in higher regard than the electorate.
- An excessive number of individuals and their personal stories for all sorts of praises.
- Rebellious gentleman from TX who was asked to leave the chamber.
As the speech progressed though, the number of self-contradictions exceeded my ability to keep count. Below are a few that I had the opportunity to note. Paraphrasing here.
- Make America affordable again while erecting tariffs.
- End unelected bureaucrats running our country while praising Elon.
- Permanent lower taxes (earlier tax cuts are soon to expire) and a balanced federal budget.- Drill baby drill, to get cheaper oil, yet the price has been range bound at $65-80 for more than two years and currently at the lower end of $66. The break-even price is said to be around $55.
- Announcement of TSMC pledging another sizeable investment to build a fab in AZ while trashing the CHIPS act. Yet, acknowledging at the same time that it's not the first investment the said company has made recently, thus implying it was done under the aforementioned legislation, which it was.
- Boasting about most deportations of illegals. A quick fact-checking suggests that during the first month, the current administration deported fewer people than Biden's last year's average.
- Claims of geriatric people receiving social security benefits. This has been refuted here. Some young DOGE fellows need to learn a bit of COBOL and SQL it appears.
- Reclaiming of sovereignty. From whom? I don't recall the US was under the rule of another state. A change in political leadership isn't that.
P - populism.
#politics
March 2025
Кажется Британия и Франция повторят динамику 1956 года. Нет, не в военном смысле, а в дипломатическом.
#politics
Этот эпизод отлично продемонстрировал контраст двух менталитетов. Идеалистического и прагматического. Желающие сами могут наложить на удобные этнические стереотипы.
Идеалист, в борьбе за справедливость и правоту каких результатов добился? Срыва сделки, продолжения войны, жертв и горя.
Прагматик, упираясь на принципы realpolitik, нацелен на результат. Кто там прав или виноват, и в каких пропорциях, сейчас уже не важно. Главная цель – остановить войну.
И ещё, люди, выступающие с позиций демонизации одной из сторон как аргумента против переговоров, забывают два важных исторических прецедента. Рузвельт заключил полноценный альянс со Сталиным, а Никсон пошёл на встречу Мао. Эти два товарища уложили в землю десятки миллионов своих сограждан. Тем не менее, логика событий диктовала пренебрежение моральными аспектами в угоду бОльших целей.
Позволяешь себе оскорбления в адрес врага – подразумеваешь продолжение войны. Хочешь мира – спрячь гордыню и договаривайся отталкиваясь от реальности, а не от своих хотелок.
#politics
The actions of DOGE appear vulgar and destructive to many observers. Let's be frank they are. Young and ambitious libertarians driven by ideals of cut through efficiency slashing funding and people without proper due diligence. In some instances, realizing ginormous mistakes and attempting to rehire the same people, only to learn there is no easy way to broadcast the message. Rampant overreporting of achieved savings is a sad reality. It's a time-honored tradition to overemphasize the achievements of a white knight.
But....
If one believes there is an existential problem one doesn't have the luxury of going slow. We tried it and it mostly failed. In 1993 Clinton attempted the National Performance Review (NPR) / "Reinventing Government". Then under George W. Bush in 2001 the President's Management Agenda (PMA), and in 2002 the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). These attempts couldn't overcome the resistance of vested interests and went nowhere.
Just to remind proponents of the status quo. We've recently crossed the Rubicon by spending more to service our national debt than on our military. Historian Niall Ferguson recently claimed similar dynamic was a cause for empires to fall. The share of federal government spending compared to the GDP is approximately 23% as of 2024. The post-WWII historical average has been around 20% of GDP. This number is somewhat skewed higher by the profligacies of the Great Recession and COVID-19.
I do feel for dismissed government workers, but those of us in the private sector have always operated under the same possibilities. Lavish severance packages are typically reserved for the top brass of elite financial firms. When a crisis manager takes the helm of a business drastic measures ensue. Sink or swim realities dictate that. Moaning and squeaking always follow. Any resolution will make someone unhappy.
The federal government, which provides services to the general public is not a business driven by profits and efficiency goals alone. However, it cannot grow unchecked either. The Achilles heel of a democracy is that it is almost impossible to eradicate entrenched interests from within, and so the waste and cronyism always grow.
When a firefighter is tasked with putting off a fire he'll break windows, doors, and walls. As concerned as I am with DOGE's tactics I'm willing to extend a firehose to them. Hopefully, the results will be net positive. Time will tell.
