Poetic accident I was reading it in Baltimore!

Obviously the loss of the worst half of the legislative body was helped policy, but reading this book (and other civil war political histories) really emphasizes how much northern leaders shifted beliefs. Chase, who created Union paper dollars, originally was a gold standard stalwart!

Also learned from the book that the "Chase" in JPMorgan Chase is named after Salmon (he was dead when the bank was founded, but it's in his memory), which I feel is fitting memory for a man so accomplished and possibly the greatest White Guy Name of all time.

Ways and Means is also a brilliant and humanizing portrayal of Treasury Secretary Salmon P Chase as a principled, ideological, emotional, and self-interested man thrust into an unimaginably difficult situation & still able to notch incredible achievements in the service of progress and his country.

He believes any deficits are caused by some form of cheating (including weakening environmental standards) so tariffs designed to “balance” trade will ipso-facto force countries to match US environmental standards. He is a very dumb man.

the main thing about this article is how much nothing it says. "I am Oren Cass and I like tariffs and dislike China" wow I didn't know that already before opening the article.
www.ft.com/content/191e...

Oren's also a master of the motte-and-bailey between bilateral & aggregate trade deficits. Canada & Mexico run *aggregate* goods trade deficits, yet bc of their *bilateral* surpluses he accuses them of the currency manipulation & consumption suppression that he blames for China's *aggregate* surplus

The really tough part is that we have extremely little macroeconomic data on immigration, even before the shutdown. Answering basic questions like "how many people have been deported this year" or "how much has legal immigration slowed down?" are basically impossible. Writing a piece on this now

It’s a very unfair city, every street has a different kind of gorgeous building

there are people who locked in a 30yr mortgage at 3% in 2021 and there will be people paying 7% to borrow over the next half century

good news, it does manage to put housing right next to the heavy industry