Category Archives: Business

Trump’s Acceptance Speech

I haven’t read it yet, but putatively, this is it.

I should note that I’m living in an empty house in Florida, renovating it for sale, with no access to media, other than over-the-air radio, tethering off my phone for Internet, and leaving garage door open in 90+ weather to hear Sirius on the rental-car radio. I feel like I’m living in the late 20th century.

[Update a while later]

I’m very interested in what Thiel says. I’m listening on NPR.

Puerto Rico’s Crisis

Coming soon to a state near you?

The collapse of recklessly-managed state and local finances on the mainland will create a political crisis of far greater proportions than Puerto Rico’s struggles. Congress should heed Padilla’s advice and start pressuring states and localities to get back on track. It should also develop a framework for managing these meltdowns if and when they do occur (Will assistance be available? On what terms?) as they do occur, so as to avoid extended squabbling and gridlock when the rubber meets the road.

As I’ve noted in the past, a bailout of California should be done only on condition that it revert to territory status, and not be allowed to reenter the union as a single state.

Jimmy Carter And The Space Shuttle

Did he save it? And if so, why? An interesting bit of history of which I’d been unaware. Mondale wanted to kill it, and did manage to reduce the fleet size from seven to five (including Enterprise, which never flew). Which was economically stupid, because it saved very little money. If we’d had six vehicles, we’d have still had four after the losses of Challenger and Columbia (assuming that we hadn’t built Endeavour from spares after Challenger, and those two events would have occurred in that alternate universe). A four- or five-ship fleet would have made for a slightly different calculus after the loss of the latter, because part of the reason the program was ended was that three was too small a fleet to continue to operate for long.