#167 / Champagne Socialism?

 

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Andy Kessler writes a column for The Wall Street Journal. He calls it, "Inside View." On Monday, May 18, 2026, Kessler and The Journal took aim at "socialism," the favorite bugaboo of all self-respecting "capitalists." Kessler and The Journal titled his column, "Our Champagne Socialists." Give that link a click if you'd like to read the entirety of what Kessler has to say. 

Kessler (and The Journal, I am sure) are particularly distressed at the idea that "America's youth" are becoming "infatuated" with socialism. According to Kessler, almost two-thirds of those under thirty years of age have a "favorable view of socialism." Horrors! Here's Kessler's prescription: 

We need to educate our youth with a full-throated defense of capitalism and free markets because for too many, the most intelligent thing they say coming out of college is, “It’s like, whatever.”

Having actully taught college classes, relatively recently, I know that Kessler is just indulging himself in his personal brand of self-imposed ignorance in saying what I have just quoted. In my personal experience, recent college graduates are far more informed (and articulate) than Kessler suggests. 

Here is a statement of Kessler's understanding of how "capitalism" and "socialism" pair off: 

Thanks to capitalism, we are living in unprecedented good times. Space launches. Weight-loss wonder pills. Happy-hour-friendly autonomous cars. AI bots that will meet our every imaginable need. A more peaceful Middle East on the horizon. A resurging middle class around the globe. But that’s nothing that a few commies—er, democratic socialists—couldn’t destroy in a generation.

In fact, I think it's probable that those young people whose intellect Kessler is so quick to deprecate, look at "space launches" and see a massive waste of national resources to benefit a couple of big-headed billionaires (Musk and Bezos, in particular). I think young people might well be a little leery of those "weight-loss wonder pills" because there seems to be growing evidence that these extremely expensive drugs provide only a temporary "cure" for weight gains that probably do need to be addressed, but that will only be dealt with effectively, in the long run, by a dietary "regime change," as opposed to hugely-expensive wonder-pills, whose sales are primarily benefitting the pharmaceutical industry giants selling them. [Please note the political reference there, alluding to the hypothetical socialist/communist revolution that Kessler fears is on the horizon. That was intentional].

Autonomous cars? This is one of the signal benefits of "capitalism"? Well, could it be that American youth would like to be in charge of their own transportation, directly? That would certainly be my own (old guy) preference, but we "old guys" are, like, really dedicated to "socialism," since we tend heavily to favor Social Security, which even has an allusion to "socialism" in its very name. Maybe those young people, seeing how their parents may be able to survive only because of this "socialistic" program are concerned that the Congress, run by those who cater to the billionaires, has not seen fit to provide for its long-term continuance. It could be that those "young people" that Kessler denigrates are wising up to the fact that the future of Social Security is, essentially, their future, and that this part of their future, at least, is being directly threatened by that "capitalism" that Kessler believes has delivered us into such "unprecedented good times." I could, of course, go on!

By the way, has global warming, coming upon us already, and threatening human civilization, been factored into the Kessler equation which he claims has delivered us to "unprecedented good times"? And what about peace in the Middle East? Really? It's just around the corner? Are America's youth really so far off base to worry about that topic, given the war so recently initiated, without any consultation with the people of this country at all, and with the current president of the United States, at one point, recently, threatening the total extermination of the civilization of Iran?

And what about that "resurging middle class around the globe" claim? What's Kessler talking about there? In case he hasn't been paying attention to what's happening in the United States, the future of the middle class seems in ever greater jeopardy. Maybe our "American youth" are onto something!

I am not a big fan of "-isms" of any type, ranging from "capitalism," to "socialism," to "nationalism," but I particularly object to those who promote a bunch of lies, tied to the praise, or the deprecation, of any specific "-ism." 

Thus, I think Kessler's column, linked above, is best printed out, crumpled up, and then tossed into a recycling bin. Get real, Andy! It's the "capitalists," not the "socialists" that are building what might be called a "champagne civilization" - that's a political and economic order that blesses the affluent, and REALLY blesses the super-rich, and  that leaves out the majority of the people struggling to make it through.

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#166 / Let's Hear It For "American Openness"

  

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The picture above, depicting what some might want to believe were the normal and everyday activities of film critic and journalist Rex Reed, appeared in the Saturday-Sunday, May 16-17, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. Reed died on May 12th of this year, and this picture was employed to head up a column by Peggy Noonan, onetime speechwriter for president Ronald Reagan. 

Noonan's column, a tribute to Reed, was titled, "Rex Reed And The Legacy Of American Openness." Her column celebrated the fact that Reed was "a self-made figure in show business, a nobody who became a somebody in a competitive field."

