I don’t think the only issue in the trump case is that outcomes are ambiguous, its that prices are endogenous. The price of the DOW has an impact on how trump acts, so you don’t know what a price change means.
Example: trump passes a 100% tariff tomorrow, stocks fall by 8%. Does this mean the policy only impacted valuations by 8%? No, it means that people are afraid to sell in case their selling causes the tariffs to be rescinded.
I sort of agree with your position in principle but I think there are a lot of caveats.
One important one: what if the policy / event is communicating some information, markets could adjust based on the information rather than the policy event. For example suppose there are two related policies A and B, and markets are unsure if this general family of policies will be pursued. When policy A is enacted, they may react based on changing views on the chance of B being enacted as well, even if A is unimportant itself.
Maybe a country is more likely to declare war on another country if it feels good about its military prospects, so on the declaration of war markets adjust not just based on the actual policy of war, but also the private information about military capacity being revealed by the decision.
Agreed. I would argue that the main reason that stocks fell on Liberation Day was not the tariffs themselves, rather what the decision revealed about how Trump would make decisions in his second term.
Enjoyed reading this. I wrote about the Venezuela intervention six weeks after the fact, trying to separate "I'm glad this happened" from "I endorse the method" — and found that most commentary collapses those two sentences into one. Your market-signal approach offers a cleaner way to evaluate the first sentence while remaining agnostic on the second.
What strikes me about extending this to Iran is that the market is answering your question in real time — and the answer is negative, which by your own framework is dispositive. The more interesting problem may be your tail-risk caveat: markets can't price the second and third-order cascades that don't show up in equity indices but reshape the world anyway. Nuclear proliferation incentives, refugee flows, the weaponisation of chokepoints by middle powers — these are the 1% risks with enormous expected-value consequences that no betting line captures.
Is not your approach more mainstream among economists than your post suggests? I recently listened the presentation of new AI-based fiscal measures database by the IMF and in the ensuing discussion the presenter stressed that a key advantage of the database is that it allows tracking of measures on a quarterly basis and hence a much better measurement of multipliers compared to annual tracking, since a lot of things influencing the economy will typically happen in one year.
I think there's another problem with using market signals to estimate the likelihood of extreme catastrophe: because there's no way to collect on such bets, it's not rational to place them, and if they aren't placed then information about those possible events won't affect the market price.
Consider a market where you can bet that there will be a global thermonuclear war. If such a war happened, everyone involved in the market would be dead, as would you, and the value of all currencies would go to zero. Betting that there will be a global thermonuclear war would therefore always be a waste of money; either you'd lose the bet, or you'd win and be unable to collect. So nobody would place the bet. Therefore, such a market would imply a probability of zero for such an event. By extension, this means that the implied probability of global thermonuclear war from *all* market prices is zero. But the probability isn't actually zero.
That conclusion is generalizable to other events that are only catastrophic for the contract in question. If you buy a put option on a stock from the company that issues the stock itself, that put option will increase in value as the stock drops . . . until the stock drops so much that the credit risk of the company becomes a factor, because if the company goes bankrupt the put option will expire worthless, as it is a form of equity rather than debt. If you buy flood insurance from an insurance company, that insurance becomes more and more valuable as the odds of flood increase . . . until such time as it becomes clear that liabilities to the insurer from flood insurance policies written are so large that further claims could bankrupt it. At that point, a higher likelihood of flood makes the policies worth less, not more, because the odds of bankruptcy invalidating the policy dominate over the odds of you having a valid claim.
I suspect that a lot of extreme tail risk possibilities simply aren't priced into markets not because markets can't estimate their probability but because of this interaction between the possibility of massive loss and the possibility that a bet on such a loss will not be collectable. If there is a plausibly high correlation between winning the bet and being unable to collect, then betting at all is irrational. But if nobody bets, then the information they have won't be incorporated into market prices, and market prices will not properly incorporate participants' own estimates of the probability of tail risk events.
Good points. I do agree, although I suspect that the majority of potential bets are not subject to those extreme tail risks. For instance, this problem was not a factor in the markets I looked at in The Midas Paradox.
