Month: January 2024

If you haven't been keeping up with all things internet you might not have heard about Bronze Age Pervert, an inexplicably popular writer on the right whose real name is Costin Alamariu. The briefest nutshell description I can think of is that he's the latest iteration of Jordan Peterson, the momentarily popular anti-woke Canadian professor who bemoaned the decline of manly virtues.

Over at National Review, Jack Butler writes a long takedown of BAP and recommends to us an even longer one. But why bother? Here is part of Butler's piece:

I do not dismiss out of hand certain of the complaints about modernity that he has lodged. That modernity disdains the authentic expression of manly virtue, for example, is impossible to dispute.

But to leverage warranted complaint into advancing a worldview that... proposes the rebreeding of “the original Aryan race, or as close an approximation as possible, through some kind of a Platonic Lebensborn program”; and imagines a future in which his followers, whom he describes as “superior specimens” in need of “space,” “wipe away” our “corrupt civilization,” and unleash their vengeance upon the “lower types of mankind,” or “humancockroach,” who have repressed them — this accomplishes nothing.

"This accomplishes nothing." Regardless of what you think about modernity and manly virtues, doesn't that seem a bit performatively restrained? Surely the manly thing would be to call Alamariu a disgusting racist bigot and be done with him. Why is that so hard on the right?

POSTSCRIPT: As for modernity "disdaining" manly virtues, I assure you it is possible to dispute. I feel like I'm on safe ground when I say that none of these complainers would last a week in ancient Sparta or the Rome of Augustus.

Back in 2021, as the Department of Justice was looking around for the best way to prosecute the January 6 insurrectionists, one of the tools they landed on was charging the rioters with "obstructing an official proceeding." A guy named Joseph Fischer was convicted on this basis but appealed on the grounds that the law prevented only the destruction of documents, not physical violence in the Capitol.

Fischer lost his case, but the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal. However, it's a little hard to make out what Fischer's case is. The definition of obstruction comes from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which states:

(c) Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

How much clearer can you get? The law specifically mentions destruction of documents and then explicitly adds that it also includes any other attempt to obstruct official proceedings. This is about as broad a definition as you can get.

This isn't a big deal except for one thing: It's part of the federal case against Donald Trump for the activities of January 6. If the Supreme Court upholds Fischer's appeal then two of the four counts against Trump would get thrown out.

It seems like a long shot to me, but what do I know? Trump has a lot of friends on the Supreme Court these days.

Over the past few years California's population has stabilized and then begun to drop slightly. But that isn't necessarily bad for California:

In 2022, almost two-thirds of those who moved to California from another state had a bachelor’s degree or higher, as did more than half who moved from other countries, according to census data.

Though the state’s population declined between 2021 and 2022, the number of people with a bachelor’s degree rose by 1.6% and the number of those with a graduate degree rose 2.6%, the data show.

The reason for this is pretty obvious. First, California has a lot of high-tech industry. Second, the thing keeping people away is high housing prices, and college grads are most likely to have the incomes needed to live here.

California is expensive, and tax rates are high for the affluent. Still, if you want a Malibu beach house, you don't have a choice of where to live. California has you by the short hairs.

Problems in the Red Sea began around early December and picked up steam in the middle of the month. So shipping stocks must have taken a beating, right? Nope:

Exchange Traded Funds are sort of like mutual funds for a particular industry: they represent the performance of a basket of related stocks. In this case, the four biggest shipping ETFs all show the same thing: strong performance ever since the Houthi attacks began. Middle East Eye explains:

ZIM's share price is up a whopping 50 percent since attacks against vessels in the Red Sea intensified last month.... Shares of Maersk, the Danish shipping giant operating more than 700 vessels, are up about 20 percent in the last month, while German company Hapag-Lloyd — the world’s fifth-largest container shipping group — is up 17 percent.

....Vessels that avoid the waterway and ply trade between the east and west have to take the more circuitous route around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.... "For them, this is going to deliver increased profitability that they didn't expect to have,” Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a senior shipping analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, told Middle East Eye. "The longer they have to divert, the higher their freight rates. They are definitely winners."

....Companies pass those costs on to consumers, sneaking in extra profit along the way, Sand says. The price to ship a container from China to the Mediterranean has already surged 44 percent this month to $2,413, according to freight booking and payments platform, Freightos.