The aim of Noonan's column, though, was not really to celebrate Reed's career as an example of something extraordinary. The column argues, using Reed's life as an example, that the kind of success he enjoyed - going from "nobody" to "somebody" - is, actually,  typical, and is what makes America great:

You can think, within two seconds, of stories of nobodies who became somebodies. In business you can go from before Andrew Carnegie to after Steve Jobs. Beyond business you’ll think: Lincoln in the dirt-floor log cabin becomes president, Oprah Winfrey of rural Mississippi hardship invents a media empire. You could think of Yip Harburg of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, whose father worked in a sweatshop and who went on to write “Over the Rainbow” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” and became a reigning Broadway presence. Jay-Z, from public housing in Brooklyn, became a cultural powerhouse, and a wealthy man. 

The wide-openness of the system in which they rose has always distinguished America—it’s part of our mythos, our ethos, our style. And it’s no accident.

"Mythos" is a fancy way of saying "myth," and I believe that there are lots of people who would argue that Reed's experience is emphatically not typical of the reality of American life, and particularly not typical of the reality of the nation's "economic" life - and certainly not today. Noonan wants to use Reed's story as a way to praise "capitalism." However, having recently read Palo Alto, by Malcolm Harris, I am somewhat less convinced that "capitalism" is the bullseye to aim for, as we consider how to organize our society. The full title of Harris' book is this: Palo Alto: A History Of California, Capitalism, And The World. In that book, "capitalism" comes across as the villain, not the hero. 

I think it is worth giving Noonan's argument a fair hearing, however. The "openness" she celebrates (economic and otherwise) is, in fact - at least in my mind - something that does deserve praise. And I agree with Noonan that the United States has been somewhat "open" to people with good ideas, a commitment to hard work (and a little luck, quite often). My own father's life, I think, exemplifies the story that Noonan wants to tell. 

The way Noonan pitches the story, "capitalism" is the reason for the "openness" that has allowed various "nobodies" to become "somebodies" in our society: 

Private property, the rule of law—in the American system common people could make binding agreements, own property, open businesses. You didn’t have to be fancy to own something. Bankruptcy laws helped, by making failure survivable. You fail and try again without being destroyed. None of it is perfect, it was never perfect. Other systems have geniuses too, but America like no country before it offered its geniuses a stage and a chance to star in the show. State socialism has always been constrictive, heavy, static.

What Noonan describes, in my mind, however praiseworthy, is not "capitalism." "Capitalism" would like to claim such benefits as "the rule of law," but that isn't "capitalism." That's the "rule of law." What Noonan leaves out (and a Ronald Reagan Republican could be expected to leave this out) is the idea that our system of government allows ordinary people, through "politics," to establish rules that promote openness, and that allows us to construct a society, and a "world," where the kind of "openness" that Noonan celebrates is a possibility (though never an inevitability, of course). The options are not "capitalism" versus "state socialism," as Noonan would have us believe. The options are between a government that might reflect the "ethos" of the Franklin Roosevelt presidency versus a government that reflects the self-interested "money is everything" approach of what's happening right now. 

The "tech bro" billionaires are the ones who are arguing that "capitalism" is what makes America great. I don't think that's it. What has made America "great" has been the kind of community spirit manifested during the "Roosevelt years," when our government really did come across, to most ordinary Americans, as belonging to them, and as a way that we could, acting together, provide the individual support and assistance that can help we "nobodies" become "somebodies." That's still the way we can make that kind of society happen. Backing "capitalism," which elevates the power of money over everything else, isn't the way to build a road to where we want to go.

By the way, and with real appreciation for Rex Reed, I don't believe that the kind of "openness" that Noonan wants to celebrate (and that I am saying is worthy of celebration) can, or should, turn us into people who sit on the beach with a book, barfefoot, in a sportscoat and an ascot, smoking a big cigar as the tide comes in - or goes out. 

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#165 / False Prophet

 

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There is a new book out, Where The Music Had To Go, by Jim Windolf. Windolf is a features editor at The New York Times, and he has published articles, reviews, essays, and humor pieces in various magazines and journals, as well as publishing some short fiction. He lives in New York City. Windolf's new book is about "How Bob Dylan And The Beatles Changed Each Other - And The World." 

I am not quite through with the book, as I write out this blog posting, but I am thinking that I am not really going to put the book down until I do finish it. I am a longtime Dylan fan, but am not otherwide much invested in popular (or other) music, and I have never really been too interested in The Beatles. This book may change my view. 

As it turns out, Dylan and The Beatles had a rich interaction, right from the very beginning, as they both rose (almost simultaneously) to public notice. Windolf documents these interactions. What is even more extraordinary, to my mind, is the fact, revealed by Windolf, that both the Beatles and Dylan trace their origin to Little Richard, who, among other things, combined his "out there" rock and roll music with a personal devotion to Jesus Christ. Like I say, I am going to keep on reading!

Thinking about Dylan and religion - appropriate on a Sunday, I'd say - led me to revisit "Rough And Rowdy Ways," Dylan's last full album. If you click that link you'll see the list of songs included on the album, with links to the lyrics of each song. I have always liked, "False Prophet," myself.