I was prompted by your comments on markets and foreign policy, but I think about this particularly wrt A.I. tail risk, both positive and negative, since those risks are very broadly discussed and I think do manifest this correlation problem that make markets a potentially poor guide to quantifying said risks.
"I’m not really a fan of the Maduro raid, for “rules utilitarian” reasons that I discuss in a post that I wrote a few weeks ago but haven’t gotten around to publishing yet. But I do believe that Hanania is correct that the raid is a net positive for Venezuela and indeed may well end up being a positive for the US as well."
I'm glad you ended with the 1938 Munich comparison, because this is not convincing (and Hanania's track record is not reassuring!). In 1938 the future would not have been visible, and it wouldn't've been clear in 1939, 1940, or most of 1941 either.
Has any society profited in the medium/long-run from the removal of its leader by a foreign empire in pursuit of hegemonic control of the natural resources located within a given hemisphere?
The answer is "No". It's possible someone can find a partial exception that half fits the description, but the baseline logic is "absolutely not, not even close, the odds are OVERWHELMINGLY against it." Growth needs to happen endogenously, it cannot be imposed by external forces concerned with one variable. Interventions and regime change can work, but not if they are extractive.
What the removal of Maduro produced is almost certainly a stream of future Maduros -- or maybe Che Guevaras, or maybe Subcomandante Marcoses -- not long-running prosperity.
More generally, every(?) crash was immediately preceded by significant market optimism, which is measured in terms of high equity market prices. Without that previous optimism there could not have been a crash.
VEZ's position is very precarious, not on a steady upwards trajectory. Iran is showing anti-US factions how to use drones to inflict massive amounts of pain on global capitalist networks, very cheaply. This is a replicable -- and exportable -- playbook.
"Has any society profited in the medium/long-run from the removal of its leader by a foreign empire in pursuit of hegemonic control of the natural resources located within a given hemisphere?"
preceded
"It's possible someone can find a partial exception that half fits the description"
Which is what you did. Even then, it took decades-long occupations by foreign military powers and the complete removal of the entire political apparatus, neither of which has happened or will happen in VEZ, so "half fits" is still reaching. Plus, those countries thrived due to their embeddedness within regional and global economic and security institutions created for that purposes, whereas today institutions are being decimated left and right.
So they were not removed as part of a resource-extractive imperial campaign, which was a key parameter. Instead they were subsidized heavily to build manufacturing sectors. Doesn't seem likely that 47 is going to do that. So we won't get that result, we'll get the "failed state / societal collapse" result.
Markets are worth trusting over poorly coordinated decision making, but not necessarily over well-informed thoughtful decisions. For example if a CEO decides his company should build a new widget factory, and his stock goes down on the news, but it ends up being a runaway success, it's at least plausible that he was smart instead of lucky.
> I suspect that the US stock market might rise if Trump were to pressure Ukraine into surrendering to Russia, or even ceding the Sudetenland . . . er . . . I mean the Donbas. Call me a hypocrite, but I worry about the tail risk of appeasing Putin.
This is why I'm a lot more bullish than hanania on the Iran stuff. Yes, markets took a (milder than expected but nontrivial) hit, but the downside risks of inaction here were significantly larger than those of not standing up to Putin.
I don't understand how Russia can possibly be a greater threat than Iran. Russia doesn't have any particular hostility towards America (certainly nothing like Iran's decades of state sponsored anti-american terrorism). It's also far less vulnerable to American actions - years of war and millions of Russian and ukranian dead haven't meaningfully weakened it that much. It's both far more hostile and far more solvable a problem than Russia.
I'd argue that our support for Ukraine has made it less likely that Russia will invade Nato countries like Estonia, and action which could trigger a crisis that might eventually involve nuclear weapons.
Russia has thousands of nukes pointed at the US, while Iran has zero. The threats aren't even close to being equal.
Iran has zero *because we stepped in to stop them having them*. If we hadn't done this they'd have nukes pointed at the US (with ICBMs to carry them) within a decade. And as they've shown with bombing gulf countries recklessly, they have far less compunctions about using them than Russia ever has.
