@ChadBown  At some point investors will have to realize that Trump is never going to return to business as usual — a rules-based trade policy with fairly predictable rules of the game. The arbitrariness and unpredictability of his moves are a feature, not a bug 2/

@ChadBown  Why trade policy as opposed to other things? Well, he's trying to do the same elsewhere too. But US trade law happens to give the president extraordinary discretionary power. Given time, he'll turn America crony capitalist more broadly. But trade is where it starts. 4/

OK, this is extremely weird. I received an email saying that a payment has been received into my blockchain wallet. But I don't have a blockchain wallet. Presumably there's some kind of fraud going on, but what?

This is really bad on two levels. First, Democrats have been far less deficit-prone than Republicans. Second, debt worries are vastly exaggerated. Is Buttigieg just Howard Schultz in disguise?

This is a really excellent description of a coal town in terminal decline, which gets at several of the issues behind growing regional disparity 1/

One point just mentioned in passing is that the crash in coal employment had nothing to do with a liberal "war on coal': it began under GOP presidents, and the industry had virtually vanished long before Obama began taking climate action 2/

Another point is that people while we have some people urging us to aid declining regions, in reality we already provide massive aid: Social Security, Medicare, and other transfer programs provide almost half Grundy's income 3/

The question is, what could give the town new "export" industries (selling to other parts of the US as well as the world)? What would induce businesses to move there? I'm at a loss 4/