No, the weight of a kilogram is completely arbitrary. They are trying to fix it to something but right now it is just a weight.

A atomic clock works by counting the vibrations in an atom. The atomic clock fails when it miscounts the vibration of an atom, causing the error. The new clock is so good at counting that errors rarely occur.

And probably it can't be - sadly.

Legally it can be challenging to release early drafts of the script â" there are in a weird in-between state between the original book and the final product. Also, you don't want to burn your bridges. Piss off people by doing a tell all and you can't get them for your next project. Brad Pitt's input on this project may have been iodic but you many need Brad Pitt (or his wife) in a future project.

Slightly off topic, but this is one of the reasons why I am interested in seeing "Jodorowsky's Dune". It is a documentary about a early attempt to film Dune in the 70s - not David Lynch's 80s attempt. Most everybody is dead or out of the business so people can be honest. Personally I would like a good look at the preproduction art but I suspect that the rights to that are just a overlapping mess between Herberts estate, the production company, and the individual artist.

We can debate if a weaker dollar would have a overall positive or negative impact, or on whom it would have impact on.

However, it would mean higher interest rates. Bonds that have been issued would go down in value but we don’t care about those – we care about the new bonds that will be issued.

As you pointed out, a weaker dollar means more expensive imports, more expensive imports means higher inflation, and higher inflation means a higher interest rate.

Also, a weaker dollar reduces the return of US bonds held by foreign owners, so they would demand a higher interest rate to compensate.

You have it mostly right, and I don’t think Russia has the power, but let us take this a step further. Damage, in theory, could be inflicted. Consider 2 things – supply and demand and that bonds are basically cash. Dump the bonds, demand for cash / bonds remains the same, Supply goes up, ergo the price of USD cash goes down. The US dollar becomes weaker relative to other currencies, fueling inflation. Everybody can buy the bonds that Russia is selling, so newly issued bonds would have to have a higher real interest rate.

See what George Soros did – he broke the bank of England. Now the US is nowhere near the irrational state the Bank of England was, but you can get an idea of the damage that can be done.

IIRC, The amount of US dollars that Russia holds is very small- they export oil and gas and turn right around and buy consumer goods. . China has the large stockpile of USD.

I heard a quote this weekend – That Europe could inflict more damage on Russia then Russia could on Europe, but that Russia was more willing to bear the pain.

O.K. – I will step up to the plate.

You need some inequity to drive the system. Exceptional talent should deserve exceptional rewards. Too much inequity kills the system. The in crowd, the entrenched, the elite dominate the system to their own ends. People get into the top not because of exceptional talent but because they were born into it or luck - either the lottery or only those who are exceptionally talented and lucky (see big name movie stars).

The trick is to find a sweet spot.

You also want the least distortive system, which is why I favor a modest inherence tax. Everybody knows that they are going to die and they can’t take it with them. Having a low inherence tax would be less distortive then a high income tax. FYI, I am a small government person – but even a small government needs a tax base. Not having taxes is another debate.

Is that a fair comparison? IIRC Alibaba does a huge amount of b2b stuff – which has a large notional value but a very thin payout for Alibaba.

Sigh, you are confusing spread with real interest rates.

Spread = Interest on loans - Interest on deposits. The bigger the spread the more profitable the bank is.

Then review this formula: Nominal Interest Rates = Real Interest Rates + Expected Inflation.

Real interest rates is what the banks care about because that is how one increase value. Nominal interest rates is what the customer gets quoted and can’t go down below zero. Hold nominal interest rates fixed, decrease inflation (or increase deflation) and real rates increase. This is basically true because most banks have a positive leveraged duration (more long term loans then short term deposits)

One can argue that one can better manage (increase) the spread during times of inflation but the evidence is very mixed. But we do know that deflation does increase the spread, giving the bankers free money.

You are wrong. Inflation is caused by the change in the demand of money and the supply of money. In Bitcoin the supply of money may be fixed (I would argue that the amount of currency is fixed, not money, but that is another point.). However the demand for money is not. As the economy grows or contracts, and people risk level for holding a safe assets changes, so will the demand for money. I can think of more cases where the demand for money would increase (growing GDP) then decease, so I would think BitCoin would have a strong deflationary bias.

Also, inflation does not help the rich. It destroys the value of cash, bonds, and annuities (which tend to be held in both absolute and relative terms by the wealthy) and eats into the profits of banks (read up on duration leverage, which is how banks make their money and explains the risks and rewards of borrowing money short term and lending it long term.)

What do you mean by private? Private banks own all of the Fed stock – but that stock does not come with voting rights and dividends are capped. The government gets to appoint the board . It is a hybrid institution. Being semi-private is part of the insulation from government but it is hardly absolute. If you want something totally independent you need to go back when the Bank of England was a private bank.

You are confusing productivity with the aggregate supply for money in aggregate (inflation). Yes, productivity is a factor but it is just a slice of the pie. Monetary policy can have a much greater factor. The Fed can turn on or off the supply of money at a whim. Productivity gains are harder and take longer.

Having a low inflation rate has not always been the goal of the central bank. There have been times (70s in particular) when the Fed cranked up inflation. They now know they were wrong. And I would reevaluate your chart. Read up on the issues and flaws of using a price index to measure inflation – It is one of the better measures we have but there are still flaws. Factor in that the data prior to 1912 is second rate. Then redo your chart us a log scale, which you should do when looking at percent changes.

Milton Friedman said that central banks never had to worry about deflation because they could inflate the money by “dropping money out of a helicopter”. There are plenty of examples where the printing press was turned on and inflation jumped up.

Exactly. Both of those countries had low inflation and high growth. I would state that low inflation was not the primary driver and Switzerland has the luxury of being a small high demand market.

Oh – and my second point. The Fed is well insulated from the day to day politics and the bankers have as much influence as the politicians – and bankers hate inflation.