I can see the argument that this is all indirect and we shouldn't take action. But so are the arguments that Russia might've eventually attacked Estonia. And Russia doesn't even have regular death to America marches.
"And as they've shown with bombing gulf countries recklessly"
Wait, you are saying that Iran's "reckless" bombing gulf countries is worse than Russia's bombing of Ukraine? What is the relative death toll from each? Iran is not trying to conquer its neighbors. Iraq did try to conquer parts of Iran, with US support. There's a lot of history here that the US media doesn't talk about.
I do believe that Obama's policy caused Iran to put its nuclear program on hold, and that this was a useful endeavor. I'm certainly no fan of the Iranian regime and I hope it collapses. I fear this war may be a setback--I hope I'm wrong.
The question here isn't about the death toll, it's about the probability of a country deciding to suddenly escalate against previously-uninvolved or semi-involved participants. We have many decades of Russia having nuclear weapons and not using them, and their hostility to the US is (or at least was, pre-war) at historic relative lows. There wasn't a significant risk of them launching nuclear weapons at America. Iran acts out in ways that make it a significantly higher probability. Not a certainty - there's definitely an argument against involvement in both cases - but certainly they're a far bigger risk than Russia.
It's true that the Obama policy did suffice to stop them from finishing steps and going all the way to building nukes, but they kept investing in terrorist networks, ballistic missile programs and nuclear tech (without quite going all the way to a bomb) during it and became significantly more dangerous over the period. I can see arguments it was the least bad option to try to make that work, but it's certainly not a risk free option (just like giving Hitler chzechoslovakia wasn't).
> This is why I'm a lot more bullish than hanania on the Iran stuff. Yes, markets took a (milder than expected but nontrivial) hit, but the downside risks of inaction here were significantly larger than those of not standing up to Putin.
Same as the downsides of an emboldened Russia except up to eleven, letting a regime that's far more hostile to America than Russia ever was have an unstoppable ICBM and nuclear program.
You're saying the choice was either start a war with Iran or they get a nuclear weapon? I can see 2 other options, at least:
1. Don't kill the JCPOA in 2017.
2. Accept the concessions that Iran was willing to make now that would have prevented completion of a nuclear weapon.
The way you all talk about starting a war with another country is depressing. A small chance at a good outcome (with no explanation or historical precedent) justifies almost anything.
To be clear, the jcpoa wasn't some kind of panacea. It would've expired by now even if we kept to it, and enabled Iran to keep their ballistic missile program and terrorism support. I'm split on whether abandoning it was correct, but this problem wouldn't have vanished if we hadn't.
Iran agreed to a non-proliferation agreement with us. All seriously reporting indicated that they would have agreed to another one, even though we broke the last one for no apparent reason. Your conclusion is that we had no alternative but war? I don't get it.
>Meh, by that logic we also shouldn't have de facto started a war with Russia.
We started a war with Russia? News to me. I thought Russia started it when they began sending soldiers into Ukraine.
I didn't say ukraine started a war with Russia, I said we did. We chose not to stay out of it (Ukraine wasn't a close American ally we had to step in for) because we saw a chance to weaken a geopolitical adversary.
Meh, by that logic we also shouldn't have de facto started a war with Russia. Which is a coherent position, but if you hold it I want to see receipts about opposing Ukraine support.
While there are clear positive signs in the Venezuelan stock market and for a couple of oil companies that are likely to increase operations (disclosure, I have been a Chevron shareholder for a number of years and don't think the need for oil is going away anytime soon), only one person from the regime in power was removed. We have no clue at all whether the remnants of the Maduro clique will make things good for the average citizen, nor do we know whether elections will be held anytime soon. this could be just the US propping up a regime nobody likes the same way we did during the 1950s in Central America.
We may not learn any more about the impact of Fed policy than the initial market movements. But there are things we could learn about Venezuela that would shed light on whether the move in January was good. For instance, we could learn more about Delcy Rodriguez’s involvement, and about her character as a leader, which might have been known to insiders at the time.
Richard Hanania? Does Stephen Miller have any interesting points to make about stock markets?