In a nutshell, it costs more to avoid the Suez Canal and instead sail around the Cape but shipping companies are raising rates even more. They love the Houthis.

Go figure.

Bob Somerby has been watching a lot of Fox News lately:

We've been surprised by one persistent talking-point as we've come to watch more and more of the nation's red tribe "cable news:"

We've been surprised by the persistence with which red tribe stars pound away at electric vehicles.

Funny thing: I've been meaning to mention that too. Over at National Review they gleefully highlight anything that can be plausibly considered a knock on electric cars. Every malfunction, every missed sales target, every consumer complaint, every goal to increase EV adoption. Hardly a day goes by without some kind of slam on electric cars.

Why? If you don't want an electric car, don't get one. I'm A-OK with that. But what's the point of bad mouthing those who do want one?

Now, I'm not an idiot. I know the answer perfectly well: EVs are favored by those who want to do something about climate change, and anything associated with climate change has to be relentlessly attacked. Solar power. Wind farms. LED light bulbs. Efficient houses. You name it.

It's all ridiculous. Even if you think climate change is a big hoax electrification is still good. "Clean" doesn't apply only to CO₂, after all. Getting rid of smog and fine particulates is a big win all by itself.

But no matter. Anything that can be interpreted as caring about climate change has to be fought desperately. In no way can climate change ever be acknowledged as a problem, since that would imply the government doing something about it. And that can't be tolerated.

Back when I was a tiny tot—let's say around 1990 or so—I learned that the Federal Reserve controlled monetary policy via open market operations that influenced short-term interest rates (the "fed funds rate"). High rates slowed the economy and low rates gave the economy a boost. The Fed pushed the fed funds rate up and down by buying and selling Treasury bonds on the open market.

Today, Peter Coy comes along to tell me I'm way out of date. The Fed no longer relies on open market operations to influence interest rates. Instead, it just changes the rate it pays banks on their reserves. If, say, the Fed is paying 5.25%, then short-term bank rates will automatically increase to 5.25%. After all, if a bank can get that much just by letting its money sit safely at the Fed, why would it ever loan out money for less? Here's a chart that shows how both rates change in tandem:

In March 2022, the Fed started to raise the interest rate on reserves and the fed funds rate followed right along.

Coy wants to know why it's taken so long for textbooks—and all the rest of us—to get the message that things have changed. I may have the answer. For starters, here's what you see on the Fed's Monetary Policy home page:

You'll notice that "Open Market Operations" is still at the top and "Interest on Reserve Balances" is #4. If you click on these, open market operations are described as a "key tool" while interest on reserves is described as an "important tool." This doesn't exactly drive home the point that open market operations are dead.

There's also the Fed's Open Market Report, which says things like this:

The Federal Reserve implements monetary policy in a framework that includes a target range for the federal funds rate to communicate the FOMC’s policy stance, a set of administered rates set by the Federal Reserve, and market operations directed by the FOMC.

It's true that "administered rates" comes before "market operations" in this paragraph, but again, it's hardly a clarion call about open market operations being dead. There's also this:

This is the Fed's balance sheet. As you can see, it went up considerably at the start of the pandemic in order to keep monetary policy loose, and then started to decline precisely in March 2022, when the Fed wanted higher interest rates. That's "quantitative tightening," which is a form of open market operation targeted at longer-term interest rates. So open market operations have changed, but aren't really dead.

Finally, there's the question of what the Fed would do if the economy went sour. No bank will loan money for less than the interest rate on reserves, so the Fed can always force interest rates up. But what if they want to force interest rates down? Even if they reduce the reserve rate to zero, there's no way they can guarantee that banks will follow suit. It still might make sense for them to keep their rates higher than the Fed wants. If that happens, then hello open market operations! They'll be back.

Now, it's true that in 2019 the Fed said this:

The Committee intends to continue to implement monetary policy in a regime in which an ample supply of reserves ensures that control over the level of the federal funds rate and other short-term interest rates is exercised primarily through the setting of the Federal Reserve's administered rates, and in which active management of the supply of reserves is not required.

That's clear enough, and Coy is right that this is the company line for now. All I'm saying is that the Fed hasn't exactly shouted this from the rooftops. It's hardly any wonder that so many of us—even textbook writers!—have been a little slow to update our brains.

POSTSCRIPT: I feel like I have to add something here. If controlling the fed funds rate is as easy as changing the interest rate on reserves and then pressing Enter, why did the Fed ever do it differently? Open market operations are a helluva lot more complicated and labor intensive.

