The Tiny Portion of Crypto Assets Used for Payments

Crypto. It is not really an investment (no profits or returns) or a currency, but people still pretend like it is both.

This, from David Frum in The Atlantic

"Most cryptocurrency owners don’t use it to buy things or pay people. A 2023 survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation found that among the small minority of U.S. households that own crypto assets, only 3.3 percent use them to send or receive payments; about 2 percent use them to purchase goods in the real economy."

A Christmas Poem (or something like it)

Christmas is the holiday we take most seriously.
The birth of the baby Jesus.
This point at which he was still innocent of knowledge,
So much still to be revealed - about himself, the world.

He taught us that the price for life is death.
No one gets out alive.
To live like you have something to save
When you know you'll eventually lose everything?
That might just be wrong,
He suggested.
Watch how it is done.

But before all that,
Before the thousand questions and The very few answers,
He was the baby Jesus,
Innocent of our calloused sin.

And that is the Jesus we celebrate
With our own children,
Wondering what gifts to give them.
Whether they will remember or value any of it.
Wondering what of our own lives will be resurrected for the next generation.
And the next.
What gifts will they be?
What gifts are we?

Labor Market Like a Deer in the Headlights Waiting for More Predictable Economic Policy

The Trump administration has sharply curtailed federal data collection and reporting, leaving us to rely on less accurate and less consistent sources to judge the economy. What those sources suggest so far is that two things have happened in Trump’s first year: hiring has slowed, and separations (layoffs, firings, quits) have also slowed. That’s good news for people who might otherwise have lost their jobs, but bad news for people hoping to find one.

When I began driving, my mother gave me simple advice: drive in a way that makes it easy for other drivers to predict what you’ll do. I later realized how wise that was. When the drivers around you can anticipate your moves, they can adjust smoothly—and you can adjust to them. Collisions avoided. (At least for the first half-century of my driving. All bets are off in my dotage.)

Which brings me back to the labor market.

Trump’s tariffs are currently being challenged in court, and betting markets put the odds of them surviving at roughly one in four. In other words, we have tariffs—for now—but there’s a decent chance they disappear soon.

Tariffs are no small thing. Yet businesses largely aren’t raising prices to offset them (why alienate customers over a cost that may vanish?). Nor are many firms hiring or firing aggressively to adapt—because the tariffs themselves may be temporary.

The result is a kind of economic hesitation. Businesses aren’t moving forward confidently under “business as usual.” They’re also not retooling their operations for a genuinely new normal. Instead, they’re waiting.

One often-overlooked role of government is predictability. Regulations that affect decisions involving millions or billions of dollars can’t reasonably change every six months, and then change again six months later. Firms don’t invest, hire, or expand in an environment where the rules of the road are unknowable.

Start driving as if there’s a bee loose in the car, and traffic grinds down. Accidents become more likely. Something similar happens when economic policy becomes unpredictable: businesses slow rather than move confidently into the future.

In theory, we may know within weeks whether the courts uphold Trump’s tariffs and, by extension, whether they affirm that Congress still has a central role in economic policy, rather than allowing presidents to levy taxes unilaterally. Until then, a key element of the economy is unpredictable. Companies hesitate. Hiring stalls. And workers, like the rest of us, remain in limbo.

For Profit Media is At Odds With A Healthy Democracy

A slowly improving society is an economic threat to an attention-based media. Panic pays; progress does not. In an information economy, demand steadily shifts toward drama, conflict, and daily news designed to seize and hold our attention. People will pay to watch a zero-sum game played on the grass; nobody pays to watch grass grow.

The politics of theater does more than elevate drama over boring progress. It has a way of putting us in the seats, watching events unfold, rather than giving us meaningful roles to play. It turns citizens into spectators - passive and angry at the same time - a particularly corrosive combination for a healthy society. 

A democracy cannot thrive when its citizens are treated primarily as an audience.

Thanksgiving 404

404 years ago in Plymouth, the early Pilgrims and Native Americans shared a meal after an appallingly hard year. About half the settlers had died. Food was scarce. They weren’t celebrating abundance so much as survival.

