Grey Enlightenment

Imagine waking up to the trending hashtags on Twitter “#trumparrest”, #trumpindictment”, or “Indictment Day”. Your heart races or sinks…it must be related to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, Jan 6th, or something to do with Russia? Or taxes? You’re thinking “this is it…it’s happening!” You hurriedly click the hashtag on the sidebar only to see… Continue reading Right again about Trump (so far)

Earlier last week Reddit suffered a major outage, which motivated me to write this post. Reddit, like a lot of the internet, has followed a trajectory of decline over the past decade or so. It’s tempting to want to blame the admins or political bias, and although those play a role, the main problem are… Continue reading The Reddit Mods/Moderation is Out of Control

This is funny (or sad, I guess, if you actually take his advice). Balaji has lost the plot. He has gone into full-blown shill/grifter mode: The BitSignal How do you ring the fire alarm on the internet?How do you show it’s not a false alarm?I am putting up the BitSignal.$1M in BTC to alert us… Continue reading Balaji goes into full-blown shill/grifter mode

Greg Mankiw on the failure of SVB: I am not particularly concerned about the moral hazard associated with insuring all bank deposits (though the expansion of deposit insurance should be done explicitly, rather than through the implicit and ad hoc process now occurring). It is not realistic to expect bank depositors to monitor the health… Continue reading SVB , moral hazard, and risk, part 2

I saw this viral article by Arnold Kling, Moral Hazard is widely misunderstood. He argues that bailouts allow bankers to be reckless with impunity (heads they win, tails you lose, so to speak): At this point, if I obtain some more funds from depositors , I can go to Las Vegas and hope I get… Continue reading SVB failure: the limitations of moral hazard, and the difficulty of assessing risk

Tyler Cowen on crypto: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Crypto is a “luxury,” long-term financial intermediation project which may or may not succeed. It comoves with the market, stability, low interest rates, and long time horizons. It is not a potential substitute for fiat currency. He’s right: It’s not a substitute… Continue reading Crypto getting ready to dump, again

I saw this article going viral Why are young liberals so depressed? The CDC survey doesn’t ask teens about their political beliefs, but Gimbrone et. al. find not only divergence by gender, but divergence by political ideology. Breaking things down by gender and ideology, they find that liberal girls have the highest increase in depressive… Continue reading Depression and other societal problems are hardly exclusive to ‘the left’

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the ensuing contagion is the biggest story now. A few days ago I said this is worse than 2008. It seems I was right: 1. The suddenness of the 2023 crisis exceeds the 2008 global financial crisis. It hasn’t been a week, and already two major banks, Signature… Continue reading Silicon Valley Bank Failure , Contagion, and Aftermath: More Thoughts

The ‘iron law’ of bad advice keeps being true (more social media followers = worse advice): pic.twitter.com/tTMWOHcUom — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 11, 2023 So how has Bitcoin fared following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)? Down 10%. Not just Bitcoin that is tanking, so are many ‘stable coins’ like USDC, which have exposure… Continue reading Why the failure of SVB is possibly worse than 2008

Silvergate is the latest domino to fall, down 30% today after announcing a liquidation plan, on top of the 50% decline last week. And “Silicon Valley Bank” fell 70%. (Apparently Silicon Valley has its own bank…who knew.) The whole crypto economy is collapsing. There is nothing that isn’t either a fraud and or insolvent. I… Continue reading The crypto collapse, continued: is there anything that isn’t a fraud or insolvent?