Good Advice for Driving and Governing

 When I was learning to drive, my mom gave me some wonderful advice.

"Just be predictable," she told me. "Drive in a way that makes it easy for the cars around you to know what you're doing."

I still feel like that covers about 90% of what's needed to be a safe driver.

And I think this advice applies for governance as well. People are trying to make decisions about whether to buy a new car or invest in a stock or borrow for a used car, take out a loan or start a side business or any of a thousand decisions for which they need to make some assumptions about the next 3 months or 3 years. Change is complicated and has so many if-then considerations. One thing you want in a community is relative stability on a lot of the major variables, from inflation to regulation to tariffs and taxes and the cost of college.

One of the many great things about a democracy is that it usually takes time to make changes. Debate proceeds proposals proceeds elections proceeds policies that ripple through our lives. People have time to process, participate in and prepare for these changes. 

One of the wonderful things about Democrats winning sweeping victories this week is that we'll be back to the more laborious process of debates, proposals, revisions, etc. that allow more people to participate in and shape the legislation that we all have to participate in and that does so much to shape us. What you don't want is governance that turns without signaling, slams on the brakes suddenly, or slows and accelerates like someone with a loose pet darting about the car. (And with Trump still in office another 2 years and able to veto legislation, there will be fewer changes than either Trump or Congress or Americans want. But that's another story.)

With 340 million Americans following your lead, it's a good thing to be predictable. 

Mitch McConnell Left Speechless by 2026 Election

This election. 

Rumor is that it left Mitch McConnell speechless.

5 November Stock Sell-Off And What That Might Mean for Musk

While Elon Musk was leading DOGE, his friend and SpaceX associate Jared Isaacman emerged as Trump's choice to run NASA. Isaacman was subsequently confirmed.

Then Musk took SpaceX public, helping propel his estimated wealth into trillionaire territory.

Today, following Tuesday's election, markets are falling sharply. Nvidia and SpaceX are both taking a beating.

But I'm not convinced that the election changes the long-term prospects for AI nearly as much as today's market reaction suggests.

Trump can veto federal legislation, and data centers can be built in many states. Still, governors, state legislatures, and local communities can make construction more difficult. That could slow investment even if demand for AI continues to grow.

Nvidia strikes me as an interesting case. Jensen Huang runs a company selling a foundational technology to customers around the world. If AI continues transforming the global economy, Nvidia has opportunities that extend far beyond any one administration or election. Demand for their product is considerably greater than just the US market.

Of course, a great company isn't necessarily a great investment at every price. Today's decline might represent an opportunity—or the beginning of a larger reassessment of AI valuations more broadly.

SpaceX presents a different question.

It has substantial commercial businesses, including Starlink and AI computing, so it would be wrong to suggest that it needs NASA contracts to remain profitable. But it also has significant relationships with the federal government, and those relationships are subject to political scrutiny.

Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars trying to influence this year's elections. Now he'll be dealing with a Congress containing many of the people he spent so much money trying to defeat.

That doesn't necessarily make SpaceX a poor investment. But it does introduce an interesting political risk.

Which brings me to a distinction I find fascinating.

Nvidia's future depends heavily on how much value AI creates. SpaceX's future partly depends on that but also on how successfully Musk navigates the commercial and political institutions on which his ambitions depend. And the half a billion dollar bet he took in his political alliances and contributions might cost him.

One of the world's most successful entrepreneurs may be about to discover that politics is a rather different kind of market.

CNN's Fear and Greed Index as of market close on 5 November:

Can We Believe What AI Tells us About AI?

 Curiously, I can have AI read me this story in the Economist about ... AI.

Nvidia's Forward P/E Suggests a Bargain Price

In the last 30 to 60 days, Nvidia's stock price has fallen about 15% to 20% even while analyst's estimates of its 12-month price target has climbed from about $290 to $322.

That is, its price has fallen even while its forecast profits have gone up.

Suggesting that today's price - about $186 - is a bargain.

As of the close today,
Nvidia's forward P/E is 13. (At a price of $181.60)
Micron's is 3. (At a price of $656.89.)
That's crazy.

Closing Scene of Trump the Musical

Trump: The Musical is going to be unbelievable.

And in the closing scene, Donald will be in his ballroom, the magnificent structure he built on the ruins of the White House's East Wing.

He will be dancing. Alone.

To music only he can hear.

After Yesterday's Election, Asset Prices Have ...

Today, after yesterday's election ....

Crude oil is DOWN about 8%.
The Dow was UP about 3%, and the S&P 500 and NASDAQ UP about half that.
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. stock was DOWN nearly 25%.

