When Satya Nadella took over as boss of Microsoft in 2014 he started by opening Windows. Unlike his predecessors, who had kept the software giant’s crown jewel hermetically sealed from the outside world, he exposed the operating system (os) to the breeze of competition. The firm’s other programs, which used to run almost exclusively on Windows, could now operate on other oss, including Linux, an “open-source” rival which Microsoft had previously called a “cancer”. The manoeuvre both broadened the market for Microsoft’s software and improved Windows by forcing it to compete with rival oss on more equal terms. In the process, it shook up Microsoft’s culture, helped it shed its reputation as a nasty monopolist and paved the way for a stunning revival that saw its market value soar above $2trn.
Friday, September 10, 2021
Colorado Dark
It is called Colorado’s last boom town. Ten thousand people stampeded into Creede in the late 1800s in search of the silver hidden within the San Juan Mountains. The town was the epitome of the Wild West, a hangout for outlaws and conmen. But more than the shoot-outs and gamblers, it was the mines that made Creede. For nearly 100 years its prosperity was tied to the price of silver. The town’s last mine closed in 1985 and only about 300 people remain. Ghost towns and the creaky remnants of old mining camps litter the mountains. Now environmentalists and residents are looking to another sparkly resource to revive the economy: the stars.
Headwaters Alliance, a local non-profit organisation, wants to create a “dark-sky reserve” in aptly named Mineral County, which includes Creede. The campaign is not unique to southern Colorado. Dark-sky communities are cropping up around the American West. The International Dark-Sky Association (ida), based in Tucson, wants towns to curb their light pollution, which harms nocturnal wildlife and obscures the stars. The ida has certified more than 130 dark-sky places globally since 2001; 14 of them are in Colorado.
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Quantitative Easing
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ August 26 op-ed in the Washington Post is an excellent commentary of the Federal Reserve’s policy of “quantitative easing.” Under quantitative easing, the Fed buys bonds, which keeps down interest rates and adds more money to the economy, greasing the wheels of commerce. Summers says that this was necessary during the financial crisis of 2008 and during the first shock of the Covid crisis in 2020, but not now. Quantitative easing tends to benefit the wealthy, pushing the stock market and other asset prices, like homes, higher, but not doing much for regular people.
Furthermore, because of the way Fed borrowing works,
quantitative easing tends to shorten the term of the debt. Summers says that with interest rates so low
at present, the Fed and Treasury should be financing long term debt, locking in
the current low interest rates. Summers
is not convinced that interest rates will stay low forever. Inflation is a bigger threat than the Fed
currently acknowledges.
Summers warns that the Fed has followed the course of
quantitative easing without examining where it is going. He fears that following the easy path of the
status quo will lead us into a financial quagmire similar to the way our continuation
of unexamined policies led eventually to disasters in Vietnam and
Afghanistan.
I think that Summers is right on. But Wall Street and most people love quantitative
easing because it is good for almost everyone in the short term, just better
for the rich. However, the question is
whether there is a problem in the longer term.
While inflation is the immediate concern, there might be other
disruptions of the market, a stock market crash, or problems in the labor market,
or failure of supply chains for food and other daily needs. It’s also possible that nothing bad will
happen. We are in uncharted territory by
letting quantitative easing and “easy money” run so long.
China is tightening up its financial markets. Most people think this is political, to reign
in the power the Chinese billionaires vis-à-vis the government. I think the Chinese may also be worried about
dislocations in their economy. They may
think that tightening up now may prevent worse consequences in the future. If so, I share their concerns. I wish the Fed did, too. I think Larry Summers does.
Vietnamese and Afghan Refugees
I have had two brushes with Vietnam during my life: one was serving in the Army artillery in Vietnam during the war, the second was overseeing databases of Vietnamese who wanted to go to the United States after the war.
When I was in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, I had very little
interaction with the Vietnamese. I was in a heavy artillery battery that
supported American Army soldiers on the ground.
Most of the time we were stationed at firebases in the middle of
nowhere, with no Vietnamese around. A
few times we had Vietnamese units on the same firebase, but we did not interact. They supported Vietnamese units and we
supported American units. We were in
northern South Vietnam, which the Army called I Corps. Occasionally I would ride into town with
supply trucks; so, I occasionally saw Hue and Quang Tri. At Firebase Barbara, on
a lonely mountaintop not too far south of Khe Sanh on the Laotian border, all
of our resupply was done by helicopter. When
Saigon fell, I had no personal connection to any South Vietnamese left
behind.
At the American Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1984 to 1986,
I was in charge of the embassy’s computers.
I was primarily responsible for the computers in the embassy, which
mainly handled administrative tasks like maintaining personnel and financial
records. However, as the senior computer
person in the embassy, I had oversight responsibility for several other
computer operations. One of them handled
data for the Orderly Departure Program for Vietnamese still in Vietnam who wanted
to leave the country. The Orderly Departure
Program had been established to try to stop the dangerous exodus of Vietnamese “boat
people.” Another handled data for Vietnamese refugees who had already escaped across
Laos or Cambodia to Thai refugee camps and who wanted to go to the United
States. This was about ten years after
the fall of Saigon, but I don’t know how many of these people had worked for
the US during the war.
According to Wikipedia, from 1980 to 1997, 623,509 Vietnamese
were resettled abroad under the Orderly Departure Program, of whom 458,367 went
to the United States. As I recall, a
friend at the embassy in Bangkok who worked in the Orderly Departure Program
went to Vietnam about once a week to process a planeload of Vietnamese going to
the US. Outside of the Orderly Departure
Program, the number of “boat people” leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in
another country totaled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated
that between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea without reaching their
destination. About 40,000 Vietnamese refugees
were held in Thai border refugee camps until they could be resettled.
If Vietnam is an example, there will continue to be many
refugees fleeing Afghanistan for years to come.