Wall Street Journal (April 21)
“If the White House wanted a test of how firing Jerome Powell would go over in the markets, it succeeded on Monday. U.S. stocks and the dollar plunged while yields on long-term Treasurys climbed after President Trump renewed his attacks on the Federal Reserve Chairman.” The President “thinks he can bully everyone into submission, but he can’t bully Adam Smith, who deals in reality. Markets know tariffs are taxes, and taxes are anti-growth.” It is clear that the “Trump tariffs are the biggest economic policy mistake in decades.” What remains unclear is the President’s ability to see reality. “Markets are spooked because they don’t know if Mr. Trump listens to anyone but his own impulses.”
Tags: Adam Smith, Anti-growth, Attacks, Bully, Dollar, Fed, Firing, Markets, Mistake, Plunged, Powell, Reality, Spooked, Stocks, Submission, Tariffs, Taxes, Treasurys, Trump, U.S., White House, Yields
Institutional Investor (February 10)
“The reality is that DeepSeek’s January 2025 release should not have caught anybody off guard. DeepSeek has been transparent about its research and ambitions in AI development, publishing its research in a series of more than 10 papers on arVix and GitHub prior to the January paper,” not to mention disclosure elsewhere. “Despite DeepSeek being an open secret to many, the release of its R1 models, did blindside U.S. tech Illuminati and market whizzes.” Much of this is due to the “dangerous assumption” that U.S. technological dominance is assured because of “an insurmountable lead in frontier AI technologies.”
Tags: AI development, Ambitions, arVix, Blindside, Dangerous assumption, DeepSeek, Dominance, GitHub, Insurmountable, Open secret, R1 models, Reality, Release, Research, Tech Illuminati, Transparent, U.S.
Washington Post (May 28)
“Nearly everything Americans believe about the economy is wrong.” A recent poll revealed that dire “perceptions of the U.S. economy are often at odds with reality.” In fact, “the U.S. economy has been growing consistently for nearly two years, even after accounting for inflation” and is “exceeding growth expectations” across most benchmarks. “The U.S. economy has been outperforming other advanced economies. We’re also doing better than pre-pandemic forecasts had situated us by now, both in terms of gross domestic product and the number of jobs out there. This generally isn’t true elsewhere in the world.”
Tags: Benchmarks, Economy, Expectations, GDP, Growing, Inflation, Outperforming, Perceptions, Poll, Pre-pandemic, Reality, U.S., Wrong
The Economist (March 6)
“So far the signals” from China’s annual meeting of the National People’s Congress “are not reassuring. They suggest that China lacks a robust plan to deal with its economic slump and that some of its targets are drifting from reality. Power is concentrating even further in the hands of President Xi Jinping.”
Tags: Annual meeting, China, Concentrating, Economic slump, Lacks, National People's Congress, Power, Reality, Reassuring, Robust plan, Signals, Targets, Xi
Washington Post (March 9)
European leaders may “attest to a continent fully awakened to the reality of the war. But the truth is that Europe has not taken its defense seriously before now, and it cannot be strategically ‘autonomous’ until it does.” Home to 450 million people with a $17 trillion GDP, defense spending in excess of $200 billion annually, the EU needs to get its act together. “A strong, autonomous Europe benefits the United States as much as it does Europe itself: Partners working in tandem present a more formidable front against any military threat.”
Tags: $17 trillion, Autonomous, Awakened, Defense, Europe, GDP, Leaders, Partners, Reality, Spending, Strategic, U.S., War
Washington Post (January 19)
“The nation is in the midst of one of the biggest workforce shifts in generations.” Many prefer working at home or at least “want a ‘hybrid’ situation of working two or three days remotely. Cities must adapt to this new reality or risk a downward spiral of falling commercial property values, lower taxes on those buildings and ghost downtowns that could lead to increased crime and homelessness.”
Tags: Adapt, Buildings, Cities, Commercial property values, Crime, Downward spiral, Home, Homelessness, Hybrid, Lower taxes, Reality, Remotely, Risk, Shifts, Workforce
Motley Fool (July 2)
“During the first six months of 2022, the S&P 500 dropped 20.6%, marking its worst first-half performance since 1970” while “the Dow had its largest first-half drop since 1962” and “the Nasdaq… had its largest percentage drop in its history.” This has left “a lot of investors worried, and understandably so. But while things might seem bleak right now, the reality is that investors really shouldn’t panic.”
Tags: 1962, 1970, 2022, Bleak, Dow, Drop, First-half, Investors, Nasdaq, Performance, Reality, S&P 500, Worried, Worst
Tampa Bay Times (September 7)
“For weeks, the virus preyed on America’s illusion of a defanged Covid. Most people returned to a semblance of their former lives.” Then, harsh reality set in. “The fast-spreading Delta variant has flooded hospitals across the South. It’s killed more people in Florida and Louisiana than the darkest days of the pandemic winter, and left so many COVID-19 patients gasping for breath that some places face shortages of medical oxygen.”
Tags: COVID-19, Defanged, Delta, Fast-spreading, Florida, Gasping, Hospitals, Illusion, Louisiana, Oxygen, Pandemic, Patients, Reality, Shortages, Virus
The Economist (September 4)
“By the age of seven months, most children have learned that objects still exist even when they are out of sight.” Understanding object permanence “is a normal developmental milestone, as well as a basic tenet of reality. It is also something that self-driving cars do not have. And that is a problem.” Though autonomous vehicles “are getting better,” they still are unable to “understand the world in the way that a human being does. For a self-driving car, a bicycle that is momentarily hidden by a passing van is a bicycle that has ceased to exist.”
Tags: Autonomous vehicles, Bicycle, Children, Developmental milestone, Hidden, Human, Object permanence, Reality, Self-driving cars, Seven months
Chicago Tribune (January 20)
In January 2020, “the U.S. recorded its first confirmed case of COVID-19.” President Trump “insisted, his administration had the virus ‘totally under control.’” Instead, “after a year of presidential denials of reality and responsibility, the pandemic’s U.S. death toll has eclipsed 400,000. And the loss of lives is accelerating.”
Tags: Administration, Confirmed, COVID-19, Death toll, Denials, Pandemic, Reality, Responsibility, Trump, U.S., Virus