Some of you may not remember this, but 404 was also an early internet message meaning “content not found.” You reached the site, asked for a page—and it simply wasn’t there.

Looking for turkey and stuffing? Pumpkin pie? Mashed potatoes? In 1621?

That request would have returned a 404 error. Or at least a very puzzled look.

If I Were King

If I were king ...

I would make being king illegal. Any day now. Very soon. Just after I do this one thing. And sit on this throne for a bit longer. And listen to the adulation and receive the gifts from the commoners - for just a another week or two. And let the best, brightest, most beautiful and rich come to me to curry favor because ... well, I am king, you know. And I would compare the gifts they offered, wonder aloud whether the gold bar could not have been just a bit larger. Or, rather, quite a bit larger. I would question the sincerity of their praise and affection and ask what more they might do to prove their sincerity. And I would luxuriously sigh during my back rub after time in the whirlpool while I sipped my favorite tea. But only for another day or two. And then all of this would have to end. Very soon.

If I were king for a day, that day would be tomorrow. Just as soon as I've tired of all this.

Tariffs Seem to Be Driving Layoffs

Nov 25, 2024, ADP "For the four weeks ending November 8, 2025, U.S. private employers shed an average of 13,500 jobs per week, according to the NER Pulse, a weekly update of the monthly ADP National Employment Report (NER)."

Related, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reports:
"Our results suggest that, immediately following an increase in tariff rates, the unemployment rate tends to increase, and inflation tends to fall. This pattern suggests that, at first, the effects of tariffs more closely resemble a negative demand shock—that is, consumers and businesses pull back their spending, which slows economic activity and also slows down inflation. Over time, however, economic activity picks up and inflation increases to a higher rate than would have been the case without the tariff increase."

Put simply, study suggests that tariffs raise unemployment rates and consistent with that, in the last four weeks US private employers are laying off workers rather than hiring. The Fed in SF also note that the data they use does not include tariff shocks as large and sweeping as what Trump has put in place. (The good news being that the courts may yet reverse these, arguing as some do that this decision about tariffs - falling into the category of taxes - is one reserved for Congress.)

How California did - and perhaps the US will - Turned Blue

 Two U.S. presidents have come from California: Richard Nixon (born here) and Ronald Reagan (governor here). Both Republicans.

So how did California become one of the bluest states in the country?

A huge part of the answer is Proposition 187.

Prop 187—branded the “Save Our State” initiative—aimed to deny public education, non-emergency health care, and many other state services to undocumented immigrants. Republican Governor Pete Wilson made it the centerpiece of his 1994 re-election campaign, and he won. The measure passed with nearly 60% of the vote.

But it backfired—spectacularly.

The campaign energized conservative voters in the short term but was widely understood in Latino communities as an attack not just on undocumented immigrants, but on Latinos as a whole. Before 1994, California Republicans often split the Hispanic vote with Democrats. After Prop 187, the association between the GOP and anti-immigrant politics became durable and deeply felt. Latino support for Republicans collapsed and never recovered.

The measure also unintentionally activated a wave of civic participation: thousands of legal permanent residents chose to **naturalize and register to vote* specifically to oppose the direction the state GOP was heading. The long-term result: a larger, more Democratic electorate.

It’s worth asking whether something similar could happen nationally.
Trump has already sent troops into cities, and ICE has conducted aggressive roundups—sometimes detaining people who are American citizens or deporting people to countries they’ve never lived in. Policies like these reveal far more about a movement than its slogans do. Sometimes the moment a party finally gets what it has been demanding is the moment voters finally understand what that party stands for.

California has a long history of exporting its culture—blue jeans, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the modern internet. It’s not impossible that the political backlash pattern that reshaped California after Prop 187 could one day serve as a template for how the nation responds to the excesses of Trump-era politics.

History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes—and California has already written one version of this rhyme.

A Quarter of a Century to Recover - the 1929 Great Crash

The Dow reached a closing high of 381.17 on September 3 1929.
It wasn’t until November 23 1954 that the Dow finally closed above that 1929 level again.

A 1929-style crash and recovery starting from a 2025 peak would imply new highs in 2050.

