Am I Destroying Capitalism?

 I was a relatively early investor in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which Annie Lowery in the Atlantic thinks may be dangerous to capitalism (along with index based mutual funds).

If I understand the concerns: in the good old days of individual stock ownership and actively managed mutual funds people, fund managers and investors, were actively concerned about the performance of companies. They bought and sold stock based on that information, resulting in a an efficient sharing of information related to performance  via financial markets.  But with ETFs and index funds dominating the scene these days, many fewer people are tracking performance and incentives for managers to perform are less.

It sounds okay to me.  Although I would point to Billy Hwang's financial distress to observe that financiers can be pretty stupid; they seem to be chasing returns through ingenuity rather than hard work.

Another aspect is the rise of global financial markets.  Back in the days of actively managed funds we had much less  in the way of global financial flows.  Over time I've diversified our investments away from Spdrs and QQQ (the early ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and the Russell index) to include several with foreign investments. While fewer people may be tracking GM  and Ford against each other, the competition between US car manufacturers and foreign manufacturers is being  tracked.

At any rate, I expect the current setup will outlast me; at least I hope so.

Side Effects of the Filibuster Rule

 One phenomena of recent times is the giant legislative bill.  That's true of the reconciliation bill passed annually, but also of others.  

I think what's going on is the filibuster.  It raises the difficulty of passing laws, so the laws which can and must pass get stuffed with measures. As long as someone, Congressional or lobbyist, has the ear of a person who's involved in the writing of the bill, there's a good chance to get your issue addressed.  That cuts out the back and forth we might expect from committee hearings, which can expose difficulties and at least gives the agency which has to administer the bill some additional background and understanding of what's going on.

Here's a related tweet.

Ezra Klein's Misinformation

 Ezra Klein was interviewed on WETA, the Amanpour program.  Briefly he was discussing California and asserted the state had the worst record in vaccinations.  According to the Bloomberg tracker, it's actually slightly above average. 

Update on Congressional Review Act

 I've posted before on the use of the Congressional Review Act to kill regulations. The last time I posted it seemed as if the administration was hesitant to use it, partly because of uncertainty over its effects down the road. CRA has a provision if Congress votes to kill a reg, the agency cannot do new regulations substantially the same without new legislation.

It now appears that maybe Democrats will try to apply it to six regulations. Because the Trump administration used their control of Congress to kill several regulations from the Obama administration, I also looking to see if any agencies try to revive them and test how much flexibility SCOTUS will allow in interpreting the act.

Herd Immunity and Peak Infections

 This was an interesting twitter thread--the gist is that herd immunity does not mean the apex of the curve of covid infections.  

This is an image from one of the tweets:

Why We're Prejudiced--We Love Our Kids

 That's my take-away from this research at the Post's Monkey Cage.

Parents seem to regard decisions that affect their children as the most important they make and to use "common sense" to decide, rather than rational values.   This, together with the existence of vicious cycles of feedback results in what looks like racism.

Worst April Fools Nightmare

 Saw a tweet about Joe Manchin switching parties--an April Fool joke.  That would be liberals' worst nightmare.

Centralize Data--Yes or No

 President Biden, through the press secretary, says no centralized database for vaccinations. 

The General Accounting Office says we need centralized data for the virus.

I can see Biden's thinking--the right has this paranoid fear of centralized databases and of vaccination passports, so why give them an opening to attack you in one of the areas in which you are strongest? 

But as a ex-bureaucrat and nerd I think GAO is likely right. 

Remembering or Failing To

 New Yorker has an article on memory, partially geared to the idea that forgetting is part of having a healthy memory. 

I think I have had a good memory, certainly one for facts, because I like to be the "know-it-all".  There's discussion in the article of people who remember lots of events in their lives (supposedly the average person can list only 10 events per year). If I dug and worked at it, I could perhaps get up to the 10 per year for my early years.  Many of my memories are detached from years, and have sort of melted into an amorphous mess.

For example, I remember one year of lots of snow, people who lived on some of the back roads were cut off for days. I think it was the first year, maybe the only year, when snowplows used snow blowers as well because they simply could shove the snow far enough off the back roads with high banks.  But I've no idea of when that was.

Recently my memory is getting faulty--perhaps just old age.  I'm starting to rely on Google Assistant to prompt me on things. Now the question:  will I forget how to use Google assistant?

Free Trade and Religion

 Noah Smith has a Substack thing, and in this post argues that experts, like public health people vis a vis masks and economists on free trade, have lied.  Masks do help and free trade hurts some people and some countries (when a multi-country trade agreement is implemented).

There's a lot of comments, too much for me to engage so I'll comment here.

Smith says, I think, that the lying is understandable but doesn't like it because it's elites deciding what's good to tell people. 

In some ways I'd argue that the economists' perspective is a Christian one--an expansion of the Golden Rule. The economists are saying that overall the benefits of free trade are greater than the losses.  The Golden Rule is usually stated as a one-on-one rule, but a reasonable expansion would be to say: act so that the world is a better place for its inhabitants, then free trade fits.