#AmericanDynamism
February 2025
В мире 3,400-3,600 коммерческих судов, ходящих под Китайским флагом и 180-200 под Американским. Данные за 2024 год.
#factoftheday
According to one famous political leader, "tariff" is the most beautiful word in a dictionary. In this light, some historical parallels are worth remembering.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed by Congress in June 1930 and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. On September 18, 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria and a bloody war followed. This was a direct consequence of said legislation, albeit an unintended one. Reciprocal tariffs from the rest of the world hit US exporters really hard too. Because the U.S. was a large net exporter it only worsened the already deteriorating economic situation. Back then the driving force behind tariffs were farmers, who had an overly naïve understanding of the economy, yet were extremely vocal constituents. It was MAGA before the term's existence.
To be fair, tariffs are a useful tool to hedge from beggar thy neighbor industrial, and by extension trade policies, of other countries. Just don't pretend they'll be cost-free.
U - Unintended consequences.
#economics
February 2025
The disappointment with the left gave us Trump 2.0. Right or wrong it's irrelevant now. The dissatisfaction, real and imaginary, could pale in comparison with what the current administration has in store. Many are clueless and find refuge in the throw-everthing-at-the-wall tactics, where some residue is destined to be net positive. Rampant cherry-picking and confirmation bias hide the unpleasantries.
Those applauding the cancelation of grants for research on menstrual cycles in transgender men are missing the boat on devastating cuts to NIH and other national labs, which wasn't properly funded, to begin with. (Bloomberg's article is behind a paywall, but the Odd Lots episode on the subject is free). This might have enormous negative outcomes for decades to come. It's worth remembering that government-sponsored scientific research was instrumental in this country's success story post-WW2.
People cheering up job cuts at the federal government in the name of efficiency are sticking their heads into the sand for what's brewing. I lived through the disintegration of the Soviet economy and witnessed what happens when enough people lose jobs. I'm not suggesting we're anywhere near the scale, but unintended consequences and multi-variable systems are impossible to predict and prepare for.
Many Trump voters, whom I know personally, welcomed and helped Ukrainian refugees under the U4U program, are oblivious to the potential shutting of said Biden-era initiative, with disastrous consequences for people caught in the middle — something which wasn't hard to predict given the anti-immigration rhetoric on the campaign trail.
Yes, we do have problems. Yes, democrats went overboard with lots of idiocies. Yes, we tried slow solutions for the national debt and they failed. However, it feels each passing week results in more instability and more shenanigans. The commander-in-chief is declining to rule out a recession, in case you've missed a hint to that during the State of the Union address. As of this writing, betting markets are pricing the probability of a US recession in 2025 at 37%. I would be a seller at this price.
I hope that people who were not satisfied with the color of their nails won't find both of their hands amputated.
#politics
March 2025
Вчерашнее событие — это домашняя заготовка или экспромт? Пришлось посмотреть всю пресс-конференцию. Манипуляции – территория коротких нарезок.
Отталкиваясь от Бритвы Оккама версию о домашней заготовке, стоит исключить как крайне маловероятную. Жечь вживую больше подходит для амплуа актера. Что он и сделал, аж дым пошел.
Если суммировать, то не очень умный, дерзкий и импульсивный ребёнок был жестко унижен двумя сильными взрослыми мужиками.
Почему не умный?
Ты приехал подписывать соглашение. Несколькими неделями ранее наш министр финансов уже летал к тебе по этому поводу, но что-то пошло не так. Плохой знак. Мы начали переговоры с РФ в качестве посредника. Если ты хочешь мира, то сбавь риторику в сторону врага и перестань публично горланить о своих амбициях. Ладно, ты уже прилетел, значит договоренности были достигнуты. Остались формальности и утряска деталей. Тебя пригласили на публику в Овальный кабинет. Согласие на прессуху, до подписания, не добавила тебе очков. Улыбайся, отвечай на заданные только тебе вопросы, в духе за все хорошее против всего плохого и выражай надежду. Подписывай, благодари и поезжай рассказывать дома о достижениях. Всё. Нет, не всё, твой английский не на том уровне, чтоб общаться в таком формате без переводчика.
Почему дерзкий?
Задал вопрос Вице-Президенту (40:30) в нарушение протокола, перешедший в фамильярность
what kind of diplomacy JD…
A very dense history of programming languages and what to expect.
