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Years ago, my chairman became an NFT enthusiast. At one point, he assured me “I’m not joking.” I responded: “That’s what I’m afraid of.” NFTs are a manifestation of The Greater Fool Theory of Investing. Like disco and yacht rock, they had their day. But eventually, the fools are left holding the bag: “ Flash forward a year, and the vast majority of NFTs are now virtually worthless, according to a report by   dappGambl . An NFT of the first ever tweet – from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that read “just setting up my twittr” – that sold for £2.3 million in 2021, is now worth around   £1,200 . In August, it was reported that a group of collectors who had invested in Bored Ape NFTs were   filing a lawsuit   against the numerous celebrities (including Fallon, Hilton, Justin Bieber and the auction house Sotheby’s) who they believe had falsely marketed the artworks and intentionally inflated their price. ” Click the link to read about five NFT “investors” about what went ...

Just read that Rhode Island public radio and public broadcasting will have to downsize, but are far from out of business. That looks to be the case for many blue states and blue cities in red states. You know who will be hurt? Trump voters in rural parts of red states: “When Donald Trump directed Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), he and his allies pushed a  long time, right-wing  narrative about targeting liberal “bias” at NPR and PBS. Instead, the Republican  rollback of $1.1 billion in CPB funding  that had previously been approved by Congress is hurting vulnerable, rural-America communities in red states.    “On Monday, CPB  officially announced  it could no longer manage the Next Generation Warning System (NGWS), a federal grant program that helps public broadcasting stations provide alerts about severe weather. CPB administered the NGWS in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, another agency...

For decades, the American right has prophesized (a) the takeover of America by socialism/communism and (b) hyperinflation due to US debt. Neither has happened yet. America is a firmly as ever in the grip of plutocratic capitalist oligarchs, and while the GOP-fueled nation debt is skyrocketing, US treasuries are still selling. So will the pearl-clutching right ever be right? “In the United States, yields on 30-year Treasury bonds are nearing 5 percent, despite—or perhaps causing—the department’s shift to a shorter-term   financing strategy . As its options narrow, the Treasury is rolling over its borrowing more frequently to avoid paying rising rates on long-term debt. More worrisome, it is increasingly   relying   on primary dealers (mainly big banks) to refinance its debts, implying that other investors have less appetite for its securities.   “Indeed, since debt levels began to scrape all-time highs and inflation rates started to chip away at the value of currencie...

Since the secretary of HHS is a vaccine denialist who cannot be trusted, the  American Academy of Pediatrics  has this week published its own authoritative, comprehensive, science-based vaccine schedule for children and adolescents from birth to age 18.    The link provides:   - the schedule for routine immunizations from birth to 18 years of age;   - how to catch your child up with vaccines if they have lagged behind;   - under what conditions you may want to avoid or speed up vaccination for your children.  If you have kids or grandkids, you might want to print these out and bring them to their doctor's office. You also might want to have copies available for insurance purposes.    https://publications.aap.org/redbook/resources/15585/Immunization-Schedules?fbclid=IwY2xjawMRj0VleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFWRTZORmg5d3A3bnpySmQ3AR4J6cDM0XkevmD80t-05yrYDEFkgcgjDX9zSQJAiBkTZISsCZ-EYWOEbSBRJA_aem_gCytcYBJQhjPGDL_sm4xlw?autologincheck=redirected

A Cybertruck passed us this morning on the way back from the south shore of Rhode Island. My wife remarked that it looked like a rolling dumpster. I’ve certainly never understood the appeal. Apparently, my aesthetic is shared. “ Once one of the world's most-hyped vehicles, sales and production numbers for Tesla's Cybertruck have fallen sharply. In the second quarter of this year, the company sold just 4,306 Cybertrucks, a drop of more than 50% over the same period in 2024. “Now, Torque News reported, some insurance companies are using those numbers to cancel their coverage of the all-electric truck.” Apparently some Cybertruck owners said they received cancellation notices from Hanover Insurance but had success finding policies with other companies like Farmers Insurance. Maybe they can sell theirs before Farmers cuts them off, too. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-owners-gut-punched-receiving-004500233.html

Remember when Trump said he wouldn’t touch Medicare. According to the director of OMB, he lied. The giant deficit increase in Trump’s BBB will trigger automatic sequestration. “If OMB ordered a sequestration of $230 billion for each year through 2034, the ordered reductions in Medicare spending would increase to about $75 biollion in 2034 and would total roughly $490 billion over the 2027-2-34 period.” Hope none of you were planning to depend on your current Medicare coverage. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-05/61423-PAYGO.pdf