If you want to excuse writing for explicitly racist far-right publications under a pseudonym, then fine. But Hanania hasn't demonstrated any actual change in thinking and he contributed to Project 2025. No thanks.
He got caught writing racist things under a pseudonym, then cashed in on a redeemed extremist narrative. Would he have stopped being a secret racist if he hadn't been caught? I guess we can't be sure, but it's not a very convincing road to Damascus moment.
There are plenty of people who weren't secret Nazis that we can look to for political science insights. Also, people who aren't contributing to the destruction of American society with anti-DEI nonsense. That's what I call silly.
I don't think your timeline is accurate. In any case, this comment section is not the place to discuss your views of Hanania, which have no bearing on this post.
I don't think so. I'd probably quote Hitler if I thought the quote was worth discussing. However, most evil people don't have comments worth discussing. They're stupid.
I find Hanania's recent posts to be quite interesting. For instance, he's probably the internet's most astute critic of the MAGA cult.
I understand the point about Hitler from 2026 America, but I think I'd feel differently in 1930s Germany. I wouldn't have wanted to hear about the brilliant logistics insights of Eichmann or whatever, not least because Nazis succeeded due to propaganda.
We're in the midst of a concerted effort to destroy American democracy, again largely through propaganda. Hanania participated in that effort leading up to the 2024 election. His political science is in service of a lesser world and I don't want to help him achieve his goals.
I don’t think the only issue in the trump case is that outcomes are ambiguous, its that prices are endogenous. The price of the DOW has an impact on how trump acts, so you don’t know what a price change means.
Example: trump passes a 100% tariff tomorrow, stocks fall by 8%. Does this mean the policy only impacted valuations by 8%? No, it means that people are afraid to sell in case their selling causes the tariffs to be rescinded.
I sort of agree with your position in principle but I think there are a lot of caveats.
One important one: what if the policy / event is communicating some information, markets could adjust based on the information rather than the policy event. For example suppose there are two related policies A and B, and markets are unsure if this general family of policies will be pursued. When policy A is enacted, they may react based on changing views on the chance of B being enacted as well, even if A is unimportant itself.
Maybe a country is more likely to declare war on another country if it feels good about its military prospects, so on the declaration of war markets adjust not just based on the actual policy of war, but also the private information about military capacity being revealed by the decision.
Agreed. I would argue that the main reason that stocks fell on Liberation Day was not the tariffs themselves, rather what the decision revealed about how Trump would make decisions in his second term.
Enjoyed reading this. I wrote about the Venezuela intervention six weeks after the fact, trying to separate "I'm glad this happened" from "I endorse the method" — and found that most commentary collapses those two sentences into one. Your market-signal approach offers a cleaner way to evaluate the first sentence while remaining agnostic on the second.
What strikes me about extending this to Iran is that the market is answering your question in real time — and the answer is negative, which by your own framework is dispositive. The more interesting problem may be your tail-risk caveat: markets can't price the second and third-order cascades that don't show up in equity indices but reshape the world anyway. Nuclear proliferation incentives, refugee flows, the weaponisation of chokepoints by middle powers — these are the 1% risks with enormous expected-value consequences that no betting line captures.
Here's the Venezuela piece if useful: https://rajeshachanta.substack.com/p/the-helicopter-the-courtroom-and
Yeah, I always liked this Sumnerian viewpoint on equity markets as signals.
Interestingly, the S&P 500 and other indices gave up some lately, but not much.
There are some strange-o signals out there:
The 1987 stock market crash, known as "Black Monday," occurred on October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plummeted 22.6%.
Huh?
But in general....pretty good signals....
Is not your approach more mainstream among economists than your post suggests? I recently listened the presentation of new AI-based fiscal measures database by the IMF and in the ensuing discussion the presenter stressed that a key advantage of the database is that it allows tracking of measures on a quarterly basis and hence a much better measurement of multipliers compared to annual tracking, since a lot of things influencing the economy will typically happen in one year.
I think there's another problem with using market signals to estimate the likelihood of extreme catastrophe: because there's no way to collect on such bets, it's not rational to place them, and if they aren't placed then information about those possible events won't affect the market price.