This is the dome above the main altar at the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Paris. Whenever I see it in thumbnail mode it reminds me less of Jesus and more of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Now that I've finally posted it, however, I'll never see it in thumbnail mode again.

In the latest CBS/YouGov poll, Republicans were asked: If Trump wins, do you want him to take revenge against his enemies? No shilly shallying, no euphemisms. Do you want him to take revenge? Nearly half said yes:

On the other hand, a mere 24% of Republicans want Trump to shut down media that's critical of him. I guess we can put that in the "count your blessings" file. Another question drilled down to Republicans' most primal fear: will Joe Biden sell out white people? An astonishing 61% said yes:

White fear of Black advances has overwhelmed the conservative movement. It's recently become distressingly common on the right to blame any sort of inefficiency or problem on "DEI hires" or a "diversity workforce." This didn't come out of nowhere. It came from Republican leaders complaining about DEI in corporations, affirmative action in universities, and wokeness sapping the strength of the US military. Claudine Gay was a diversity hire who never deserved to be president of Harvard. Trans-tolerant policies are ruining military preparedness. Airport delays are due not to the weather, but to a diverse—i.e., too Black—workforce.

Racial progress in America has never been steady. White backlash lurks around every corner, and we're going through a phase of that now. But it's certainly dispiriting that this time around it's being led so explicitly from above.

Gaza is getting worse:

Famine is looming in Gaza, the United Nations warns. The World Food Program estimates that 93 percent of the population faces crisis levels of hunger. Disease is spreading rapidly. The World Health Organization predicts that the death toll from sickness and starvation in coming months could eclipse the number of people killed in the war so far — more than 24,000, according to the latest count from the Gaza Health Ministry, with the majority women and children.

Aid agencies say the chief factors hampering the delivery of lifesaving assistance to Gazans fall almost entirely under Israel’s control — the Israeli inspection process for aid remains lengthy and inefficient; there aren’t enough trucks or fuel inside Gaza to distribute the aid; mechanisms to protect humanitarian workers are unreliable; and commercial goods have only just begun to trickle in.

At the risk of falling into the trap of thinking that America can do anything it wants, I can't help but wonder if we have to put up with this reprehensible conduct from Israel. What would happen if we helicoptered supplies out to the Bataan and thence to Gaza, Berlin airlift style? Or used aircraft to fly in supplies directly to one of Gaza's airstrips? Or, for that matter, broke the Israeli blockade and brought in aid via ship. Is Gaza Port big enough for that? In theory this is dangerous, but would Israel really do anything if we told them this was a humanitarian mission and we were coming in whether they liked it or not?

I'm obviously no military logistics boffin and this might be the dumbest idea ever, regardless of whether Joe Biden would be willing to do it. But is it dumb to even ask the question?

The accusations of genocide against Israel have mostly been ridiculous, but they won't be if we start digging mass graves in Gaza populated by victims of deliberate starvation and disease. This needs to stop.

That's not me saying it, it's Donald Trump saying it. Based on a discovery request filed Tuesday night, this is apparently going to be his defense in the classified documents case:

The court papers, filed in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., gave the clearest picture yet of the scorched earth legal strategy that Mr. Trump is apparently planning to use in fighting the classified documents indictment handed up over the summer.

....Mr. Trump’s filing appeared intended to paint Mr. Trump as the victim of the spy agencies that once served him and of purported collusion between the Biden administration and prosecutors who have filed some of the four criminal cases he now faces.

....In the filing on Tuesday night, Mr. Blanche and Mr. Kise asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case, to force Mr. Smith to give them any “documents and communications reflecting bias and/or political animus toward President Trump” by members of his own prosecution team.

Poor Donald, always a victim. What he's saying here is that he plans to turn the trial into a political circus, claiming that the charges were only brought in the first place because everyone has it out for him. If not for that, he would have gotten away with everything.

This isn't surprising. The evidence against Trump in the documents case is so overwhelming that he really has no choice except to change the subject. So sure, he took the documents. And then refused to give them back. And then defied a subpoena to give them back. And then colluded with his staff to hide them when the FBI searched his house. But it was only because.......I don't know, because he was fighting a righteous battle against corrupt apparatchiks on behalf of the American people?

Sure, that's the ticket.