Chicago Federal Reserve Bank president Austan Goolsbee is always good for explanations and observations of what’s going on with the economy.
Category: Politics, Religion & Money
Tracy Kidder (1945-2026)
Massachusetts-based author Tracy Kidder’s name has appeared here a few times. Like Jon Krakauer and Michael Lewis, Kidder was a non-fiction writer.
I first read Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine and last read Rough Sleepers. I didn’t read everything in between, but I have fond memories of reading House, Among Schoolchildren, and Home Town. The NYTimes has a good overview of Kidder’s life and writings.
Away With Words
A man who speaks constantly, and yet he’s a man of few words.
“They gave us a present and the present arrived today, and it was a very big present, worth a tremendous amount of money.”
Ask a Loyalist
Willful ignorance starts at the top with Trump and reaches down to everyone who voted for him.
TACO Tuesday Monday
Trump always chickens out. He talked tough on Saturday, then today he’s clucking a different tune.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social site that the U.S. and Iran have had “very good and productive conversations” that could yield “a complete and total resolution” in the war.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iran-threatens-attack-mideast-electrical-045513561.html
Who’s he kidding? There aren’t any ongoing talks. He’s been all over the place with self-contradictory outbursts. We are at the mercy of an irrational, impulsive narcissist.
Trump is a freak who can’t stop himself. He is who he is. So I blame Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court, and most of all, the millions of stupid American voters who put Trump back in power. They have made me very cynical.
Fly TSA
Musk offers to pay TSA salaries, as Trump floats ICE at airports
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/21/musk-trump-tsa-ice-airports
The fact that Musk is able to realistically make this offer says something significant about the concentration of wealth in America.
Trump is setting a high bar with his typically hyperbolic threat to deploy ICE agents to airports, “where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before.” Really? I was once held at gunpoint in a windowless room by airport security in Saudi Arabia.