Years ago, I was invited to give a talk at Arizona State University in Tempe. My host told me to fly in early in the day, so he could take me walking in the desert. I’d never seen anything like it: mostly cactus and rocks. Seemed like Middle Earth. Since then, we’ve vacationed in Arizona and New Mexico several times, and I’ve always been impressed by the stark beauty of the desert southwest. But what is already dry looks to get even dryer. “The southwestern United States has been in   a historic megadrought   for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including   lakes Mead and Powell   dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over   rights to use water from the Colorado River . “This drought has been linked to the   Pacific Decadal Oscillation , a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a   dry spell of epic proportions . “The PDO was...

When my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, she was given a chemotherapy that had proven so effective at the time that they couldn’t predict how much longer it would extend her life since not enough people had died yet. Progress in the war on cancer in the last 20 years has been amazing. Innovations like CAR-T cells and mRNA vaccines are the culmination of years of painstaking research and are finally finding their way into clinics and patients. But in his petulant war on universities, Trump is calling a halt to this life-saving progress: “ THE NEWS CAME ON JULY 31, when the Trump administration informed UCLA it was  suspending  roughly 800 research grants that, together, are worth more than $500 million. The freeze has already disrupted operations, Shackelford told me, leaving him (and countless  other UCLA researchers ) scrambling to figure out how to stretch their budgets or quickly find outside funding.   “Shackelford said his team has had a series of recent...

32 economists associated with the University of Chicago at some point in their careers were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics .  With all that expertise, you’d assume that the University of Chicago would be a paragon of economic discipline. You’d be wrong. “T he University of Chicago is in crisis. Under extraordinary financial strain, it has diminished its faculty-student ratio and hired hundreds of “lecturers”: teachers whom it pays little and whom it does not expect to do research. It has deliberately driven down the percentage of undergraduate tuition that it devotes to actually teaching undergraduates. This summer it proposed to “merge” (read: “close”) departments; send some students online—or perhaps put them on buses—to study at other institutions; and teach some languages via ChatGPT. It is freezing budgets, closing academic units, slashing doctoral education, and con...

Exhibit A. The emperor grovels for the Nobel Prize (per The Guardian): “Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance minister last month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian press reported on Thursday.” Exhibit B. Bondi levies felony charges for a guy who threw a sandwich at a federal agent. So the law-and-order guys who are supposed to vanquish crime from the streets of DC can’t handle a Subway sandwich? Seriously? Doesn’t look like peace is coming to Ukraine any time soon.

Teslas are pretty popular here in Rhode Island. While that appears virtuous, it’s important to recall that 95% of Rhode Island electricity comes from natural gas, so those Teslas are running on fossil fuel. EVs are proliferating all over the planet: “ Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) –   Car News China   reports that in the first half of 2025, consumers in that country bought 10,891,000 passenger vehicles. But here’s the catch. They bought 5,458,000 EVs and 5,433,000 gasoline cars. Look carefully at those numbers. They bought   more   EVs than internal combustion engine cars. To be precise, 50.1% of new cars bought in China this year were battery electric or plug-in hybrid.” While China is also pursuing a green energy policy, 60% of electricity in China comes from coal. On the other hand, China has a more robust public transportation structure than the US, and is building that out rapidly. But China is also gaining in the EV export market. While Xi’s China is moving to a...

Kodak was ubiquitous when I was growing up. While I never owned a Kodak camera, I purchased miles of Kodak film, both color and black-and-white, as well as developing chemicals and printing paper. When Fujichrome first appeared, I tried it, but the pictures always turned out with a green-blue cast. Kodachrome and Ektachrome ruled. The company was prosperous back in the day. I had an uncle who worked at Eastman in Rochester NY, and Kingsport schools were some of the best in Tennessee because Eastman had a plant there. But now things look grim: “Kodak has debt coming due within 12 months and does not have committed financing or available liquidity to meet such debt obligations if they were to become due in accordance with their current terms,” the company wrote in a regulatory filing. “These conditions raise substantial doubt about Kodak's ability to continue as a going concern.” Eastman Kodak was unable to adapt to digital photography. Another American icon seems about to disappear....