The first verse of "False Prophet" announces "another day of anger - bitterness and doubt." In other words, as Dylan says in aother song, "it was a normal day." Here's the entirety of that first verse:

Another day without end - another ship going out
Another day of anger - bitterness and doubt
I know how it happened - I saw it begin
I opened my heart to the world and the world came in

The "world," and all our human preoccupations, can just "come in," and overwhelm us - and most usually it does. Dylan's song, "False Prophet," certainly tells us that. But... in the end, that isn't, really, what the guy singing the song wants you to accept, and take for real. There is something else out there, beyond all those things that assault us on all our days "without end." There is something out there that is not "of this world." It's implied, not spoken, not described, but just so you know, the guy singing the song is no "false prophet." He's "the enemy of treason - the enemy of strife." He's "the enemy of the unlived meaningless life." 

If you believe in all those things that the world brings in, you're missing the real thing. That's what the guy singing this song knows, and he's no "false prophet."

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#164 / Pretty Good Advice From A Political Fugitive

 

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Joseph Kabila is pictured above. You can read The New York Times' article from which I obtained the picture by clicking the following link: "Congo's Leader For 18 Years Is Now A Fugitive." That, by the way, is the headline found on the hardcopy version of the article. When you click the link, the headline will be a bit different, but the story is the same. 

Kabila was the fourth president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, serving from 2001 to 2019. He took office ten days after the assassination of his father, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila. He is now in hiding, and facing the death penalty. Kabila calls the charges against him "sheer stupidity." 

Here's a piece of "good advice" I obtained from reading about Kabila in The Times (emphasis added): 

As crickets struck up and glassy Lake Kivu disappeared into the night, [Kabila] said his main failure as president was not transforming the Congolese into “better citizens.” Then, he said, “you get better leaders.”

Query whether a president can "transform" a nation's citizens into "better citizens" by anything that the president does (though George Washington's decision to leave the presidency after two terms in office, rather than seeking out continued control over the government, did, arguably, help teach citizens of the United States of America that it was they, not the president, who are the most important players in our system of self-government). Kabila, incidentally, appears not to have known about what George Washington did, and Kabila apparently held on to his presidency even after the end of the term for which he was elected.

Here is my comment on the quotation set out above. While I don't agree that a "president" can, generally, and by his own, personal action, "transform" citizens into "better citizens," I absolutely do agree that "better citizens" will result in "better leaders." 

If that's true - and I do think it is - then what can we say about ourselves, as citizens, given who is now leading our country, after having been elected two times?

I think it's fair to say that if we were all "better citizens" we would have a different (and different kind of) president, and that any such president would be a "better leader" than the leader we actually have. If we did have such a "better leader," I am convinced that the nation (and the world) would be immeasurably better off. As I have noted in a previous posting, I think it's clear that we made a mistake in electing our current president. 

What does it take to be a "better citizen"? Well, in my book, "better citizens" are those who are, personally and directly, engaged in "self-government" by being actively and personally involved in the politics that determines what our governments (at every level) actually do. 

Voting? That's good (and note that our current president is trying to truncate or extinguish our ability to do even that). However, "voting" is not the main job of a citizen. That's a de minimus definition. "Better citizens" get involved - along with some friends and others who share their views and concerns - and try, with those friends and associates, to make the government do what they think would be good, and that would be the "right thing." That is what "self-government" requires - your personal work and involvement on issues related to our government. If you don't like what your Congress Member is doing about Palestine, for instance, get together a group of friends and figure out what you think the best strategy would be to force that Congress Member to change. Impossible? Actually, not! But it does take a lot of work. That's the work of "self-government."

The result, just like former president Kabila says, is "better leaders." 

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#163 / Think Different

 

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"Think Different" was an advertising slogan - and was actually a complete advertising campaign - propagated by Apple Computer. That's a young Steve Jobs pictured above with the apple. 

Click right here if you'd like to watch the "original" television ad for the "Think Different" campaign. The video begins with a salute to "the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels...." Charlie Chaplin is pictured first, followed by Bob Dylan, and then on to "lesser rebels." Whenever I think of that "Think Different" advertising campaign, and remember the video's listing of the "crazy ones," I am tempted to move from the list of the rebels provided by Apple and to insert my own, personal addition, with a salute ".... to the people who decide that they don't need to use proper grammar."

Anyway, the "Think Different" slogan popped into my brain as I read Malcolm Harris' book, What's Left: Three Paths Through The Planetary Crisis. Harris, you may remember from one of my earlier blog postings, is the author of Palo Alto: A History Of California, Capitalism, And The World. I have mentioned that book before, and more than once, and I can now report that I have finally finished reading it - it's over 700 pages long! When I was done with Palo Alto, I started in on Harris' next book, which is a proposal for how we might survive the massive planetary disruptions to which our inattention to Global Warming is quickly delivering us. 

