Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Trump: Elon ate my homework

Truman famously had a desk sign reading “The buck stops here.” That was back when there were grown-ups in the White House. With Trump, the buck stops over there somewhere: “The news, linked above, that the resignations emails were Team Elon’s idea and didn’t have the okay of the White House comes from a Washington […]

Elon Musk: A trillion here, a trillion there; whatever

Back in October, I posted that Elon Musk’s claim that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget showed he couldn’t do arithmetic. Evidently, Elon has finally acknowledged this, but he tries to make a virtue of necessity: “Elon Musk has walked back his previous claim that he could cut at least $2 trillion […]

Donald Trump and the Musk business model

Yale Professor Timothy Snyder is an expert on the history of Eastern Europe, especially the histories of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and World War II. He has become a public intellectual with the publication of his books “On Tyranny” and “On Freedom.” Snyder has been sounding warnings about the second Trump Administration, not only for […]

Elon Musk can’t do arithmetic

Kevin Drum over at jabberwocking.com watched the Trump spectacle over at Madison Square Garden so we didn’t have to. He zeros in on Elon Musk: “Elon used to be smart enough to do simple addition, but he thinks we can cut “at least” $2 trillion from federal spending—which amounted to $6.1 trillion last year, not […]

California dreaming

I’ve been to California a few times, for scientific meetings, for vacation and once for a friend’s wedding. I’ve had a good experience each time. It has always struck me as an expensive place to live, though, and I’m definitely not a beach person. Elon Musk is warning us that the nation will become “Californicated” […]

Has Elon Musk Damaged His Portfolio By Buying Bitcoin?

Has Elon Musk Damaged His Portfolio By Buying Bitcoin?  After tweeting repeatedly for some time about bitcoin and the originally satirical degecoin, both of which have gone up massively in the past year, on Feb. 8 Elon Musk put his money where his mouth had been and had his Tesla EV company buy about $1.5 […]