Get the best daily market and macroeconomic commentary anywhere for less than $7 per month.
Already have an account? log in
The Honor’s In The Dollar, Kid
An already convoluted outlook for markets was complicated further on Friday by a jobs report seen likely to embolden the Fed on the path to what officials spent most of the week insisting will eventually be restrictive policy settings.
The labor market's optically strong performance in July seemed to validate the contention that the world's largest economy isn't in a recession, regardless of what any rule of thumb has to say on the matter.
The White House was pleased with the numbers. "More pe
The problem with Daly’s comment isn’t so much her own personal experience but rather her contrasting example. Americans forced to ‘eat at their hotel room’ as an example of the pain Americans are experiencing makes it an open question of whether she’s out of touch or merely seems it.
There was a time in her life that Janet Yellen might have been a person eating in her hotel room. Would she have been qualified to be a voting member of the Fed at that point in her life?
FYI, I took a staycation just because I wanted to spend time in my garden.
The Fed’s jobs are to keep inflation in a range, keep unemployment in a range, and keep the financial system working. Those tasks are hard enough. Let someone else have the job of being the in-touch-feel-your-pain-empathy-exhibitor.
Most of FinTwit isn’t any more in touch with poor Americans than anyone’s else. To the extent any of them are “poor”, it’s usually the kind of “poor” experienced by well-educated finance-y people who are just starting their lucrative careers, between lucrative positions, or not good enough to have a lucrative gig. You know, like “broke MBA student poor”.
What I dislike about “Finance Twitter” is the extent to which everyone purports to be Libertarians, despite the vast majority seeming to be totally bereft when it comes to naming even one thinker from the Libertarian tradition. Many of them seem genuinely oblivious to the rich intellectual history and the copious number of classic treatises that form the basis of Libertarian thought. They seem to think that re-posting clips of Rand Paul questioning congressional witnesses and sharing articles from conspiracy theory web portals makes them Libertarians. As someone who was obsessed with early Libertarian political treatises when I was a young man, the haphazard hijacking of political philosophy by thousands of uninformed, irritable day traders, bloggers, fund managers and VCs ranging from the totally insignificant to some of the biggest names in the business, is highly distressing. They inadvertently insult a tradition that includes some of the best minds in modern human history. It’s too much for me. I highly doubt that some of the most famous historical Libertarians would recognize what’s being promoted under their banner today, and I think most would disavow it completely.
They saw an Ayn Rand book once, so they are experts about Libertarianism.
I prune my FinTwit feed pretty aggressively, to keep the S-to-N sort of ok.
H- this post offers a great little insight into the “pandora’s box” that is opened when someone uses the word ‘libertarian’ to describe their politics and philosophy. And I definitely chuckled when reading your words, “it is too much for me”.
We can (pretty much) all agree that we positively identify with the Latin word, libertas, but after that- when someone tells me they are libertarian- much more information is needed for me to understand what they actually mean by that. Are they identifying with some of the classical thinkers, Austrian school (Mises), modern day right leaning or modern day left leaning….? What are their specific beliefs on personal property rights and capital?
My observation is that people like to use that word to describe themselves in order to justify not wanting to follow any rules that do not result in a direct benefit to them, personally.
I stopped using that word to describe my political and philosophical beliefs when talking with people I do not know very well because no one ever asked me what I actually meant by that.
Having said that – I am definitely a libertarian!
Can you imagine what Hayek would have to say about today’s geopolitical landscape? He’d take one look and get on the first plane to Switzerland.
There are no one word descriptions of group membership that mean anything consistent in this day and age (maybe in any day and age). Every word that starts to trend becomes co-opted by thousands and coincidentally loses all meaning. We end up chasing ghosts and are left running in place.
Well, there is the batshitcrazy group that continues to insist that the only thing that happened on January 6, 2021 was a peaceful protest and failure to reelect tRump will doom the Union.
The thing about using labels to describe oneself or others seems handy and time-saving but it’s not since most people who attach a label to themselves have to explain it to others who never seem to know what it actually means. My late boss hated labels and discussions of labels. He would get very impatient and say something like: “Who cares what you call (something something), call it Fred and lets get on with it. Me, I’m a “Fred” because I don’t know the definitions of Progressives, Liberals, neo-anythings, Libertarians, Conservatives, whatever.
Thank you for your point on empathy (the impossibility of). Cannot be emphasized enough, yet no one emphasizes it.