Apparently, the guy who bankrupted casinos has called economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman a “deranged bum.” Trump is pissed at Krugman for criticizing Trump’s tariff policy and firing of the BLS person.  “Claiming that economic data you don’t like is fraud perpetrated by a deep state conspiracy has been standard practice on the right for a long time, going back to the ‘inflation truthers’ of the Obama years,” Krugman   wrote. ” Trump says somebody should sue Krugman and other Trump critics.  “ Trump didn’t specify exactly what about Krugman, an economist at the City University of New York, set him off, probably because there are plenty of   recent possibilities   to pick from.” If you’re going to attack a Nobel Laureate, you need arguments, not rage-tweeting. Trump thinks he’s a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Attacking others with epithets is not the path to the peace prize. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-rages-at-deranged-bum-nobel-laureate-...

It its quest to eliminate diversity in America, the Trump Administration is demanding admissions data from colleges and universities to hunt for evidence of discrimination against white kids and kids from red states. In fact, there’s a history of affirmative action for white kids in admissions that goes back a century: In the early 20th century, Harvard and other Ivy League schools saw an increase in the enrollment of Jewish immigrant students. To address these changing demographics, Harvard's President, Lawrence Lowell, proposed limiting the number of Jewish students. Harvard introduced policies like legacy preferences, favoring applicants with family connections to alumni in an attempt to limit Jewish enrollment and maintain a predominantly white, Protestant student body. The practice of using legacy admissions to restrict Jewish students spread to other Ivy League schools. We’ve been here before. If university admissions are blind to ethnicity and rely only on grades and test sc...

Trump fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer for allegedly manipulating statistics to make him look bad. In support of the firing, he pointed to what he said were exaggerated jobs numbers in the Biden administration that had to be revised downward by—wait for it—BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer! “How could downward revisions released   during   Biden’s presidency have been part of a plot to hurt Trump? And if this year’s revisions are suspect, why should we trust revisions from prior years, the most substantial of which were produced under McEntarfer’s leadership?     “The White House is trying to bend reality to fit President Trump’s preferences for economic data. Any economic data that is positive is true and the same report is fake when it produces results he doesn’t like,” Jessica Reidl, an economist with the conservative Manhattan Institute, told HuffPost. “There’s no rhyme or reason.” Looking for reason or logic from Trump is a fool’s errand. This is a guy wh...

Poor James Carville. He's lost his mojo. Just because I wish he was right doesn't erase his many recent errors. He's just another good ole boy, which isn't a flattering look IMO. Ignore him.   https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5441667-carville-apologizes-for-podcast/  

As my AB peeps know, I loves me some prophecy. As a consumer, not a producer. My wife and I play this little game. If I make a prediction, she grabs a post-it note and writes it down, then dates it and makes me sign it. She saves them and we review them periodically. The results confirm my long-held suspicion that my aptitude for prophecy is mixed. But having read Ken Rogoff’s book “Our dollar, your problem,” I’m emboldened to make the following prediction: Within the next five years, the US dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. My prediction, not his. Write it down. 

T he Fed has two jobs: (1) control inflation and (2) maximize employment. So how’s that going? “ That's a change in tone from last week, when most Fed policymakers voted to leave their influential interest rate unchanged for the fifth time this year. Fed officials had been content to wait and see how tariffs were moving through the economy, but the July jobs report raised concerns that the economy wasn’t as strong as previously thought.” The July jobs report? Is that the report that Trump called fake and fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer for?  If the jobs report is fake news, why not just “wait and see how tariffs [are} moving through the economy? Oh yeah. Because Trump. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-officials-signal-possible-interest-153809624.html 

The “health” that drives private sector health insurance is the health of the corporate bottom line. As understand it, the “advantage” of Medicare Advantage was supposed to be lower costs for better benefits that only the free market could promise. How’s that working out? “UnitedHealthcare said in its second quarter earnings call that it plans to drop Medicare Advantage plans that currently serve over 600,000 users, becoming the latest health insurer to announce a scaling back of this magnitude. “We are seeing higher-than-expected medical cost increases, particularly in outpatient care,” Tim Noel, UnitedHealthcare CEO, said on the earnings call. “The American health system’s long-standing cost problem is accelerating. “A  s enrollment in these plans, which are administered by private insurance companies, has ballooned, costs for providers have taken off. In response, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have been making cuts to some benefits and even increasing deductibles.” It turns out ...