Indecisive

"Would you say that you are decisive?"
"I'm not sure."
"Well think about what you were doing when I approached you."
"I'm looking at these shelves but I don't even understand the differences between body washes and shampoos much less the differences within them. I'll probably stare at them for a couple of minutes and then arbitrarily choose one of each."
Surveyor looks skeptically at my head, volunteers, "You might be able to save some money by just buying the body wash. You certainly have more body than hair."
"I can't decide whether that was advice or an insult."
"I'll just put you down as indecisive."

Trump's Department of Labor Fabricates 2 Million New Jobs - confusing a periodic correction with the real world

Correction: Why This Claim Is Misleading

The figures in this post from the Department of Labor are based on a technical statistical adjustment, not on real changes in employment for native-born or foreign-born workers.
Every January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics updates the population weights used in the household survey (CPS) to reflect new Census estimates. In January 2025, this adjustment added roughly 2 million people to the “employed” category and more than 2 million to the “labor force” — on paper — even though these individuals did not actually enter employment that month.
Because BLS does not revise earlier months of the household survey, this one-time update appears as a sudden spike between December and January. It is a statistical correction, not a labor-market event.
The post above incorrectly treats this one-month benchmarking adjustment as evidence of job gains for native-born Americans and job losses for foreign-born workers. In reality, the underlying economy did not add or subtract millions of workers in these categories. This was simply the result of updated Census population estimates being applied to the survey.
A more accurate interpretation is:
The January re-benchmarking raised employment and labor-force levels for statistical reasons,
but it did not represent genuine job creation or job loss,
and it should not be used to evaluate policy or economic performance.
It is not certain whether this distortion of the technical statistical adjustment is intentionally misleading or simply reflects confusion within the Department of Labor about how these periodic revisions work.

Weakly Job Creation Rate This Summer

This summer the economy is creating about as many jobs per month as it did last summer per week.

May through September:
Average for 2024: 136,000
Average for 2025: 39,000

data:
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth

Crypto Wealth Dissolved

As of 20 November 2025 ...

The price of bitcoin has dropped about $24k this month, representing about half a trillion dollars.
The much smaller by percentage drop in the three major indices this month equates to roughly 3X that, $1.5 trillion.

Job Creation Slows for 2025

We now have job and unemployment numbers through September. Unemployment is steadily ticking up, now the highest it has been in nearly 4 years. Average job creation over the last 5 months is 39,000. (To compare, in the same 5 months in 2024, the average was 136,000, nearly 100,000 more. Each month.)

Reasons?
1. Random changes. It's a wonder that the national economy is as steady as it is. Lots going on any given month.

2. Immigration. Fewer people coming into the country and more people going out. (These aren't just people at your local taco shop. Remember that Hyundai had people in an American factory who were training American workers who were arrested by ICE.)
3. Tariffs. Trump's policies have created uncertainty, which can cause businesses to hesitate before hiring. And tariffs themselves disrupt trade flows and existing business partnerships, triggering layoffs and hiring freezes.
4. Fed continuing with higher interest rates (in order to suppress inflation) which can depress hiring and investment.
5. AI. There are some reports that organizations' senior people are turning to AI rather than junior hires to complete certain kinds of tasks.

The good news is that the courts may yet scuttle Trump's tariffs and Powell and the Fed could be lowering interest rates within the next few months. The bad news? We have a president who likes a little chaos with his breakfast and there doesn't seem to be any serious policy discussions about what AI might mean for employment policies.

Miss Information

Tomorrow we finally get job numbers for .... September.

If this administration could generate data at even 1% the rate at which it generates nonsense we would be so well informed.

Wonder how long it'll be before Trump has a beauty contest for Miss Information.

BIG returns from TINY changes COMPOUNDING over time

A reminder of how little it takes when you are compounding returns ...

If the market went up about:

0.02% every day → you get 5% annually

0.04% every day → you get 10% annually

0.07% every day → you get 20% annually

So, not 7%. Not 7/10th of a percent. But 7/100th of a PERCENT every trading day would yield a 20% annual return.