Consider a market where you can bet that there will be a global thermonuclear war. If such a war happened, everyone involved in the market would be dead, as would you, and the value of all currencies would go to zero. Betting that there will be a global thermonuclear war would therefore always be a waste of money; either you'd lose the bet, or you'd win and be unable to collect. So nobody would place the bet. Therefore, such a market would imply a probability of zero for such an event. By extension, this means that the implied probability of global thermonuclear war from *all* market prices is zero. But the probability isn't actually zero.
That conclusion is generalizable to other events that are only catastrophic for the contract in question. If you buy a put option on a stock from the company that issues the stock itself, that put option will increase in value as the stock drops . . . until the stock drops so much that the credit risk of the company becomes a factor, because if the company goes bankrupt the put option will expire worthless, as it is a form of equity rather than debt. If you buy flood insurance from an insurance company, that insurance becomes more and more valuable as the odds of flood increase . . . until such time as it becomes clear that liabilities to the insurer from flood insurance policies written are so large that further claims could bankrupt it. At that point, a higher likelihood of flood makes the policies worth less, not more, because the odds of bankruptcy invalidating the policy dominate over the odds of you having a valid claim.
I suspect that a lot of extreme tail risk possibilities simply aren't priced into markets not because markets can't estimate their probability but because of this interaction between the possibility of massive loss and the possibility that a bet on such a loss will not be collectable. If there is a plausibly high correlation between winning the bet and being unable to collect, then betting at all is irrational. But if nobody bets, then the information they have won't be incorporated into market prices, and market prices will not properly incorporate participants' own estimates of the probability of tail risk events.
Do you agree?
Good points. I do agree, although I suspect that the majority of potential bets are not subject to those extreme tail risks. For instance, this problem was not a factor in the markets I looked at in The Midas Paradox.
I was prompted by your comments on markets and foreign policy, but I think about this particularly wrt A.I. tail risk, both positive and negative, since those risks are very broadly discussed and I think do manifest this correlation problem that make markets a potentially poor guide to quantifying said risks.
"I’m not really a fan of the Maduro raid, for “rules utilitarian” reasons that I discuss in a post that I wrote a few weeks ago but haven’t gotten around to publishing yet. But I do believe that Hanania is correct that the raid is a net positive for Venezuela and indeed may well end up being a positive for the US as well."
I'm glad you ended with the 1938 Munich comparison, because this is not convincing (and Hanania's track record is not reassuring!). In 1938 the future would not have been visible, and it wouldn't've been clear in 1939, 1940, or most of 1941 either.
Has any society profited in the medium/long-run from the removal of its leader by a foreign empire in pursuit of hegemonic control of the natural resources located within a given hemisphere?
The answer is "No". It's possible someone can find a partial exception that half fits the description, but the baseline logic is "absolutely not, not even close, the odds are OVERWHELMINGLY against it." Growth needs to happen endogenously, it cannot be imposed by external forces concerned with one variable. Interventions and regime change can work, but not if they are extractive.
What the removal of Maduro produced is almost certainly a stream of future Maduros -- or maybe Che Guevaras, or maybe Subcomandante Marcoses -- not long-running prosperity.
More generally, every(?) crash was immediately preceded by significant market optimism, which is measured in terms of high equity market prices. Without that previous optimism there could not have been a crash.
VEZ's position is very precarious, not on a steady upwards trajectory. Iran is showing anti-US factions how to use drones to inflict massive amounts of pain on global capitalist networks, very cheaply. This is a replicable -- and exportable -- playbook.
I'd argue that both Germany and Japan profited by having their leaderships forcibly replaced after WW2.
The question
"Has any society profited in the medium/long-run from the removal of its leader by a foreign empire in pursuit of hegemonic control of the natural resources located within a given hemisphere?"
preceded
"It's possible someone can find a partial exception that half fits the description"
Which is what you did. Even then, it took decades-long occupations by foreign military powers and the complete removal of the entire political apparatus, neither of which has happened or will happen in VEZ, so "half fits" is still reaching. Plus, those countries thrived due to their embeddedness within regional and global economic and security institutions created for that purposes, whereas today institutions are being decimated left and right.
