Central Bankers’ limitations; Trump fund raising

election
US
finance
Author

Ben

Published

June 21, 2024

Trump’s fund raising caught up with Biden’s

“Trump Has Rapidly Eroded Biden’s Edge in 2024 Cash Battle”

Central Bankers’ limits [op-ed]

“Markets ignore the internal politics of central banks at their peril”

  • “Neither the US Federal Reserve’s Jay Powell nor the European Central Bank’s Christine Lagarde is a certified member of the central bankers’ club. Lacking the economics training and record, they must operate as deft chairs of technocratic boards.”

    • Powell is a Georgetown JD (with a investment banking career); Largarde has law and English degrees (MA) from France with experiences in the law (antitrust) and bureaucracy.

  • The lack of their won expertise renders decision making ‘constrained’ by data. Even when they’d like to cut rates, for instance, the monthly inflation data readings would prevent it.

Campus tension between Jews and Muslims

“At Stanford, 2 Reports on Bias Show Extent of Divide Between Jews and Muslims”

  • “One report documented antisemitic threats. The other, anti-Muslim threats. Both signaled that there may be little room for agreement.”

  • “The report on antisemitism — by a university subcommittee on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, consisting of faculty, students and an alumnus — found that acts of antisemitism have ranged from an anonymous threat on social media against a student journalist who had written about antisemitism to what students said was intimidation in the classroom and residence halls.”

    • examples: “a social media message calling for a student journalist to be “waterboarded with gas and set on fire” after he wrote an essay about antisemitism; an instructor who had told students that “only six million” Jews had died in the Holocaust, and compared it with the 12 million deaths in colonial Belgium; and mezuzahs, a religious talisman, being ripped from some students’ door frames.”

  • “The other report — by Stanford’s Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities committee — described what it called “a rupture of trust” between students, staff and faculty. “These communities have felt afraid for their safety, unseen and unheard by university leadership,” it said.”

    • examples: “a threatening email from a Stanford alumnus to two undergraduate members of Students for Justice in Palestine with the subject line, “College Terror List — You Made It!”; a professor haranguing students at a pro-Palestinian protest, accusing them of doing “the work of Islamic jihad and Hamas”; and a printout of a Palestinian flag taken off a student’s door and ripped in half.”