In the past six months, the Trump Administration acting through Elon Musk’s DOGE, cut more than 10% of the staff at the National Weather Service. But it looks like TACO doesn’t just apply to tariffs: “The National Weather Service has   received permission to hire   450 meteorologists, hydrologists and radar technicians just months after being hit hard by   Department of Government Efficiency-related cuts  and early retirement incentives.   “The new hiring number   includes 126 new positions   that were previously approved and will apply to “front-line mission critical” personnel, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration official told CNN.” With hurricane season beginning, filling these positions is urgent.   How many of these positions will be filled by re-hiring the fired employees and how many will require expensive new training is unclear.  https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/05/weather/nws-rehiring-doge-layoffs-climate

mRNA vaccines proved transformational in the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, they’ve allowed a rapid pivot to attack new variants. They saved tens of millions of lives worldwide, and prevented long COVID in survivors.   “ Infectious disease experts say the mRNA technology used in vaccines is safe, and they credit its development during the first Trump administration with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Future pandemics, they warned, will be harder to stop without the help of mRNA.” So naturally HHS is investing in this transformational technology, right? “   The Department of Health and Human Services will cancel contracts and pull funding for some vaccines that are being developed to fight respiratory viruses like   COVID-19   and the   flu . “ Robert F. Kennedy Jr . announced in a statement Tuesday that 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines using mRNA technology will be halted.” WTF? How many people will suffer and die needlessly becaus...

“[Trump] called me last night,” Kennedy added. “He calls me three or four times a week and says, ‘Where are you? Why aren’t people healthier yet?’ So he’s keeping me under pressure.” LOL!  The obese president with circulatory pathology who is destroying biomedical research and cutting the Medicaid budget is calling the quack anti-vaxxer he appointed to dismantle the FDA, CDC and NIH to ask why people aren’t healthier yet? The very notion is so absurd it would make a dog laugh. Of course, RFK Jr is lying. The only health Trump cares about is his bank account. I’d ask what kind of fools does he take us for, but I know the answer: the credulous fools who watch Fox News. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rfk-jr-donald-trump-calls_n_6891be81e4b06ab338943c47

Trump slapped a 50% tariff on Brazilian coffee. Guess that will show them! “China has approved 183 new Brazilian coffee companies to export products to the Chinese market, according to a social media post of the Chinese embassy in Brazil on Saturday.   “The measure, a boon to local exporters after the United States government's announcement of steep tariffs on Brazilian coffee and other products, took effect on July 30.” There are way more people in China than in the US.  All these Trump tariffs do is make stuff more expensive for US consumers and drive former US trading partners into the arms of China.   https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-welcomes-183-brazil-coffee-sellers-wake-us-tariffs-2025-08-03/

Ever since November 2024, when Donald Trump took over all three branches of the federal government, there has been no shortage of navel-gazing pieces posing as political analysis of why Democrats are unable to get their voters to the polls.   One theme has been that the party is been chasing dollars, and to be successful, it has to look more like the successful GOP fund-raising machine. Given how unpopular Trump and his immigration and trade policies are—according to Nate Silver, his numbers are all under water—fund-raising for Democrats should be a snap. And yet so far, it’s been weak. Why? “The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to se...

The dollars are rolling in to the federal government coffers from tariffs. And Trump is claiming victory. “Indeed, Trump has routinely cited the tariff revenue as evidence that his trade approach, which has sowed uncertainty and begun to increase prices for consumers, is a win for the United States. Members of his administration have argued that the money from the tariffs would help plug the hole created by the broad tax cuts Congress passed last month, which are expected to cost the government at least $3.4 trillion. “The good news is that Tariffs are bringing Billions of Dollars into the USA!” Trump said on social media shortly after a weak jobs report showed signs of strain in the labor market.” But the Trump tariffs could prove addictive: “Over time, analysts expect that the tariffs, if left in place, could be worth more than $2 trillion in additional revenue over the next decade. Economists overwhelmingly hope that doesn’t happen and the United States abandons the new trade barrie...

