The Trump presidency is now being graded on the curve, the US Treasury bond yield curve. It inverted for a short time last week and now the media is taking the possibility of an election year recession seriously. For our next meeting, we will talk about the politics of the yield curve. Here are some of the videos for the meeting:
-------------------------------------- Updated 8/22/19 ---------------------------------------
Here the other videos shown at the meeting:
Here the other videos shown at the meeting:
- Trump insisting he has no concerns about the current state of the US economy
- Rattled? Unraveling? President Trump reacts to economic news
A couple of weeks ago, someone commented on the amount of murder, I responded by claiming there was a higher rate of murder when we were children, quite without data.
ReplyDeleteSo I went to Wikipedia and got the intentional homicide rates by year in U.S, in #/100,00 inhabitants per year. the data for 2016 and 2017 are from a different database.
1900: 1.2, 1910: 4.6, 1920: 6.8, 1930: 8.8, 1940: 6.3, 1950: 4.6, 1960: 5.1, 1970: 7.9, 1980: 10.2, 1990: 9.4, 2000: 5.5, 2010: 4.8, 2015: 4.9, 2016: 5.4, 2017: 5.3
I was born in 1939 so it looks like I was right but not by much. Incidentally, the 1900 figure seems wrong, the excursion in 1930 is perhaps connected to prohibition and the excursions in 1980 and 1990 perhaps connected to the heroin and cocaine epidemic. If the current rate is about 5, then Howard County (300,000 people) should have about 15 homicides per year. We have many fewer, perhaps 3 or so for a rate of 1.
As Wendell Berry (Harper’s 2008) observed, the US is founded on the delusion of limitlessness: “limitless growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resources, limitless energy, and limitless debt. The idea of a limitless economy implies and requires a doctrine of general human limitlessness: all are entitled to pursue without limit whatever they conceive as desirable—a license that classifies the most exalted Christian capitalist with the lowliest pornographer.” It is sobering to note that this analysis was made long before anyone imagined we would have as President someone who asserts an image as both that of “an exalted Christian capitalist” and a “lowly pornographer,” and it reminds us that we desperately need leadership with the skill and courage to direct our attention to the mirror.
ReplyDelete