The Fed targets price stability and employment, not growth.
Of course that is largely correlated with stimulating growth as a derivative of that, but certainly not "only" to stimulate growth. For example, the current cutting cycle has far more to do with inflation that it does growth. The Fed's primary concern currently is growth accelerating into more inflation.
There are other reasons for cutting as well. For example, funding stress. Repo funding stress caused an interest rate pivot not too long ago (and repo funding stress is rising once again, which will be a factor in the current rate decisions.)
>When businesses, governments, and individuals increase their borrowing, as they are now, that means that the cost of borrowing, the interest rate, is too low.
That's not necessarily the case. Credit expansion comes with healthy growth as well.
You know, now that I think about it, I have seen an actual ticket short squeeze before - when the airline is overbooked and has to run a reverse auction to buy back their ticket.
This article downplays the extent of Kramnik's online harassment campaign.
The first thing that it is important to note in articles covering this is that Kramnik's cheating allegations are clearly outright trolling and cyberbullying, and should be labeled as such. For example, in a recorded game where Kramnik doesn't see an easy best-move in an end game, he expectedly loses from the blunder, and immediately reports the opposing player for cheating. He reports hundreds and hundreds of people. There are dozens of proven examples of him weaponizing cheating allegations to protect his fragile ego. The intentional weaponization of false allegations is part of the greater cheating problem.
This is an online troll harassing people. The cheating issue is real, and properly addressing it would actually involve addressing mass cheating allegations weaponized as harassment, not giving it credence.
The second point is that this was clearly a personal vendetta against sort. For example, trolling with a "Don't do drugs" post after a recent video where Danya looked like he was in rough shape. If you're serious about pursuing feeding allegations, you should expect the defendant to defend themselves, not use the simple fact that they are defending themselves as an excuse to step up the harassment campaign to personal attacks.
Lastly, the entire situation begs the question of how online harassment and cyberbullying should be handled in the future. The regulatory body that partly gave Kramnik his outsized influence, as well as the greater chess world, arguably needs to do a better job requiring a higher standard of conduct from its professional members (like many other sports). It's no stretch to say that members of a professional organization should be protected from other members harassing them and threatening their livelihood.
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Moving on from cyberbullying, I do have a feeling that Danya was going through something pretty rough personally. I had a somewhat similar situation a few years ago where something I dedicated my life to was used to hurt my reputation. The hard part is knowing you did something great (help people, didn't cheat, build a community you love), being internally proud of what you have built, and then seeing it misconstrued to represent everything you stand against and tie you to those values.
That delta results in internal tension that builds up endlessly, as well as constant stress and in my case even some emotional trauma (where you just lose control and have to scream, that sort of thing). That is combined with a sense of complete powerlessness, and finally a sense of loss as your "calling" loses its magic, which can then lead to self-doubt and even self-hatred ("What if they're partly right after all? What if all this was just a waste of time? If I thought I was doing something good, but everyone else doesn't see it that way, maybe I'm just alone.") those are all real examples from things I've felt at least, and Danya seems to mirror some of those feelings and frustrations in interviews.
It's very sad to lose the magic in something which brought you joy and meaning since childhood, and even worse to have character assassination tied to that. Having it all take place in the public sphere must be even more severely stressful. In my case (in the past), it led to heavy drinking to deal with the overwhelming stress, and while I won't speculate on his situation, he clearly and publicly stated he had severe sleep issues which I also commiserate with. Pacing back and forth at night in a silent room with high cortisol and self-amplifying repetitive negative thoughts doesn't lead to good sleep ritual.
Additionally, even if the "self-funded" aspect was enshrined into the process on all levels, you're looking at a program that dwarfs any other program of this type, worldwide. It would necessarily be in US government bonds, and the real yields of bonds are very much a function of the overall deficit and wider tax current situation and outlook. The treasury actively twists issuance and effectively has yield curve targets. The Federal Reserve does active balance sheet management as well, and monetary and fiscal are increasingly working in sync with one another. A program of the size of social security with inflation adjusted US dollar denominated obligations in trillions can never be and will never be truly separate.
Even if they wanted to do something extremely simple like hold TIPS (inflation linked bonds) and hedge some of the inflation risk internally, buying TIPS from the US government would simply be a circular transaction that would be canceled out by the bond component of the TIPS. Pointless. If SS went out into the global financial market, they would quite literally absorb a big chunk of the global capacity for that risk, and more importantly, on a global level it all feeds back to the US/dollar, especially in times of stress (which having a Gorilla sucking up endless amounts of inflation risk would actually amplify). Again - it would cancel out on net. A program that big is almost too large for traditional financialization. It would need to be buying networks of ports and such like China does with their surpluses, but even here, the US already carries a large amount of geopolitical risk in their financial system (look at the Tariff scare where the bond market almost blew up because the large amount of financial assets held by foreigners were pulled from the country). It's actually fairly interesting to follow these lines and feedback loops and see how everything is connected.
I propose any company that flagrantly violates the intent of a ruling like that is sent to a special judge who operates in the same manner - bring forth a penalty while explicitly looking for every violation and arcane loophole to punish the company with.
To save people opening the link...in France it would be a judge not a prosecutor. France has an Inquisitorial rather than the Adversarial legal system the UK and US have. Put simply, a judge doesn't merely decide between the two cases presented to them, they try and establish the facts
Edit: I said 'UK' where I should have said 'England and Wales'. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own legal systems, although I believe both have Adversarial systems they are different in some ways. The US system could, however, be seen as a continuation of the English system.
I'll bet apple fan boys will agree to this statement for Valve or any other company, but when it comes to apple having to open up their walled garden in EU and then using every dirty trick in the book to make it impossible, oh boy...
This is probably one of those scenarios where if someone wants to fake it they're going to fake it (or at least it will be a never ending arms race, and I expect AI to keep close chase), while a basic security solution will suffice for 99% of use cases, including standard journalism. After all, skilled photoshop+computational tools can already do expert fakery in journalism. (Just look at the last Abroadinjapan video earlier today for a good callout of Photoshop editing to increase engagement).
The Fed targets price stability and employment, not growth.
Of course that is largely correlated with stimulating growth as a derivative of that, but certainly not "only" to stimulate growth. For example, the current cutting cycle has far more to do with inflation that it does growth. The Fed's primary concern currently is growth accelerating into more inflation.
There are other reasons for cutting as well. For example, funding stress. Repo funding stress caused an interest rate pivot not too long ago (and repo funding stress is rising once again, which will be a factor in the current rate decisions.)