So they were not removed as part of a resource-extractive imperial campaign, which was a key parameter. Instead they were subsidized heavily to build manufacturing sectors. Doesn't seem likely that 47 is going to do that. So we won't get that result, we'll get the "failed state / societal collapse" result.
Markets are worth trusting over poorly coordinated decision making, but not necessarily over well-informed thoughtful decisions. For example if a CEO decides his company should build a new widget factory, and his stock goes down on the news, but it ends up being a runaway success, it's at least plausible that he was smart instead of lucky.
> I suspect that the US stock market might rise if Trump were to pressure Ukraine into surrendering to Russia, or even ceding the Sudetenland . . . er . . . I mean the Donbas. Call me a hypocrite, but I worry about the tail risk of appeasing Putin.
This is why I'm a lot more bullish than hanania on the Iran stuff. Yes, markets took a (milder than expected but nontrivial) hit, but the downside risks of inaction here were significantly larger than those of not standing up to Putin.
"it's at least plausible that he was smart instead of lucky."
Yes, but the best ex ante forecast is that the investment was probably unwise, and he got lucky
I view Russia as a far greater threat than Iran. We should have stuck with Obama's policy.
I don't understand how Russia can possibly be a greater threat than Iran. Russia doesn't have any particular hostility towards America (certainly nothing like Iran's decades of state sponsored anti-american terrorism). It's also far less vulnerable to American actions - years of war and millions of Russian and ukranian dead haven't meaningfully weakened it that much. It's both far more hostile and far more solvable a problem than Russia.
I'd argue that our support for Ukraine has made it less likely that Russia will invade Nato countries like Estonia, and action which could trigger a crisis that might eventually involve nuclear weapons.
Russia has thousands of nukes pointed at the US, while Iran has zero. The threats aren't even close to being equal.
Iran has zero *because we stepped in to stop them having them*. If we hadn't done this they'd have nukes pointed at the US (with ICBMs to carry them) within a decade. And as they've shown with bombing gulf countries recklessly, they have far less compunctions about using them than Russia ever has.
I can see the argument that this is all indirect and we shouldn't take action. But so are the arguments that Russia might've eventually attacked Estonia. And Russia doesn't even have regular death to America marches.
"And as they've shown with bombing gulf countries recklessly"
Wait, you are saying that Iran's "reckless" bombing gulf countries is worse than Russia's bombing of Ukraine? What is the relative death toll from each? Iran is not trying to conquer its neighbors. Iraq did try to conquer parts of Iran, with US support. There's a lot of history here that the US media doesn't talk about.
I do believe that Obama's policy caused Iran to put its nuclear program on hold, and that this was a useful endeavor. I'm certainly no fan of the Iranian regime and I hope it collapses. I fear this war may be a setback--I hope I'm wrong.
The question here isn't about the death toll, it's about the probability of a country deciding to suddenly escalate against previously-uninvolved or semi-involved participants. We have many decades of Russia having nuclear weapons and not using them, and their hostility to the US is (or at least was, pre-war) at historic relative lows. There wasn't a significant risk of them launching nuclear weapons at America. Iran acts out in ways that make it a significantly higher probability. Not a certainty - there's definitely an argument against involvement in both cases - but certainly they're a far bigger risk than Russia.
It's true that the Obama policy did suffice to stop them from finishing steps and going all the way to building nukes, but they kept investing in terrorist networks, ballistic missile programs and nuclear tech (without quite going all the way to a bomb) during it and became significantly more dangerous over the period. I can see arguments it was the least bad option to try to make that work, but it's certainly not a risk free option (just like giving Hitler chzechoslovakia wasn't).
> This is why I'm a lot more bullish than hanania on the Iran stuff. Yes, markets took a (milder than expected but nontrivial) hit, but the downside risks of inaction here were significantly larger than those of not standing up to Putin.
What were the downsides?
Same as the downsides of an emboldened Russia except up to eleven, letting a regime that's far more hostile to America than Russia ever was have an unstoppable ICBM and nuclear program.
