Thoughts from the Frontline

“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'”

The ability to choose our goods and services is fundamental to economics. The freer we are to make choices, the more the economy should prosper. That’s because our choices tell producers what works.

We are in the time of year when Americans pack transatlantic airliners for their European vacations. I had actually hoped to be one of them. That didn’t work out but we can still talk about events in Europe. And we probably should, because potentially major changes are happening.

I am writing this letter on the afternoon of July 4th, so it is natural to think about our government and independence. I want to comment on the Chevron case which is blowing up my X (Twitter) feed as well as my news feeds, both for and against. It is both less and more than many of the quick reactions. I would like to interject a little calmness, as not a great deal will immediately change, but it will change our experiment with self-government.

The giant federal debt we’ve been talking about isn’t just borrowed money. It is also lent money. Loans are two-party transactions. One side receives temporary use of cash which it agrees to repay with interest. The other gives up the current use of that cash in exchange for receiving interest. Ideally, it works out for both… but not always.

The old saw about doing the same thing and expecting a different result is less simple than it seems. Sometimes you need a few attempts to get it right.

You know I’m highly concerned about government debt in the developed world, particularly the US. I’ve said for years a crisis is coming. We’ve blown right past all our chances to avoid it. Now all we can do is imagine what the crisis will look like… and how much it will hurt.

I’m writing you from Cape Town, South Africa, where I’ve been warmly welcomed and reminded how much I enjoy international travel (well, except for jet lag!). Our world has so many wonders most people never get to experience. Of course, “there’s no place like home,” but seeing other places makes me happy, too.

A quandary of writing a weekly letter is I notice myself saying the same things repeatedly. Something comes to mind as I write, I start to include it, and then I vaguely remember, “Wait, didn’t I say that last month/quarter/year?” I check and sure enough, it’s right there. Should I say it again?

When new inventions turn into market frenzies, the contrarian part of me wants to be skeptical. But the optimistic part of me wants it to be true, especially when the idea promises to change life for the better. Reality is usually somewhere in between. And that, I suspect, is where the current artificial intelligence frenzy will go.

Sometimes two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. Right now, we can correctly say inflation is both a) better than it was and b) higher than it should be.

Any way you care to measure it, the United States has the world’s largest economy. It is not, however, the fastest-growing economy. And growth rates matter because, other things being equal, a faster-growing economy might eventually challenge US leadership. China is doing so now. Where is this going? That was a frequent topic at this year’s SIC.