Among other things, Harris gives us the bad news that "thinking differently" will really be necessary if we are going to avoid planetary disaster, and that it's not going to be all that easy to do what we need to do. For instance, what about getting rid of gasoline-driven automobiles, and substituting in all-electric vehicles? That sounds like a plan that will help, right? Probably not, says Harris! Currently, the United States has a ratio of almost one automobile per person, and the environmental and global warming impacts of replacing all those gasoline-powered vehicles with vehicles that are "all-electric" will be a net negative in terms of planetary protection - at least that's true the way Harris does the calculation. I think he has a pretty good argument. 

So, if we are going to survive, Harris warns us, we need to go way beyond "thinking different." What we really need to do is to start "living different" - and in a pretty big way. No more one car per person! We need to get rid of most of our cars, period - and that really does mean that we need to "live differently." Sorry about using proper grammar, there. That's just the way I'm wired!

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#162/ Imposing An Authoritarian, Leftist Majority

 

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Allow me to introduce you to Bruce Gilley, pictured above. Gilley is no longer associated with New College of Florida. Currently, he is a professor of political science and director of the PhD program in Public Affairs and Policy at the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. 

I picked out the above picture to give you a hint that Gilley is a bit of an academic "radical." Not too many political science professors are willing to say that they think colonialism has had a lot of really good effects, but while I haven't read the book, personally, that does seem to be Gilley's contention. Wikipedia tells us that Gilley gained international acclaim for "The Case for Colonialism," which was first published in an advance online edition of Third World Quarterly in 2017. Fifteen members of the Third World Quarterly board resigned over Gilley's article.

Gilley's "untraditional" approach to politics continues. I first heard about Gilley from an opinion column that ran in the March 30, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. In that column, titled, "What Do Democrats Mean By 'Democracy'?" Gilley opines that the greatest danger to "democracy" in the United States is the Democratic Party, which aims to impose a "leftist majority." You can, at least maybe you can, read Gilley's column by clicking the link. 

As for Gilley's thesis, you may be as surprised as I was by the suggestion that anyone who is concerned that our current president is attempting to install an authoritarian government here in the United States is just about 180 degrees off base. Don't worry about the Republican Party. The real authoritarians are the Democrats!

To be honest, I am not very much enthused by either one of our major political parties, and I really don't like the fact that we seem to have nothing but a binary choice: Red or Blue. Republican or Democrat. It is most definitely not comforting to be told that either way we swing, we are really choosing authoritarianism. But is Gilley right? I am not immediately dismissive of the idea that the Democratic Party has authoritarian tendencies. In 2016, I was an official delegate for Bernie Sanders, and the party apparatus played lots of dirty tricks to squelch any possibility that Bernie might have been nominated to represent the party in the upcoming election - the election that put our current president into office for his first term. 

Regular readers of this blog of mine know that I think that what we really need is "self-government," and that "democracy," so-called, is something different from that. When ordinary citizens are not, themselves, in some significant numbers, personally involved in our government (at all levels, and particularly at the local level) the wealthy and the well-connected (the same  people) are almost sure to take over. 

Isn't that what has happened to us (both parties participating)? 

If you don't like "colonialism," and you don't like "authoritarianism," either, consider getting together with a group of friends and start taking over your government, beginning from the bottom up!

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#161 / Fighting An Infectious Disease

 

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Plough is the publishing house of the Bruderhof, an international movement of Christian communities, which include both families and single people from a wide range of backgrounds. By clicking the following links, you can learn more about the Bruderhof’s faith, history, and daily life, or find a Bruderhof community near you to arrange a visit. I, personally, subscribe to Plough Quarterly, an online and hardcopy publication whose online version includes the following statement: "Another Life Is Possible." 

Well, I have to say that I really like that statement. I think we all need to be shooting for "another life." 

Whoops! Wait a minute! "Shooting" isn't quite the right word here!

In fact, on May 12, 2026, I read an article titled, "Eliminating the World’s Most Dangerous Epidemic," which Plough identifies as "Violence." Profiled in the article is Dr. Gary Slutkin, who is someone who spent most of his career as an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization. Plough says that Slutkin "knows what he is talking about," and it is Slutkin's contention that "violence is a contagious disease." He doesn't mean that metaphorically, either. 

I found Slutkin's article pretty compelling. If you click right here you can read it for yourself, and I do recommend that!

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#160 / Private Credit

 

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My gratitous investment advice is freely given, here on my daily blog. I do NOT recommend "crypto." Click this link if you'd like to see my multiple explanations for why I don't. 

I am also not a fan of so-called "Private Credit." I just want to make my views on that topic clear, since the "Streetwise" column in the May 11, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal suggests that "Private Credit Likely Isn't Disaster." That link cites the "hardcopy" version of the headline. Online, the headline is even more forthcoming, and more cautionary: "Private Credit Isn’t a Major Threat—Probably."

"Probably?" Hey, if that's how you like to make your investment decisions, please feel free to roll your dice. Like "crypto" (this is my opinion), "private credit" is, essentially, a "bet" that the value of the investments made are going to go up. In other words, most "investments" in the arena of "private credit" are fundamentally speculative.