You're saying the choice was either start a war with Iran or they get a nuclear weapon? I can see 2 other options, at least:
1. Don't kill the JCPOA in 2017.
2. Accept the concessions that Iran was willing to make now that would have prevented completion of a nuclear weapon.
The way you all talk about starting a war with another country is depressing. A small chance at a good outcome (with no explanation or historical precedent) justifies almost anything.
To be clear, the jcpoa wasn't some kind of panacea. It would've expired by now even if we kept to it, and enabled Iran to keep their ballistic missile program and terrorism support. I'm split on whether abandoning it was correct, but this problem wouldn't have vanished if we hadn't.
Iran agreed to a non-proliferation agreement with us. All seriously reporting indicated that they would have agreed to another one, even though we broke the last one for no apparent reason. Your conclusion is that we had no alternative but war? I don't get it.
>Meh, by that logic we also shouldn't have de facto started a war with Russia.
We started a war with Russia? News to me. I thought Russia started it when they began sending soldiers into Ukraine.
I didn't say ukraine started a war with Russia, I said we did. We chose not to stay out of it (Ukraine wasn't a close American ally we had to step in for) because we saw a chance to weaken a geopolitical adversary.
Meh, by that logic we also shouldn't have de facto started a war with Russia. Which is a coherent position, but if you hold it I want to see receipts about opposing Ukraine support.
Remind me why they were so hostile to the US that they might want to put a nuke on an ICBM and point it at the US?
Is it really a good idea to use one measure (say the stock market)?
The idea behind a balanced scorecard still looks looks more promising to me.
"Is it really a good idea to use one measure (say the stock market)?"
No.
While there are clear positive signs in the Venezuelan stock market and for a couple of oil companies that are likely to increase operations (disclosure, I have been a Chevron shareholder for a number of years and don't think the need for oil is going away anytime soon), only one person from the regime in power was removed. We have no clue at all whether the remnants of the Maduro clique will make things good for the average citizen, nor do we know whether elections will be held anytime soon. this could be just the US propping up a regime nobody likes the same way we did during the 1950s in Central America.
The point is that market movements give us a clue.
We may not learn any more about the impact of Fed policy than the initial market movements. But there are things we could learn about Venezuela that would shed light on whether the move in January was good. For instance, we could learn more about Delcy Rodriguez’s involvement, and about her character as a leader, which might have been known to insiders at the time.
I agree that foreign policy outcomes are much harder to evaluate than changes in aggregate spending.
Richard Hanania? Does Stephen Miller have any interesting points to make about stock markets?
If you want to excuse writing for explicitly racist far-right publications under a pseudonym, then fine. But Hanania hasn't demonstrated any actual change in thinking and he contributed to Project 2025. No thanks.
"But Hanania hasn't demonstrated any actual change in thinking"
This is just being silly.
He got caught writing racist things under a pseudonym, then cashed in on a redeemed extremist narrative. Would he have stopped being a secret racist if he hadn't been caught? I guess we can't be sure, but it's not a very convincing road to Damascus moment.
There are plenty of people who weren't secret Nazis that we can look to for political science insights. Also, people who aren't contributing to the destruction of American society with anti-DEI nonsense. That's what I call silly.
I don't think your timeline is accurate. In any case, this comment section is not the place to discuss your views of Hanania, which have no bearing on this post.
OK. It's your blog. Makes me wonder if there's anyone you wouldn't platform, though.
I don't think so. I'd probably quote Hitler if I thought the quote was worth discussing. However, most evil people don't have comments worth discussing. They're stupid.
I find Hanania's recent posts to be quite interesting. For instance, he's probably the internet's most astute critic of the MAGA cult.
I understand the point about Hitler from 2026 America, but I think I'd feel differently in 1930s Germany. I wouldn't have wanted to hear about the brilliant logistics insights of Eichmann or whatever, not least because Nazis succeeded due to propaganda.
We're in the midst of a concerted effort to destroy American democracy, again largely through propaganda. Hanania participated in that effort leading up to the 2024 election. His political science is in service of a lesser world and I don't want to help him achieve his goals.