(Roughly) Daily

Plumbing, like most bits of the infrastucture on which we depend, is ideally out of sight and out of mind. It’s usually only when it fails that we pay attention… and then, too late to preempt the damage done and the problem that we then have to fix.

Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman turns to Nathan Tankus to discuss a wonky, but crucially-important, piece of financial infrastructure now being beset by the Trump administration…

Nathan Tankus has become an essential resource during these strange and scary times. My last chat with Nathan was about DOGE’s depredations at government agencies. This time I spoke with him about disruptions in financial markets.

I continue to be astonished at how important the “plumbing” of these markets — the stuff that makes them function, which we normally don’t even notice — becomes when everything falls apart. And economists in general don’t know that much about the plumbing, so we need help from people like Nathan who do.

One thing that struck me during the conversation was Nathan’s explanation of the partial easing of financial stress after the crazy tariffs announced April 2 were replaced by the equally crazy tariffs of April 9. He points out that while a serious analysis of the April 9 tariffs showed that they were as bad in their own way as the original tariffs, the narrative was that policy had eased. And markets, he insists (and I agree) are less information processors than conventional wisdom processors.

Much more in the interview…

Watch, listen, and/or read: “Liquidity, Volatility and Market Craziness: Paul Krugman Interviews Nathan Tankus Again.”

* Deb Chachra [and here], How Infrastructure Works

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As we batten down the hatches, we might recall that this date in 1970 inaugurated a celebration of the mother of all infrastructures: it was the first Earth Day.  Initially suggested by John McConnell for March 21 (the Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, a day of natural equipoise), Secretary General U Thant signed a UN Proclamation to that effect.  But Earth Day as we know it was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (who was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award for his work) as an environmental teach-in to be held on on this date.  The first Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States.  Later that year, President Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Agency into being.  Earth Day is now observed in 192 countries, coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, chaired by the first Earth Day 1970 organizer Denis Hayes– according to whom Earth Day is now “the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a billion people every year.”

Earth Day Flag created by John McConnell (source)