Apparently former Harvard law professor and professional grandstander Alan Dershowitz was turned away from a pierogi stand at a farmers’ market because of his politics. Never one to miss a chance at press coverage, Dershowitz feigned outrage and had the desired effect:   “I said to the people who were approaching the tent where he was selling his pierogi, ‘do you really want to buy pierogi from a guy who won’t sell it to somebody based on his politics?’” Dershowitz said. “‘I think that would be wrong. You wouldn’t buy from somebody who didn’t sell to Black people, or gay people, or transgender people, or anything like that.’” Apparently, Professor Dershowitz believes people choose their race, sexual orientation and gender like they choose their politics. Good thing he’s retired. His former students should demand a tuition refund.   https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/01/metro/dershowtiz-pierogi-vineyard/

St. Ronnie quoted the Russian proverb   doveryai, no proveryai   (доверяй, но проверяй) meaning 'trust, but verify' in connection with a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Reagan was referring to the posture towards a political adversary. In principle, our government should be an ally, not an adversary. We ought to be able to trust our police, our physicians, our food inspectors, our FDA, the Federal Reserve, etc.  Trump just fired the commissioner of labor statistics. Why? Not for dereliction of duty. Look, everyone including Trump knows that firing the messenger doesn’t change facts. What it does is sow distrust. And that’s the goal. Distrust of our military allies in our defense commitments. Distrust in our trade allies of our trade policies. Distrust in drug, vaccine and food safety. Distrust in our election system. Distrust in our justice system. In short, the goal here is to make Americans doubt experts, institutions and neighbors, and leave Trump as the sol...

Trump isn’t a jobs creator—the jobs reports are down. So what does Trump do? He fires the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. How many jobs will shooting the messenger create? Meanwhile, his threatened tariffs have stocks headed down. Will he fire Wall Street? A fed governor steps down, making room for a Trump appointment and setting the stage for a Trump takeover of the Fed. When inflation spirals out of control because of Trump rate cuts, who will he fire? Meanwhile, Trump is being played by his counterparties in tariff negotiations: ““They’re playing Trump,” said C. Fred Bergsten, a renowned economist who served on the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and negotiations under both presidents Barack Obama and Trump. “They’re giving him a talking point that he can use to characterize his agreements as big deals with big pay offs, but there’s no ‘there’ there.”   “Contrary to accounts of Trump’s  “triumphant” performance  in trade negotiations, “America is a loser from all ...

My personal experience with opioids began in 2002. I was in a bike accident that landed me in the hospital with a broken clavicle, four fractured ribs, a punctured lung and a concussion. During my 3-day stay in the hospital, I was connected to an IV morphine line. I don’t remember much of that stay, other than I couldn’t keep any food down. I was sent home with a prescription for Percoset, which was about as bad. I finally settled on hydrocodone, which didn’t leave me nauseous but blunted the pain. I was on hydrocodone for a month. The only complications were constipation and loss of short-term memory. I had no problem stopping. I’ve always been grateful to my docs for the prescriptions. I see where the FDA is requiring new labeling for opioids: “ The agency is requiring opioid manufacturers to add to the prescribing information that higher doses are associated with increased risk of serious harm, and that the risks of serious harms persist over the course of therapy, among other chang...

Apparently, former Harvard law professor and professional grandstander Alan Dershowitz was turned away from a pierogi stand at a farmers’ market because of his politics. Never one to miss a chance at press coverage, Dershowitz feigned outrage and had the desired effect: “I said to the people who were approaching the tent where he was selling his pierogi, ‘do you really want to buy pierogi from a guy who won’t sell it to somebody based on his politics?’” Dershowitz said. “‘I think that would be wrong. You wouldn’t buy from somebody who didn’t sell to Black people, or gay people, or transgender people, or anything like that.’” Apparently, Professor Dershowitz believes people choose their race, sexual orientation and gender like they choose their politics. Good thing he’s retired. His former students should demand a tuition refund.   https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/01/metro/dershowtiz-pierogi-vineyard/

Speaking at a Breitbart event, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent crowed about the new “Trump Accounts” in which the parents or employer can contribute up to $5000/year.   The funds are to be structured like IRAs and must be invested in portfolios tied to U.S. stock indexes. Quoth Bessent: “In a way, it is a backdoor for privatizing Social Security,” Bessent said at the Breitbart event. “If, all of a sudden, these accounts grow and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, that’s a game-changer, too.”   First of all, if “all of a sudden” these accounts exploded to hundreds of thousand of dollars, that will be because of a sudden massive increase in inflation. Which means those hundreds of thousands of nominal dollars aren’t going to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars in goods and services in retirement. Either Bessent doesn’t understand how money works or—more likely—he’s selling snake oil. Secondly, where are tens of millions of American families t...