• Paul Krugman in the New York Times, July 17: “We absolutely should politicize the weather.” Paul Krugman, August 13: “The fact that the climate war is now part of the culture war worries me, a lot.”
His cat better be hiding somewhere.
• I haven’t had a chance to dilate the news a couple weeks ago that Fitch has downgraded U.S. debt, in the absence of any acute political crisis like a debt-ceiling showdown in Washington. This is different, and the surprised and defensive reaction of the Biden Administration, which was caught off guard, was very telling.
The Wall Street Journal is out with a story tomorrow about the ongoing erosion of American finances because of rising interest rates and uncontrolled growth of the national debt that includes this amazing projection:
Consider that around three-quarters of Treasurys must be rolled over within five years. Say you added just 1 percentage point to the average interest rate in the CBO’s forecast and kept every other number unchanged. That would result in an additional $3.5 trillion in federal debt by 2033. The government’s annual interest bill alone would then be about $2 trillion. For perspective, individual income taxes are set to bring in only $2.5 trillion this year.
Given that the majority of income taxes are paid by higher income groups who also tend to be the largest bondholders, it looks like wealthier Americans will be paying their own interest. So why not just cut out the middleman and let us keep our own money?
• It’s been obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that the whole ESG (environment, safety, governance) enthusiasm in the business world was a scam—merely the new name for the “triple bottom line” of 20 years ago. The Financial Times has the latest expose on the scam:
Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rated rivals
Companies rated highly on widely accepted environmental, social and governance metrics pollute just as much as lowly rated companies, research has found. This perverse lack of correlation holds even if companies’ carbon intensity — their carbon emissions per unit of revenue or market capitalisation — is compared purely to their environmental rating, according to Scientific Beta, an index provider and consultancy.
Heh. This was one of the easiest predictions to make.
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