11/5 addendum .... because you will NEVER have a final price for the market or people's assessment of its prospects ...
NASDAQ is down nearly 3.5% this morning, suggesting that either the market is going through its own re-pricing drama around the prospects of AI or is feeling terribly ambivalent about what a blue wave means.

Musk's Poor Return on Campaign Financing

 Elon Musk spent nearly half a billion donating to campaigns in today's election.

Possibly related, his net worth has dropped $100 billion in the last month.

Democratic Wave and the Awkward Recovery to Follow

Good news: we're cracking the crack pipe and trying to quit whatever that weird stuff was that Trump is smoking and selling.

Bad news: rehab is going to be tough.

Election Results and What Comes Next

Good news: we're cracking the crack pipe and trying to quit whatever that weird stuff was that Trump is smoking and selling.
Bad news: rehab is going to be tough.

Woody Guthrie's Guitar

During the 1940s, Guthrie famously displayed the words:

“THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”

on his acoustic guitar.

It was a declaration of his belief that music, storytelling, and working-class solidarity could combat fascism and authoritarianism.

The slogan became one of the most recognizable symbols of American protest music, and later inspired countless variations.

It's an especially interesting statement because Guthrie was identifying his instrument not simply as a means of entertainment, but as a tool for political and cultural change. Change minds and you change entire political systems. And if you want to "kill" violence, you need something other than violence. A guitar and some songs, for example.

I Dwell in Possibility

 I dwell in Possibility --

A fairer house than Prose --

Begins this Emily Dickinson poem explored by the New York Times' A.O. Scott here
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/21/books/emily-dickinson-poem-i-dwell-in-possibility.html

Trump Says He Would Have Bombed Ho Chi Minh City During the War

Trump claimed he could have won the Vietnam War in one week by targeting "Ho Chi Minh City and the different places" with bombing. Ho Chi Minh City was named Saigon during that war and that was our ally and where many American troops lived during the war.

He might have known that if he hadn't gotten out of Vietnam with "bone spurs," a man who stayed in Manhattan and called the seventies sexual excesses his Vietnam. The man who had the courage to dismiss John McCain's time as a prisoner of war with the comment, "I prefer heroes who weren't captured."

The man who the Republican Party admires to much that it has committed to follow him for 10 years, and counting.

Meanwhile, multiple viral videos and social media reports from poll workers show Trump supporters arriving at polling places and becoming angry or confused about why Donald Trump’s name is not on the ballot for this midterm election.

What a leader. What followers.

Democracy

Democracy literally means “rule by the people.” Popular rule is closer to the original Greek than voice of the people.

The word comes from ancient Greek δημοκρατία (dēmokratía), combining:
- Dēmos (δῆμος) — the people, particularly the body of citizens.
- Kratos (κράτος) — power, strength, or rule.
Thus, dēmokratía means the power of the people or government by the people.
One further distinction worth considering: Democracy is not simply the right to vote. It is the right of a people to govern themselves. Voting is one of the mechanisms through which that authority is exercised.

In other words, voting is the least you can do.

If You're Not Humbled By What You're Trying to Do

Back in November of 2009, I wrote on this blog:

“If you're not humbled by what you're trying to do, you're not stretching yourself very far.”

Feeling completely competent might be a warning that you've stopped growing, was the message implied 17 years ago. Now, with AI emerging as a force, it might suggest something different.

If AI isn't making you reconsider what you're capable of attempting, you may not be thinking ambitiously enough. And if society isn't creating opportunities for people to attempt more, we may be building an economy that needs fewer of us rather than one that empowers more of us.

In an age when AI is rapidly expanding what individuals can attempt - this notion of stretching yourself is both inspiration and warning. Inspiration because it reminds us that AI - like industrial machinery lifetimes before - is opening up new possibilities. Warning because if we don't aspire for more, we're likely to end up wildly under- or even un- employed in the economy emerging.

Trump Has Lowest Midterm Approval Since Truman in 1946

Trump heads into this midterm with the lowest approval rating of any president since Harry Truman in 1946.

Truman had ordered the atomic bombings of Japan the year before, and was struggling with the rocky shift back to a peacetime economy: soaring inflation, massive labor strikes and widespread shortages. That November, Republicans won a landslide, taking control of both the House and Senate.

Could we mitigate poverty by taxing political campaign advertising?

California EV Adoption Compared to Various Countries

 California has about double the US rate of Electric Vehicle adoption and about a third or less of Nordic countries.