I found out, recently, that the so-called "gift article" links that I have passed on, from The Wall Street Journal, are time-limited, and since I sometimes write my blog postings quite a bit "ahead" of the date on which they are posted in this blog, the idea that clicking on a "gift link" will get you to the article is almost as speculative as your potential "private credit" investment. 

My apologies to anyone who tried to utilize one of my past Wall Street Journal "gift link" postings. I'm not going to advertise them in any of my future blog commentaries. But, to make up for this past error, and to make this blog posting much longer than it would otherwise be, I am providing, below, the entire text of James Mackintosh's May 11th "Streetwise" column, providing those who read it with the following assurance: If you invest in "private credit" offerings you won't lose your money, probably. 

Probably! 

And.... to cite to my favorite songwriter-philosopher, Bob Dylan: "I just said, 'Good luck.'”

oooOOOooo

Private Credit Isn’t a Major Threat—Probably
The question is whether trouble in the sector could spill into the wider economy or—disaster—the wider financial system

By James Mackintosh
May 9, 2026 

Financial history provides lots of lessons, but few are more obvious than those regarding lending.

When lending rises rapidly, watch out: Much of it won’t get repaid. When lenders focus on how to get money out the door, rather than whether it will ever come back, watch out. When lenders finance long-dated loans with money that can be taken out sooner, watch out. And when the lenders have a lot of leverage, rely on dodgy credit ratings or are influenced to lend by regulatory demands, prepare for serious problems.

Welcome to the world of private credit.

Individual investors are already finding that private credit sold to them doesn’t deliver what they hoped, and many have been unable to get their money back as quickly as they thought.

The question is whether private-credit trouble could spill into the wider economy or—disaster—the wider financial system, especially the banks where ordinary people keep their deposits. I’m inclined to think that while a bunch of private-credit investors might lose money, losses for the rest of the financial system will be manageable.

But I’m also cautious about repeating the mistake of Ben Bernanke, who as Federal Reserve chairman in 2007 told the world the financial system was insulated from subprime mortgage failures.

Within months of his reassuring words it was clear that tendrils from subprime had wormed their way deep into finance, and the resulting loss of trust led first to a recession and then to the biggest financial crisis since 1929.

So, go back to those historical warnings.

• Rapid rise in lending: check. Private lending has risen 10-fold in a decade and a half, though estimates vary wildly from $1.6 trillion in assets under management just in the U.S. to well above $3 trillion, depending on what is included. 

• Focus on lending, not repayment: check. This is more anecdotal, but even now the discussion among big private-credit funds as they gathered at “Junk Bond King” Michael Milken’s annual conference in Los Angeles was about how to deploy big gobs of money, much of it to data centers, power and other suppliers to artificial-intelligence firms. 

• Asset-liability mismatch: check. This is only a small part of private credit, but individuals who didn’t read the fine print of semiliquid business-development companies have discovered that the promise of quarterly withdrawals comes with a cap. When everyone wants to get out, everyone gets only a bit of their money. It started with Blue Owl, but now private-credit funds run by Apollo, BlackRock and KKR have limited withdrawals. A slow-motion run on these funds is under way. 

• Leverage: perhaps. According to the Office of Financial Research, most funds borrow almost nothing, but 5% of funds borrow 3.6 times their capital or more to juice returns. That’s still less than the 10 times or more typical for banks, but it’s a lot for a fund. Regulators also worry that a lack of transparency has allowed leverage to be layered in ways that might escape attention.

“Leverage in private credit exists at multiple and varying levels, including within the portfolio companies, private credit funds, at the sponsor level, and investor financing,” said the Financial Stability Board, a global grouping of regulators, on Wednesday. “This layering effect may amplify losses during market stress.”

Regulators mostly worry that trouble in private credit will spill over to banks that lend to it or to insurers that invest in it.

This past week, another bank was drawn in. The failure of Market Financial Solutions, a private British mortgage lender, caused a loss of $400 millionfor HSBC, which had lent money to an arm of Apollo Global Management for a warehouse facility to MFS.

“You always tend to see these kind of excesses after a very benign period for credit,” said Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer of Pimco, the bond manager. “It started with a very reasonable thesis—banks were pulling back because of regulation—and has now expanded into more and more aggressive forms of lending.”

The scale of private credit in all its forms is comparable in size to U.S. subprime in 2007. But even with the layers of debt, private credit doesn’t seem to have nearly so much leverage and leverage on leverage as back then.

It could be that the failure of MFS and U.S. “cockroaches” Tricolor and First Brands are a sign that the easy lending amid zero rates in 2020 and 2021 is finally catching up with companies. Lots of other private-credit-backed companies have quietly modified terms to avoid formal defaults, known by detractors as “extend and pretend,” while the use of payment-in-kind rather than cash interest payment rose sharply as rates increased.

Private lenders say concern is overdone, overblown by the publicity around the funds that restricted withdrawals and too much exposure to loans to software companies. But the sector remains opaque.

