“It’s a great idea, if…done right. Federal lands are a national resource, and the nation needs more housing… What cities like St. George need most—and what they mostly refuse to allow—are modest homes and apartments for…workers and families.” @BCAppelbaum https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/opinion/housing-crisis-federal-land.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

(may i suggest microcities? www.interfluidity.com/v2/8772.html or just the sort of districts #MikeEliason would design and propose?)

if they had any sense they’d call the whole thing off and declare the weaker dollar a great victory.

every time i swipe the credit card, whatever bullshit i am blowing the money on, i am increasing my capital account surplus.

it’s been a long time, but i guess i’ll have to watch some 60 Minutes segments.

the same forces that pushed Obama to say “if you like your health insurance you can keep it” pushes an effective housing politics to concede “if you like your neighborhood, you can keep it”

in neither case is the constraint necessarily virtuous. perhaps it can be overcome. but it’s the same problem.

although the laundering itself remains illegal, providing extremely difficult to penetrate *money laundering services* has been effectively legalized, as long as the infrastructure is “digital assets”.

see @jp_koning https://www.moneyness.ca/2025/04/if-its-crypto-its-not-money-laundering.html

the most insidious propaganda by mainstream media is how it cheerfully chatters the days away as though we are living through ordinary times rather than a desperate national emergency.

every university should offer students whose visas are arbitrarily rescinded pathways to complete their degrees via remote learning.

kind of surprised administration flunkies aren’t hawking tawking points about how interest rates are rising because markets can anticipate the huge boom the president’s policies will bring, but stocks are down because tariffs will cut into Wall Street fat cat margins.

it’s weird how the mishandling of COVID is so many people’s excuse for supporting the guy who mishandled COVID.

no source of authority beyond a boot or a rifle, is what they are after. because they can persuade no one, but they know how to stomp.

is there a more banality-of-evil phrase than "ICE quota"?

you can just do things. stupid things.

policy uncertainty is a non-tariff barrier.

#economics

when norm violations become the norm, then whatever they are they are not norm violations.

The Trump Administration “is using this case to establish a truly chilling proposition: that no one can stop the Trump administration from imprisoning any people it wants anywhere else in the world.” #EriwnChemerinsky #LawrenceTribe https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/opinion/trump-deportations-gulag-prison.html ht @ct_bergstrom

i hope your day was tariffic and not tarible.

was the tariff rate shift intraday, or if you paid the steeper duty this morning do you get a partial refund?

i remember when people used to say China’s stock market wasn’t really investable, because its movements were dominated by unpredictable choices by government.

does this mean we are no longer liberated?