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Open thread Oct. 3, 2022

Dan Crawford | October 4, 2022 9:53 am

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Open thread Sept. 30, 2022, Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com)

13 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

October 4, 2022 at 10:14 am

Less Turnover, Smaller Raises: Hot Job Market May Be Losing Its Sizzle

NY Times – Oct 3

Unemployment is low, and hiring is strong. But there are signs that frenzied turnover and rapid wage growth are abating. …

… By many measures, the labor market is still extraordinarily strong even as fears of a recession loom. The unemployment rate, which stood at 3.7 percent in August, remains near a five-decade low. There are twice as many job openings as unemployed workers available to fill them. Layoffs, despite some high-profile announcements in recent weeks, are close to a record low.

But there are signs that the red-hot labor market may be coming off its boiling point.

Major employers such as Walmart and Amazon have announced slowdowns in hiring; others, such as FedEx, have frozen hiring altogether.

Americans in July quit their jobs at the lowest rate in more than a year, a sign that the period of rapid job switching, sometimes called the Great Resignation, may be nearing its end. Wage growth, which soared as companies competed for workers, has also slowed, particularly in industries like dining and travel where the job market was particularly hot last year. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

October 4, 2022 at 10:23 am

Overdue awards for work on ‘Quantum Entanglement’.

Three scientists share Nobel Prize for work on quantum science

Boston Globe – Oct 4

(AP) — Three scientists jointly won this year’s Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their work on quantum information science that has significant applications, for example in the field of encryption.

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were cited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for discovering the way that particles known as photons can be linked, or “entangled,” with each other even when they are separated by large distances.

“Quantum information science is a vibrant and rapidly developing field,” said Eva Olsson, a member of the Nobel committee. “It has broad and potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing and sensing technology.” …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 4, 2022 at 10:32 am
  
  Aspect’s experiment (Wikipedia)
  
  Aspect’s experiment was the first quantum mechanics experiment to demonstrate the violation of Bell’s inequalities. Its result allowed for further validation of the quantum entanglement and locality principles. It also offered an experimental answer to Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen‘s paradox which had been proposed about fifty years earlier.
  
  The experiment was led by French physicist Alain Aspect at the École supérieure d’optique in Orsay between 1980 and 1982. Its importance was immediately recognized by the scientific community. Although the methodology carried out by Aspect presents a potential flaw, the detection loophole, his result is considered decisive and led to numerous other experiments (the so-called Bell test experiments) which confirmed Aspect’s original experiment. …
  
  ‘Spooky’ quantum-entanglement experiments win physics Nobel
  
  Nature – Oct 4
  
  Three quantum physicists have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for their experiments with entangled photons, in which particles of light become inextricably linked. Such experiments have laid the foundations for a plethora of quantum technologies, including quantum computers and communications.
  
  Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger will each share one-third of the 10-million-kronor (US$915,000) prize.
  
  “I was actually very surprised to get the call,” said Zeilinger, a physicist at the University of Vienna, at the press conference announcing the award. “This prize would not be possible without the work of more than 100 young people over the years.”
  
  The trio’s experiments proved that connections between quantum particles were not down to ‘hidden variables’, unknown factors that invisibly tie the two outcomes together. Instead the phenomenon comes from a genuine association in which manipulating one quantum object affects another far away. German physicist Albert Einstein famously called the phenomenon ‘spooky action at a distance’. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 4, 2022 at 10:36 am
  
  Three quantum physicists have won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for their experiments with entangled photons, in which particles of light become inextricably linked. Such experiments have laid the foundations for a plethora of quantum technologies, including quantum computers and communications.
  
  Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger will each share one-third of the 10-million-kronor (US$915,000) prize.
  
  “I was actually very surprised to get the call,” said Zeilinger, a physicist at the University of Vienna, at the press conference announcing the award. “This prize would not be possible without the work of more than 100 young people over the years.”
  
  The trio’s experiments proved that connections between quantum particles were not down to ‘hidden variables’, unknown factors that invisibly tie the two outcomes together. Instead the phenomenon comes from a genuine association in which manipulating one quantum object affects another far away. German physicist Albert Einstein famously called the phenomenon ‘spooky action at a distance’. …
  
  ‘Spooky’ quantum-entanglement experiments win physics Nobel
  
  Nature – Oct 4
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 4, 2022 at 11:09 am
  
  <a href=”https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03088-7″>‘Spooky’ quantum-entanglement experiments win physics Nobel</a>
  
  Nature – Oct 4
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 4, 2022 at 11:16 am
  
  FWIW, Chinese physicists have done the heavy-lifting in entanglement research.
  
  Chinese Researchers Achieve Stunning Quantum-Entanglement Record
  
  Scientific American – July 2018
EMichael says:

October 4, 2022 at 12:48 pm

ibid.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

October 4, 2022 at 4:22 pm

Ex-president sends case to his Supreme Court.

