Sometimes the stock market can get in a "good news is bad news" cycle, where a stronger-than-expected jobs report like this morning's would cause traders to think that the Fed will raise interest rates in response, and the market will sink as a result.
Today's stock market reaction, at least as of this afternoon, was "good news is good news," where a strong jobs report leads to optimism about corporate earnings and future stock prices without a lot of fear that the Fed will overreact and ruin the rally.
"More than anything, we need to change the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. I know we have strong disagreements, but we need to stop seeing each other as enemies. We need to talk to one another, listen to one another, work with one another," President Biden said on October 4, 2023 in Washington.
As Biden himself would say, "come on, man." Biden himself has been running around the country depicting Republicans as a bunch of racist Nazi sympathizers who are putting democracy itself at risk. Here he is speaking at a campaign fundraiser at Tempe, Arizona on September 28:
Pope Francis is out with a new apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, with the subtitle "To all People of Good Will on the Climate Crisis."
It's ostensibly about climate change, but there's plenty of economics and politics embedded in it. For example, "Regrettably, the climate crisis is not exactly a matter that interests the great economic powers, whose concern is with the greatest profit possible at minimal cost and in the shortest amount of time."
And, "This situation has to do not only with physics or biology, but also with the economy and the way we conceive it. The mentality of maximum gain at minimal cost, disguised in terms of reasonableness, progress and illusory promises, makes impossible any sincere concern for our common home and any real preoccupation about assisting the poor and the needy discarded by our society."
The former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, at a September 14 appearance in Brooklyn, as reported by the Jewish Press: "Cuomo also criticized national Democrats for ignoring the problem of crime. 'We just closed our eyes to the crime problem and we paid for it... I'm afraid we're doing it again. I'm afraid we're doing it again with this migrant issue.... This is the migrant issue on top of the crime issue, on top of homelessness, on top of the other sanitary conditions in the city.' Cuomo said remote workers "don't have to be here anymore. They can move to another state with lower taxes."
From the press release announcing Melissa Gilliam as the new president of Boston University: "She credits Robert Zimmer, the president of the University of Chicago from 2006 to 2021, for being the mentor who suggested she consider pivoting from research and medicine into higher education leadership. Zimmer, who died in May, built a tight circle of future higher ed leaders, mentoring, promoting, and helping to launch the careers of the current presidents of Dartmouth, Caltech, Vanderbilt, Clark, and Colby College. And now Boston University."
That is quite a record. Zimmer—provost of Brown University from 2002 to 2006 and a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City and the Brandeis University class of 1968—was known for defending free speech on campus.
The Washington Post excerpt of Michael Lewis's latest, much-anticipated book on cryptocurrency figure Sam Bankman-Fried focuses on Bankman-Fried's professional relationship with his Taiwan-raised public relations person and scheduler, Natalie Tien. From the excerpt: "He'd occasionally surprise her with some kindness — for example, after he'd met privately with former president Bill Clinton and asked him what the United States might do if China invaded Taiwan. Whatever Clinton had told Sam had prompted him to seek her out afterward and suggest that she move her parents out of Taiwan."
Biden said in September 2022 that the U.S. would defend Taiwan, where a lot of the microchips our economy depends on are manufactured.
From the front of the business section of today's New York Times comes this summary of Amazon's rise:
Jeff Bezos made his fortune with one truly big idea: What if a retailer did everything possible to make customers happy?
His forcefully nurtured creation, Amazon, sold as many items as possible as cheaply as possible and delivered them as quickly as possible. The result is that $40 out of every $100 spent online in the United States goes to Amazon and Mr. Bezos is worth $150 billion.
Anyone who doesn't understand why Donald Trump is so far ahead in polls of Republican primary voters, or why he is running ahead of, or neck and neck with, Joe Biden in national polls, might consider taking the time to watch Trump's appearance last night in Clinton Township, Michigan.
I watched it this morning after staying up last night to watch the Republican presidential debate, which Trump skipped. The contrast is noteworthy. Trump is more confident, takes himself less seriously, has a better sense of humor, has a better command of the issues, and relates more warmly to a television audience than any of the other Republican candidates. Just in terms of sheer entertainment value, Trump is more fun to watch. He's a better politician.
My latest at the New York Sun: "The one-liners almost write themselves. At least the allegedly dishonest senator was smart enough to get the bribes in honest money. ....Maybe the Justice Department should leave the Mighty Menendez alone and indict the rest of the senators for theft in connection with the inflation that has eroded the value of the fiat currency with which the non-gold-bar-keeping public has been stuck." Please read the whole column over at the Sun: "Menendez Emerges in Court Filings as an Accused Crook Who Wanted To Be Paid in Honest Money."
A staff writer at the New Yorker, Lawrence Wright, recently did that somewhat-stale-at-this point question-and-answer interview that runs in the New York Times Book Review. The version of it that appears online is markedly different from the print version, which includes this passage (not published online):
Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?
...Journalists underestimate the power of religious belief. We spend so much time writing about politics, neglecting the fact that people can have very strong political views without it affecting their behavior at all, while strong religious views tend to dominate people's lives.
As a legal matter, the indictment unsealed today by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York against Senator Menendez and his wife strikes me as the usual prosecutorial overreach. To make a federal case out of what the indictment calls "compensation for a low-or-no-show job," during a pandemic in which half the country was working remotely or hybrid, is a stretch. No actual underlying crimes are charged, just three counts of "conspiracy" — "conspiracy to commit bribery," "conspiracy to commit honest services fraud," and "conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right." Congress should repeal these conspiracy statutes, which make a thought crime of supposedly planning a crime even when no crime is committed. The actual crimes are much harder to prove, because they require prosecutors to show that the politician did something that they wouldn't have done absent the bribe. In this case, Menendez could easily argue that, as a senator, he would have had an honest public interest in helping New Jersey businesses and in advancing a strong U.S.-Egypt foreign policy relationship. What his wife did for work is irrelevant. Unless Congress wants to outlaw paid work by congressional spouses, siblings, parents and children, some spouses will have jobs and friendships. The senator might claim he didn't know everything his wife was up to. It's a recurring story, in which everyone from Donald Trump to New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to, in the matter of "honest services fraud," my fellow New York Sun columnist Conrad Black has been unjustly swept up.
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