Debt BuildupAs interest rates rose, borrowers added to debt via payment in kind (PIK) rather than pay​interest in cash.

“It’s troubling that we don’t have more information,” said Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. “The oldest rule of financial accounting is nobody hides good news so that makes me think that whatever’s there is probably bigger and more threatening than it first appears.”

Private-credit losses would have to be big to cause serious problems for their leverage suppliers, with total borrowing from banks and other lenders by private-credit managers estimated by the OFR at up to $540 billion, mostly on fairly conservative terms.

A previously unthinkable risk now being entertained by some is trouble at life assurers. A run—where customers rush to withdraw their money, forcing deeply discounted asset sales and spiraling into catastrophe—is dismissed by most, because of the high penalties and taxes that have to be paid to get out of an annuity or life policy.

But with life companies now holding about 10% of their assets in private credit, according to the Financial Stability Board, their holdings opaque, many owned by private equity, and a widespread belief that they benefit from shopping around for credit ratings that minimize their need for capital, it is enough of a risk to be discussed by major investors.

Equally, bank lending to private credit might be more concentrated, badly structured or more leveraged than the banks and their regulators realize, and so might go wrong more quickly than expected in a recession.

“A whole lot would have to go wrong for it to get to be a systemic issue,” said Anne Walsh, chief investment officer of Guggenheim Partners Investment Management. “I just don’t get the sense that this one has the same hallmarks as past issues.” She’s probably right. Probably.

oooOOOooo

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#159 / The Ellsberg Paradox

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Jan R. Thomas, working with Daniel Ellsberg's son, Michael Ellsberg, has published a selection of Daniel Ellsberg's writings. I am sort of taking for granted that anyone reading this blog posting will know who Daniel Ellsberg was, but click the link to his name if you don't, for a brief Wikipedia write-up. 

The "short version" is that Ellsberg was a Defense Department analyst who made public The Pentagon Papers, a top-secret 1967 Department of Defense study that detailed America's political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Ellsberg, who helped write this study, faced years in prison for making these secret papers public, but he escaped a prison sentence (thanks in significant part to the improper activities of President Nixon). By letting the public know what was really going on in Vietnam, Ellsberg helped to bring the Vietnam War to an end, and is a hero to Vietnam-era antiwar activists and draft-resisters, like me, and to those who are working, now, to end the threat of nuclear annihilation. 

The image at the top will provide you with the title of the recent book I mentioned above, which is a collection of hundreds of Ellsberg's thoughts, culled from his handwritten, personal notebooks. They are certainly worth reading!

Not extensively discussed in the book is "The Ellsberg Paradox." Here is how Wikipedia explains it: 

In decision theory, the Ellsberg paradox (or Ellsberg's paradox) is a paradox in which people's decisions are inconsistent with subjective expected utility theory. John Maynard Keynes published a version of the paradox in 1921. Daniel Ellsberg popularized the paradox in his 1961 paper, "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms". It is generally taken to be evidence of ambiguity aversion, in which a person tends to prefer choices with quantifiable risks over those with unknown, incalculable risks. 

Ellsberg's findings indicate that choices with an underlying level of risk are favored in instances where the likelihood of risk is clear, rather than instances in which the likelihood of risk is unknown. A decision-maker will overwhelmingly favor a choice with a transparent likelihood of risk, even in instances where the unknown alternative will likely produce greater utility. When offered choices with varying risk, people prefer choices with calculable risk, even when those choices have less utility (emphasis added).

To provide an example, suppose you will be paid $100 if you pick a white marble out of one of two different urns set before you. You only get one pick! You know that each urn contains 100 marbles, and you know that Urn #1 contains 50% black marbles, and 50% white marbles, with Urn #2 containing an unknown percentage of white marbles and an unknown percentage of black marbles. You can decide which urn to choose from; so, which urn do you pick? As it turns out, people will most often choose to pick from Urn #1, where the probabilities are certain, even if they're not that great. People intrinsically dislike situations where they cannot attach probabilities to outcomes, even if that is not, really, rational.

With respect to decisions about war and peace, we often think that we can estimate, pretty clearly, what our chances will be if we fight. We don't, though, have a very clear idea what our chances would be if we didn't fight - if we were to "give peace a chance," to quote John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

The Ellsberg Paradox relates to "decision theory," and what Ellsberg tells us - in his notes in the book pictured at the top, and by way of the "Ellsberg Paradox" - is that we need to take a chance on doing what we think is "moral," and "right," and not limit ourselves only to actions that we think will "win." 

Seems like a lesson worth learning, don't you agree?

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https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/search/?q=truth%20and%20consequence

#158 / How Many Times? How Many Roads?

 

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"Blowin' In The Wind" is one of Bob Dylan's most famous songs (and one of the songs, written very early in his career, that established him as a musician to pay attention to, to take seriously - a musician who, in fact, would later win the Nobel Prize for his songwriting).  

