Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
My impression is that continuing to construct the previous series was not really practicable. The blog post talks about this a little bit. The change in the definition wasn't arbitrary. The fed changed a regulation that required "savings" accounts be permitted no more than 6 withdrawals a month, otherwise the account had to classified as a "transaction" account. Transaction accounts are included in M1 but savings accounts aren't. They also count differently for capitalization requirements. It sounds like when the fed changed the rules about limited withdrawals banks largely started reporting all their accounts as "transaction" accounts, and therefore contributing to M1. So the fed can't really construct the old M1 anymore because they relied on banks to make the relevant distinction between accounts and banks largely stopped making that distinction in reports to the fed once it no longer served a purpose.
There's actually a little blurb under the FRED chart noting this discontinuity in definition for the M1 and M2 measures.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
In May 2020 FRED changed it's definition of M1 to include savings accounts, which is why there's a huge spike in specifically that month. If you switch the graph from billions of dollars to % change this is much clearer. Changes in M1 (percentage wise) seem to have been pretty similar before and after (perhaps even less volatile after), based on my eyeballing the graph. They have a blog post explaining it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
Grok is correct, at least to my understanding. The Insurrection Act merely permits the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement purposes. Such usage is otherwise forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act. The escalation beyond this would probably require suspending the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Although the Constitution (and Supreme Court precedent) limit this suspension to an Act of Congress. As a historical matter, the only time it was actually suspended was by Lincoln during the Civil War. Though the Supreme Court ruled Lincoln's suspension unconstitutional he ignored them. Not an encouraging precedent!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d ago
What set of actions you've described do you think are, or perhaps ought to be, crimes? What section of the United States Code do they violate? The closest one, in my mind, is the license plate one. Which could be a CFAA violation depending on how they are getting the information about plate owners. Although the Twitter thread you linked shows the database described as being crowd sourced, which would not be a crime. The one ICE usually cites to is 18 USC 111 but note that statute requires the use of force in impeding federal officials going about their duties.
At what point is this a conspiracy to undermine the laws of this country resulting in the deaths of two people ?
What section of the United States Code describes the crime of "undermin[ing] the laws of this country resulting in the deaths of two people"? What are its elements?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I am making some assumptions about the procedure I suppose. I'm imagining they measure a gap of some size, 1" say, and that's what they record. Then, on subsequent inspections, if the gap measures less than 1-1/8" they just leave the measurement at 1". So not updating the measurement over months and years implies a net change less than 1/8". If they reset the baseline they are measuring the gap against on subsequent measurements then I agree that is a huge problem.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I am not an expert on railway safety but presumably there is some tolerance for these gaps, below which changes are not concerning. I am not sure 1/8 of an inch is the correct number but there is some correct number. It makes sense to me that the process for inspection incorporates these tolerances. In this specific context Bell is contesting his being fired. In which case whether he was doing the thing he was trained to do is relevant. "I was following the procedure my employer trained me to do" is, to my mind, a pretty good defense against "this employee acted negligently in their role." Or, at least, it shifts any negligence off the employee to the employer.
"You know, if these rails are always a little off, that's probably a bad thing, even if 1/8th of an inch isn't Big Bad on its own."
Is it a bad thing, though? How much are these gaps expected to change naturally? What is the inter-inspector accuracy? I do not have the domain knowledge to answer these questions but it seems plausible to me the mentioned 1/8 inch is a tolerance below which variation is not worth worrying about.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
China is the obvious one but, like, the EU is itself about the size of the US. A GDP almost as high and 50% more people. Sure, no individual country in Europe is a match for the US but collectively may be a different story.