1. Binary code (1940s-1950s). Instructions were written directly in binary (0s and 1s). Tedious and highly error-prone.
2. Machine code (late 1940s-1950s). Slight improvement to octal or hexadecimal representations.
3. Assembly language (1950s). A major improvement with human-readable mnemonics and symbolic names for memory locations and instructions.
4. High-level languages (late 1950s onward): FORTRAN, COBOL, C, Java, Lisp, and everything we use today.
The first three categories were hardware-dependent. Programmers had to be aware of the specifications of the hardware they were writing code for, but this need mostly disappeared with high-level languages.
The jump to high-level languages was met with performance-related criticism from incumbents. Early compilers were no match for seasoned assembly programmers. But problems were getting bigger and compilers were getting better. Eventually, the domain for assembly languages became a tine one. My wonderful AI helper suggests it's less than 1% today.
Some say we're in similar dynamics today. AI-written code is all the rage lately. This implies that the next programming language will be English. If history is any guide, tools like Copilot will evolve and improve. Potentially to a point where knowledge of the underlying computer science concepts will become irrelevant.
There is fear among programmers. Their skills will be obsolete. I wouldn't be so pessimistic. The responsibilities will probably shift, but with ever-increasing problem space, better tools are naturally required, while somebody is going to apply and operate them.
#history #tech
February 2025
According to this source
MicroStrategy owns 499,096 bitcoins as of Feb. 24, 2025. MicroStrategy states the average purchase price as $62,473.01 USD per bitcoin with a total cost of $27.954 billion USD.
Perhaps pendulum has reached one extreme and will start to swing back. This proposal has a bipartisan support, or so I hear, and should sail through both chambers. Time will tell if this initiative was a watershed moment for a declined US maritime industry.
#AmericanDynamism
По итогам последних двух недель нужно признать, что многие перепутали неприменение силы, пока только дипломатической, с её отсутствием. Видимо европейским лидерам следует повторить уроки Суэцкого кризиса 1956 года. Биби тоже в трудном положении. Придётся понижать ястребиный накал. Про Зеленского и говорить нечего. Парень явно забыл с чьих рук кормился. Начал сильно нервничать.
#AmericanImperialism
February 2025
Очень много лет Изя и Моня успешно работали с Мыколой. Изя поставлял американских заказчиков, Мыкола поставлял украинских разработчиков. Моня имел 5 копеек связав этих персонажей. Изя иногда подключался, давая стратегические напутствия. Моня иногда подключался, давая стратегические напутствия. Мыкола раздавал деньги в конвертах. Все были в доле. Иногда люди Мыколы косячили и тогда Моня и Изя теряли, но Мыкола и его люди оплачивались четко и регулярно. У них так принято. Доля Мыколы была даже больше, хотя рисков он не нес. У них так принято.
Был один нюанс. Договорились, что на проектах Изи, разработчики должны получать минимум икс. Смысл был в том, чтоб работяги были довольны и не разбегались. Это было важно Изе. Он дорожил репутацией и качеством работы. Маржа Мыколы, в его географии, легко позволяла с запасом соблюдать данную договоренность, продолжая мазать масло на икру.
Но. Изя не был бы Изей если бы не сообщил людям Мыколы, с которыми ему приходилось трудиться, о данной договоренности. Изя не вчера родился. Не прошло и полгода как программисты стали жаловаться, что отродясь не видели икс. Это грозило утечкой грамотных кадров и срывом проектов.
В дело подключился Моня, задав пару неудобных вопросов. Попросил отчётность по зарплате. Первое чем озаботился Мыкола – откуда информация. Видимо многолетний опыт не беспокойства его по пустякам не послужил сигналом о важности разговора. После неких колебаний, Мыкола пошел в глухой отказ объяснив свои действия неприятием внешнего вмешательства в свою бухгалтерию и желанием перекупить его людей. Контраргумент что с ним бы тогда вообще не связывались не возымел эффекта. Необходимость проверить соблюдение договоренностей осталась где-то в воздухе. Мыколе предоставили возможность опровергнуть претензии или их исправить. Он прошёл мимо.
По итогу Мыкола остался без стабильно-солидного заработка. Изя накинул зарплату и перешёл на прямое сотрудничество с людьми Мыколы. А что же Моня? А Моня пошёл искать нового Мыколу.
#ЖадностьПорождаетБедность
How do I know a good deal? When both sides loudly complain about it. The lack of complaints from one side suggests the opponents are being had.
#politics #economics