The Curious State of P/E Ratios for Tesla, Nvidia & Google

 

Economic Forecast: Increasing Gales of Creative Destruction

A report from Equibles analyzing about 12,000 S&P 500 earnings reports found the average next-day move rose from 3.4% in 2021 to 5.3% so far in 2026. The share of reports producing a move of 10% or more roughly tripled, from 4.4% to 13.3%. Tech stocks have averaged 8% moves over the past year.

So far this morning, as a dramatic example of this, Google's stock has fallen about 12% from yesterday's close, down a stunning $900 billion in valuation since its high in May of this year. 

AI has changed the weather forecast for the stock market to "increasing gales of creative destruction," as it creates and destroys businesses, industries, and career paths.

We may need more safety nets.

New Politics for the Next Economy (or, the transition that explains why you're feeling so stressed about American politics)

New Politics for the Next Economy, the book.

Feeling stressed about politics and the country? That makes sense. You’re living through a transition into a new America.

As the table shows, the US has already been four Americas: Jefferson’s agricultural economy, Lincoln’s industrial economy, FDR’s full-employment economy and Reagan’s information economy. Each began with a transitional president, and each had its own limit to progress. Now we’re moving into a fifth America, an entrepreneurial economy, where the limit to progress shifts from culture to entrepreneurship. Of all the things that means, here is the most exciting: a shift from institutions using individuals as tools to individuals using institutions as tools.

Land, capital and labor are the classic factors of production, and each limited one of the first three Americas. Less obviously, culture belongs on that list. Culture is a community’s know-how and its values. Do you know how to make steel? Cars? Computer chips? How to edit DNA, make a latte or write a song? What you know how to make shapes your economy. What you value shapes your community: what you praise or criticize, tax or subsidize, make legal or illegal. Romantic ideals or warrior spirit? Great art or science? Turn those dials and you get very different economies, very different communities, and very different kinds of children.

Entrepreneurship is to institutions what invention is to technology: the ability to create, change and improve them. We live better than the great apes because of our technology, but also because of our institutions, which let us do together what none of us could do alone, from raising a barn to launching a spaceship.

Markets have never rewarded institution-building more. The world’s ten richest people, all American men, are together worth about $3 trillion, and most of them built their fortunes on companies they founded. Yet Americans have rarely trusted their institutions less. Gallup has tracked Americans’ confidence in defining institutions such as Congress, churches, big business, the courts and the media since 1979. The share expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence has fallen from about half to about a quarter. We value what institutions can do, and we’re frustrated with the ones we have.

That calls for a different kind of politics, one focused less on culture and more on creating and improving our institutions. Picture public-sector entrepreneurship working like Silicon Valley. Most initiatives will start locally, simply because there are far more local governments than state or national ones, but they can start at any level: helping immigrants settle in, launching careers for kids not bound for college, giving parents and preschoolers safe and fun places to play and connect. Many - probably, as happens in Silicon Valley, most - will fail. Some will succeed and stay local, because they fit one community’s culture but not another’s. A few will succeed spectacularly and spread to other cities, states, even the nation. In a country of many cultures, the right scope for a solution isn’t decided in advance. Call it scalable but it's essentially discovered.

The transition into a fifth America, perhaps beginning with the next president in 2029, will be as big a change as Lincoln’s or FDR’s. It will be stressful, but it can be invigorating: the stress of building something, and of institutions finally becoming tools for the people who use them.

Real World Data

She intended to say “real-world data,” but it came out “real weird data.”

And somehow, that stuck. Because the data's most remarkable feature wasn't that it was real. It was that it was weird.

Microsoft Offers Voluntary Buyouts to 60,000 Employees - Shifting Spending Into Capital for AI Buildout

Microsoft has offered voluntary buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees, more than a quarter of its workforce.

Not 60,000 layoffs. No one knows yet how many will accept.

But the announcement is related to AI. Microsoft is investing extraordinary sums in AI infrastructure while seeking to reduce other costs.

What's less clear is whether AI is already making employees redundant or whether Microsoft is simply shifting its investments from people toward computing infrastructure.

Either way, it raises an critical question: Are we witnessing AI replacing work, or capital replacing labor as the preferred investment in creating future value?

That last distinction is particularly significant. AI doesn't have to replace a worker's tasks directly to change the economics of employing that worker. It may change where corporations believe their next dollar of investment will generate the greatest return.

That's potentially a much bigger economic story than the headline suggests.

Like a Dolphin

I feel like a dolphin.
What?
No porpoise.