The OP doesn't quote the section but there's a part in Carney's speech where he talks about middle powers like Canada making alliances on limited issues based on interest alignment. They'll work with China on issues where they're aligned with China. The EU on issues where they're aligned with the EU. The overarching point is that the era of "whatever the US says, goes" is over. Unless we intend to enforce that at the end of a gun.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I do not think either we or our allies have conceived of our relationship as vassalage and attempts at converting our relationship to vassalage will be harmful to those relationships.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
It is not normal politics. It is bad for America's long term ability to negotiate agreements if other countries come to believe that every President is going to tear up every agreement of their predecessor. Why make any deal that will last longer than the current administration? The reason other presidents have honored agreements previous presidents made, even when they disagreed with them, is because there is value in being a country that honors it's agreements.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I mean, some of them presumably do their jobs. If I go to a WMATA operated stop a bus or train will come. With an operator who is a WMATA employee.
Based on reading your two links I don't think this characterizes the situation accurately? According to the second link:
1. Not updating measurements when the new measurement was within 1/8 of an inch was standard practice going all the way back to the 1970's.
Yet the panel found Metro had never rooted out a practice begun as official policy when the system opened in the 1970s that had inspectors only update measurements on monthly switch inspection forms if the new measurements were at least 1/8 inch different. If not, the same numbers were simply carried over from month to month and year to year.
“It’s understood by everyone that that’s how we do things. Otherwise, we would have gotten accused of falsification prior to this,” Bell told the arbitration panel. “It was understood that each inspector’s eyes are different, and 1/8 of an inch is negligible.”
2. The issue that ultimately lead to the train derailment was flagged by inspectors and had been for years.
In Metro management’s initial response to the derailment, they noted 12-14 buttery ties that had allowed tracks to slip too far apart — right where the inspection reports had reported 15 defective ties month after month, year after year.
Bell’s termination letter acknowledged the problem had been reported over and over.
“The records reflect there was a recorded defect on the Defect Database that was at the ‘Point of Derailment’ and another entry that was allowed to remain on the database since 2012,” the letter said.
3. They did change their training and practices after the derailment to improve them.
After the summer 2016 derailment, Metro changed inspection procedures to no longer provide the previous measurements pre-typed in on switch inspection forms, and retrained track inspectors to record the actual measurements they took.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
Comparing this to UBI seems weird to me. My understanding is the point of UBI is that it's approximately unconditional. You get the money whatever your income or whether you have a job. By contrast, according to your budget link, the WMATA provided something like 268 million trips for its budget. Maybe you think the $19 or so per trip that works out to is not a good use of money, but it seems pretty far from the "nothing" the government gets in return for UBI! Maybe a better comparison would be some kind of guaranteed job program? No idea what the economic efficiency of programs like that work out to.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
The only way out is through, as they say. I think Carney and co. are likely correct as a factual matter. As the United States becomes a less reliable partner countries are going to look at diversifying away from their dependence on it. Whether that is part of a process of becoming more self sufficient, making friends with other great powers, or coalitions of "middle powers" countries are going to aim to reduce their reliance on America as a friend and ally. A couple paragraphs from Carney's speech you didn't quote but that I think highlight this:
As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains. This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable. And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from ‘transactionalism’ become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty— sovereignty which was once grounded in rules—but which will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure. This classic risk management comes at a price. But that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.
I, personally, think America's close integration with our allies operated to our benefit. Both economically and in terms of our ability to order the world more to our liking. A more isolationist America is going to be poorer and facing a more hostile world. Even in the event Democrats take back control of Congress and the presidency over the next several elections I expect the damage done by Trump would be generations in undoing. Other countries are not going to forget it takes one demented madman winning an election to blow up any agreements we might have.
That's fair. I think it's a hard problem that I don't have a strong opinion on. In the case the fed chose, there's the obvious potential for confusion due to a very dramatic change in the graph. Notwithstanding any kind of clarifying text on the page. On the other hand, if you create a new series it can be hard to discover that the old series exists, when it might be useful. FRED actually already has at least one discontinued M1 series, which was weekly data.
My perception is that, from FRED's perspective, they are still reporting the "same" thing (the sum of some field on a report bank's file with them). If they changed their underlying methodology I suspect they would discontinue the old series and create a new one (as with the weekly data) but in this case it's the reporting entities whose behavior changed.
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