I have come to believe that this song, "Blowin' In The Wind," is actually a profound meditation on a deeply "religious" or "spiritual" understanding of what our life is all about. The following verse is found in the New Testament, in the Bible, in John 3:8 (King James Version):

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

In other words, as I interpret this, the Bible is telling us that the Spirit that has created and that animates and sustains this world - the Spirit that inspires and shapes our individual lives - cannot be defined by our own categories, and cannot be held to the timelines that we would like to impose upon it. Our deepest desires, though - what we most deeply need - are present. They are not ours only! Our Creator cares for us, and is not in ignorance of our longings. How long will it be until prejudice and discrimination come to an end, till justice is done? How many times must we kill each other, and destroy the cities that we have built to shelter and celebrate our lives? How many times? How many roads? How many years? 

Have faith. I think that is the message. There is a Spirit that knows our hopes and needs. An answer to all our questions will be provided - but not according to our own schedule or demand. This is, indeed, a "religious" and "spiritual" thought. Our answer is coming. It is on the way!

Fear not!

oooOOOooo

I am providing both the lyrics to "Blowin' In The Wind," below, and a YouTube link here, and also furnished above, that will let you hear Bob Dylan sing that song.

 

Blowin’ in the Wind
Written By: Bob Dylan

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ’n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ’n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ’n’ how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ’n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ’n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind

Copyright © 1962 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1990 by Special Rider Music

oooOOOooo

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https://youtu.be/vWwgrjjIMXA?si=S-6fPTR7zgbhEws2

#157 / Emphasis On The "We"

 

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Matthew J. "Matt" Garcia is a professor of Latin American, Latino and Caribbean studies, history and human relations at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of “From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement.” In an opinion column that ran in The Santa Cruz Sentinel on Thursday, March 26, 2026, Garcia says that it is "time for Cesar Chavez to fall." The column also ran in The Los Angeles Times on March 19, 2026. 

I am assuming that those who are reading this blog posting of mine, in early June, will know all about the disclosures naming Chavez as a sexual predator. No further need to rehearse, or even comment upon those things - at least, so I think.

I do, however, want to provide you with the last paragraph in Garcia's column (emphasis added): 

We need to acknowledge that whatever the UFW accomplished, it often did so as a collective. There’s a reason the UFW’s slogan, “Sí se puede,” is translated as “Yes, we can.” History shows us that organizers, workers and advocates solved problems by coming together, not by blindly following orders from Chavez. This is the moment for Cesar to fall.

Yes, WE can! "Sí se puede." The grammatical fact is that "we" doesn't actually appear, in any literal way, in that Spanish expression. It's just implied!

In all our endeavors, and particularly in politics, let's never forget the fact that the emphasis is always on the "WE."

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https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2026-03-19/cesar-chavez-abuse-allegations-united-farm-workers

#156 / Even Smart People Get Fooled

 

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I am citing, today, to the March 21-22, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, I am making it possible for you to read an article titled, "Why Even Smart People Believe AI Is Really Thinking." That's a "gift link," or so I am told. No "paywall" should prevent you from reading what Christopher Mims has to say about that subject. Just click the link!

Thinking that software "agents" that respond to our directions are actually "thinking," just like we do (and better, actually) is what Mims is calling the "Turing Trap." 

The "Turing Trap" is something quite different from the "Turing Test," which is something that you have probably heard about. The "Turing Test" is a way to try to figure out whether or not a computer has attained human intelligence. As Mims explains, "if a person chatting with a bot couldn't tell if it was human, it might as well be declared intelligent." So, people are starting to believe that AI "Chatbots" are now just as "intelligent" as humans. People aren't able, really, to tell the difference. 

Mims calls this a "trap," because there is a fallacy in this idea that "intelligence" is the same thing as "speaking." However, "speaking isn't the same as thinking, let alone being," claims Mims.

I encourage you to read Mims' article. Here's from his final paragraph: 

It appears we have created in AI a compelling technology that hijacks instincts that are essential to our survival. It’s unclear where we go from here, but if today’s lawsuits over the addictiveness and harms of social media are any indication, we’ll potentially see years of disagreement—and damage—before AI companies face real consequences.

Real people. In "real life." Small groups of them, meeting in person. That is where the politics that remakes our world begins.

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https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-tools-sentience-b98fc6e6

#155 / Here's A Quote

 

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Marc Johnson, pictured above, was an influential professional skateboarder who helped define modern street skating and made formidable tricks look effortless. He "played a leading role in shaping the San Jose and Bay Area skateboarding scenes and had a hand in some of the most recognizable developments in street skating in the late 1990s and early 2000s." 

My report on Johnson relies on what I learned from his obituary, which ran in the June 2, 2026, edition of The New York Times. Johnson died on May 26th. He was 49 years old. 

Here is a quote, from Johnson, which I commend to you: 

If you think of something, you can do it, you know?

Johnson was onto something, there, with that quote from his "Hot Chocolate" skateboarding video! That "Johnson Rule" works for skateboarding. And it works for politics, too (which does have some similarities to skateboarding, after all). That "Johnson Rule" works for life in general! 

