Month: November 2024

Remember that Chinese bulk carrier suspected of cutting a couple of internet cables in the Baltic Sea? Apparently it's now a pretty open-and-shut case:

Investigators have established that the ship dropped anchor but remained under way in Swedish waters on Nov. 17 at around 9 p.m. local time. The dragging anchor cut the first cable between Sweden and Lithuania shortly afterward, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

During that time, the ship’s transponder, which charts its movements on the so-called Automatic Identification System, shut down in what is known as a “dark incident” in marine traffic jargon. The ship then continued even as the dragging anchor greatly reduced its speed, according to satellite and other data reviewed by investigators.

Investigators say that at around 3 a.m. the following day, having traveled about 111 miles, the Yi Peng 3 cut the second cable between Germany and Finland. Shortly afterward, the ship started zigzagging, raised anchor and continued. Danish Navy ships then set out to pursue and intercept the Yi Peng 3, ultimately forcing it to anchor in the Kattegat Strait, which connects the Baltic and the North seas.

The current belief is that China had nothing to with this. It was a rogue captain who was bribed by the Russians to do it. Oddly, although the ship's owner is "cooperating," the captain of the ship hasn't been questioned. Ditto for a Russian sailor onboard.

Oh, and this is the second time this has happened recently:

In October last year, a Chinese-registered vessel called Newnew Polar Bear cut the Balticconnector gas pipeline and a telecommunication cable connecting Finland and Estonia with its anchor, according to people familiar with the investigation into the case. Some officials briefed on the investigation said Russian sailors were aboard the Chinese ship at the time of that incident.

Newnew Polar Bear was allowed to proceed toward Arctic Russia because authorities in Sweden, Denmark and Norway didn’t want to halt the ship without sound legal backing, according to officials.

Sound legal backing or no, the Scandinavians have apparently had enough: "The Chinese bulk carrier is now guarded by a small flotilla of North Atlantic Treaty Organization ships belonging to Denmark, Germany and Sweden."

Both the headline and core rates of PCE inflation were up last month:

On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE was up 2.3% and core PCE was up 2.8%. Both are higher than they were in September. Sadly, this is the kind of news likely to convince the Fed that "the fight against inflation isn't over," and therefore they should hold off on further interest rate cuts.

Just for the record, I want to remind everybody what Donald Trump said about the new USMCA trade deal with Canada and Mexico back when he signed it:

We have negotiated this new agreement based on the principle of fairness and reciprocity.... This is a terrific deal for all of us....This new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country.... With this agreement, we are closing all of these terrible loopholes. They’re closed. They’re gone. They were a disaster.... We are requiring a large portion of every car to be made by high-wage workers, which will greatly reduce foreign outsourcing.... This deal will also impose new standards requiring at least 75 percent of every automobile to be made in North America.... This landmark agreement will send cash and jobs pouring into the United States.... We formed a great partnership with Mexico and with Canada.... It’s a fair deal for everybody.

Huh. I guess he no longer feels quite the same way.

Here's the latest update on the number of EV chargers that have been built using funds from the bipartisan Infrastructure Act:

There have now been 126 chargers built using NEVI funding. The first chargers built using CFI funding also went up last quarter, including a mega-station in Washington state, for a total of 210 chargers, triple the 69 that were finished by last quarter.

At the current rate, we'll have more than a thousand charging ports built by the first quarter of next year. The ultimate plan is to build 500,000 charging ports across 100,000 stations by 2030.

Mexico says they'll retaliate if Donald Trump levies a 25% tariff on everything we buy from them. But retaliate how? What do they buy from us?

In fact, they buy about $300 billion worth of goods from us every year. Here are the US industries that would be hurt the most if Mexico levied broad retaliatory tariffs on us:

If you work in one of these industries, you should probably be a little wary of Trump's tariff threats.

A reader has suggested that fare evasion is a good measure of the low-level disorder I wrote about yesterday. Maybe! And in New York City it's way up:

I'm of three minds on this. On the one hand, it's obviously a symptom of low-level lawbreaking, and it's not really pandemic related. Fare evasion did spike during the pandemic, but then it returned to precisely the trendline it was on beforehand. If the pandemic had never happened, fare evasion would probably still be way up.

On the other hand, fare evasion isn't really a sign of disorder. It doesn't hurt anyone, after all. It doesn't even directly annoy anyone or make the subway less safe.

On the third hand, the increase in fare evasion matches perfectly with the 2018 announcement by the city's DA that he would no longer prosecute fare evaders. This was not for woke reasons (poor people can't afford to pay, etc.), it was because it wasn't cost effective. Nonetheless it's an example of encouraging minor lawbreaking by simply giving up on enforcement.

The increase in fare evasion also (kinda) matches up with an increase in social media meme videos about how to evade fares. But I'm not sure if this confirms or contradicts the notion that fare evasion is a symptom of rising disorder.

So I'm afraid I don't have any strong conclusions to draw about this. I just thought I'd toss it out for everyone to gnaw on.

A few weeks ago I showed you a pair of pictures of the rose window at the Votivkirche in Vienna. Here's the church itself, spectacularly lit up at night.

Tyler Cowen points me to this today:

23.4 million government employees! That's some context. But here's some better context:

Kalshi's number includes state and local workers, most of them teachers. The number of federal workers, which is all Musk cares about, comes to 3 million. Just a slight difference.

In any case, the 60,000 bet is a big change from yesterday, when eager Musk groupies were offering to take bets on 100,000 workers getting fired—and an even bigger change from last week, when it was at 160,000. Apparently the saner bits of the betting market have re-tethered them to reality.

But the whole thing is even weirder than it sounds. The bet in this case is how many federal workers will be gone by January 2026 even though Musk isn't scheduled to make recommendations until July 2026. And just for reference, direct federal employment grew by 70,000 during Trump's first term.

Semafor reports that the Chinese government is unhappy with their investment in Twitter:

State outlets, which put considerable resources into amassing millions of followers on Elon Musk’s social media platform — including by buying ads, deploying bots, and hiring influencers — have recently seen their growth plateau.

The growing popularity of Bluesky, which has a largely liberal base and harder-to-manipulate algorithm, has sparked “worried chatter within Chinese state media circles,” a former Xinhua and China Daily employee wrote in his newsletter.

Huh. I wonder if Elon is aware of this? But even if he is, I imagine his giant Tesla factory in Shanghai keeps him keenly aware of the need to accommodate the needs of the Chinese state.

Average home prices were up last month, and suddenly nobody wants one anymore:

That's a drop of 128,000 homes from the previous month. It's the fifth biggest decline in history.