Trump Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in Review of Mar-a-Lago Records

NY Times – Oct 4

Former President Donald J. Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to bar the Justice Department from reviewing documents marked as classified that the F.B.I. removed from his Florida estate, saying that an appeals court had lacked jurisdiction to rule on the matter.

Although the Supreme Court is dominated by six conservative justices, three of them appointed by Mr. Trump, it has rejected earlier efforts to block the disclosure of information about him, and legal experts said Mr. Trump’s new emergency application faced significant challenges.

The new filing was largely technical, saying that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, had not been authorized to stay aspects of a trial judge’s order appointing a special master in the case.

“The 11th Circuit lacked jurisdiction to review the special master order, which authorized the review of all materials seized from President Trump’s residence, including documents bearing classification markings,” the application said. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 5, 2022 at 8:24 am
  
  Talk of ‘Civil War,’ Ignited by Mar-a-Lago Search, Is Flaring Online
  
  NY Times – Oct 5
  
  Soon after the F.B.I. searched Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents, online researchers zeroed in on a worrying trend.
  
  Posts on Twitter that mentioned “civil war” had soared nearly 3,000 percent in just a few hours as Mr. Trump’s supporters blasted the action as a provocation. Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform. Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts, as measured by Critical Mention, a media-tracking firm.
  
  Posts mentioning “civil war” jumped again a few weeks later, after President Biden branded Mr. Trump and “MAGA Republicans” a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech on democracy in Philadelphia.
  
  Now experts are bracing for renewed discussions of civil war, as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

October 5, 2022 at 8:18 am

The First Global Deflation Has Begun

NY Times – Oct 4

Around the world, rapid economic recovery from the Covid shock unleashed the largest wave of inflation we have seen since the early 1980s. In response, in the summer of 2021, central banks began raising interest rates. Brazil led the way. In early 2022, the Federal Reserve joined in, unleashing a bandwagon effect: Once the Fed moves and the dollar strengthens, other countries either raise their interest rates or face a sharp devaluation, which further stokes inflation.

The outline of this pattern is familiar. But the breadth is new. We now find ourselves in the midst of the most comprehensive tightening of monetary policy the world has seen. While the interest rate increases are not as steep as those pushed through by Paul Volcker as Fed chair after 1979, today’s involve far more central banks.

There are moments when history-making creeps up on you. This is one of those moments. As far as the advanced economies have been concerned, the era of globalization since the 1990s has been one of disinflation and monetary expansion by central banks. Now that balance is being reversed, and on a global scale.

To add to the disinflationary pressure, we are also seeing Covid-era stimulus programs wound up in favor of measures like the Inflation Reduction Act that promise to cut deficits and take demand out of the economy. In the United States in the third quarter, the so-called “fiscal drag” will slow the economy by more than 3.4 percent of gross domestic product, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  October 5, 2022 at 8:20 am
  
  The consequences of this global deflationary cycle are hard to predict. We have never done this before on this scale. Will it get inflation down? Very likely. But we are also courting the risk of a global recession that at its worst could bring down housing markets, bankrupt businesses and states, and throw hundreds of millions of people worldwide into unemployment and distress.
  
  In light of this worst-case scenario, policymakers have to consider three questions: Are interest rates too blunt an instrument for dealing with our current economic imbalances? Can the central bankers pick the right rate, so as to slow inflation but not strangle the economy? And can a debt-laden global economy survive a serious interest rate rise led by the Federal Reserve?
  
  Inflation in much of the world has been driven by Covid-related supply-chain bottlenecks and energy price shocks. Raising interest rates is not going to bring more gas or microchips to market, but rather the contrary. Reducing investment will limit future capacity and thus future supply. In Europe, for this reason, modest interest rate increases by the European Central Bank are being flanked by caps on electricity and gas prices imposed by some European Union countries. What the monetary and fiscal squeeze does do is to help ensure that inflation does not become entrenched and widespread. This is the main concern of the Fed right now.
  
  But containment comes at a price. The primary means by which the Fed’s policy will work is by slowing the economy and increasing labor market slack, which is a euphemistic way of saying more unemployment. Is the global squeeze perhaps going too far? …
EMichael says:

October 6, 2022 at 11:20 am

Judge hits 62 home runs and becomes the season leader. Beyond tired of people and reporters talking about Bonds, Sosa and McGuire. They cheated. They knew they were cheating. Their records should be trashed. Past time for baseball to give those guys (and the others) the Lance Armstrong treatment. How many times did he win the Tour De France? None. As it should be.
- run75441 says:
  
  October 7, 2022 at 11:37 am
  
  EM:
  
  Separate category labeled: “Could Have Beens”