Try it! That's my advice. You might like it. In politics, it's best practiced with friends!

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/sports/marc-johnson-skateboarder-dead.html

#154 / Killing For Fun

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An Associated Press article that appeared in the May 9, 2026, edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel bore the following headline: "Trump Is Lifting Restrictions On Hunting In National Parks." The same story appeared in numerous papers from around the nation. Hunters will probably cheer; at least, that's my supposition.

As for me, I think it would be good for us, as human beings, to start trying to wean ourselves away from the idea that killing is fun. Our national parks, I think, should not be turned into killing grounds. That is, clearly, my personal opinion. I know that others have an opposite thought.

Given that we, as Americans, pride ourselves on our 250-year old commitment to democratic self-government, I believe that decisions about opening up our national parks to hunting should be a decision made by our elected representatives, debating the issues involved. 

That isn't what has just happened, and this recent story provides one more example of how the nation is currently going down a different path, in which one person, our president, has arrogated to himself a decision that really needs to be made not by executive fiat, but by democratic debate. 

Just saying! If we don't demand democracy, and (really) insist on it, all the "No Kings" demonstrations in world aren't going to steer us back to self-government.

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https://tpwd.texas.gov/education/hunter-education/online-course/firearms-and-ammunition-1/sights-and-safeties

 

#153 / Same Fate As The Dinosaurs?

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If you have been following the news, you probably know that SpaceX will soon promote an Initial Public Offering (IPO) - a sale of its stock to the public. This stock offering will possibly end up making Elon Musk (pictured) the world's first trillionaire. As the BBC tells us, in the article I have linked in the first line of this blog posting, "SpaceX makes rockets, offers a satellite internet service called Starlink, and also owns Musk's controversial artificial intelligence (AI) firm xAI. The initial public offering (IPO) on the US stock market is set to be the largest in Wall Street history and could start next month under the ticker symbol SPCX."

Naturally, the BBC is not alone in covering this news. The Saturday-Sunday, May 23-24, 2026, edition of The Wall Street Journal had a couple of articles on the SpaceX IPO. Ben Cohen wrote a column titled, "SpaceX’s Ambitions Are Intergalactic. Its Business Is Selling You Internet." Corrie Driebusch's article appeared under this headline: "SpaceX Is Aiming for Civilization on Mars. Its IPO Couldn’t Be More Old School." Both of these are worth reading, and I think that clicking on the links will get you to them. Here is an excerpt from Cohen's column that caught my attention (emphasis added): 

SpaceX consists of three segments: space, AI and connectivity, which is primarily driven by Starlink. Last year, the Starlink division was responsible for $11 billion of revenue, which amounted to more than 60% of the company’s total sales. It was the most valuable part of the business—and the only profitable one. And for years, it has been absolutely essential to the success of SpaceX. As it turns out, even companies that defy the laws of gravity are bound by the laws of economics. 

The mysterious finances of Musk’s company were detailed this week in SpaceX’s IPO filing, which is far more bonkers than financial paperwork has any right to be. 

The highlights include the company describing itself as “the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth,” claiming a total addressable market of $29 trillion, revealing that Musk’s pay package is tied to “the establishment of a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants” and declaring: “We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs.”

Now, when I say that the report above "caught my attention," I am somewhat understating my reaction. First, Musk, apparently, thinks that it's actually going to be possible to transport a "human colony" to Mars - a "colony" with "at least one million inhabitants." Remember how much time, effort, and money it took to put a couple of guys on the Moon? A million on Mars? Wow! That's a truly different thing, indeed. 

But check out the last line I have quoted. Musk doesn't "want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs." We do remember what happened to the dinosaurs, right? They all died, as conditions on Earth changed to make the planet incapable of supporting their life, going forward. 

So.... it looks like Musk believes that this is what's going to happen in the relatively near term (within Musk's lifetime) with respect to human beings. Humans are either going to die out here on Earth, or they are going to have to migrate to Mars, to avoid extinction. As a personal note, Mars does not seem very hospitable, or a nice place to live, at least to me (witness the photo below). 

My suggestion? Let's forget about putting our money into a company that is betting against the continued ability of human beings to live on Planet Earth, and start investing our money on keeping Earth habitable. Wouldn't it make more sense to use our financial resources to fight off global warming, and to bring peace to the world (eliminating the possibility of a global nuclear war), instead of betting on some whacked-out potential trillionaire's dream that he, and a million or so pals, can all scoot off to Mars, avoiding the extinction of human life on this planet?

Check out the pictorial comparison below. Don't you agree that sticking with Earth is the better bet?

Earth

Mars

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4pe2953q1o

(2) - https://www.walmart.com/ip/Earth-From-Space-Satellite-Image-Photographic-Print-by-Unknown-24-x-24-Sold-by-Art-com/6260921363

(3) - https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/mars-lander-will-peer-inside-the-red-planet/