The Shrinking Presidency

Related to an earlier post, I have seen many articles over the past few months or so about how Biden’s presidency is failing, or how Biden’s approval ratings are falling, or how no one is listening to him–‘the shrinking presidency’. As I observed earlier, Biden’s presidency is much more of the Western-European tradition than American,… Continue reading The Shrinking Presidency

Declining Fertility Rates: What is to Blame

Declining fertility rates among developed countries has been a subject of intense debate online for years. The debate generally falls into one of two camps: that the decline, particularly in the U.S., is due to political/economic factors, or due to individual social factors. My money is strongly on the latter, that Americans are choosing to… Continue reading Declining Fertility Rates: What is to Blame

The Daily View 12/5/2021

It looks like Mr. Butthead has devised a new way for his clients to lose money: This morning we launched the first ever crypto index separately managed account (SMA) strategy. It’s currently only available for Ritholtz Wealth Management clients but that will change in Q1. You can add yourself to the wait list here and… Continue reading The Daily View 12/5/2021

The Myth of White Collar Leniency

I saw this article going viral a few days ago: The Manafort case is a reminder that we invest too little in catching white-collar criminals He writes: The extent to which Manafort’s prison sentence seems light compared to the harsh justice the United States routinely hands down to drug offenders and violent criminals was immediately… Continue reading The Myth of White Collar Leniency

The Persistence of the Black-White Academic Achievement Gap

Another interesting Freddie Deboer article Racial Disparities in the SATs Are Exactly What Antiracists Should Predict …You let them in despite worse academic preparedness than their peers; if you don’t address that lack of preparedness in a systematic fashion you’re setting them up to fail. But remediation is expensive for institutions and potentially for students… Continue reading The Persistence of the Black-White Academic Achievement Gap

Freddie Deboer on Writing

Freddie discusses how being weird and divisive is necessary for being successful as a writer: Because being divisive is good for business. You have to be weird. I’m making more money than I ever thought I would in my life because what I write is not easily found elsewhere. Niche tastes can still be popular… Continue reading Freddie Deboer on Writing

The Return of Covid….again

Looks like another Covid variant has been invented. Got to keep those drug company profits up now that Delta is fading from relevance. Time to shut everything down again, cuz people may die. At this point it’s hard to take any of these ‘health experts’ seriously after they promised the the vaccines would stop Covid,… Continue reading The Return of Covid….again

The Biden Freefall

Ny Mag explains why Biden’s approval ratings are falling. The so-called ‘honeymoon period’ ended in June, just as Biden’s approval ratings had peaked at 53%, according to 538. The recent decline is consistent with past presidents, the only exception being George Bush, who only served a single term, so it’s not like it’s that accurate… Continue reading The Biden Freefall