Pitbull

The tenacity required for deregulation is a challenge. Are they up for it?

Trump Fires Consumer Financial Watchdog Who Drew Ire of Banks

The cognitive bias here may be to cite the industry opposition as a sign that Chopra was doing the right thing for the little guy, consumer. A man is defined by the quality of his enemies, perhaps.

Or we could judge the quality of his regulations.

Reverting once again to the cybernetic rule that the purpose of a system is what it does, maybe the purpose of Chopra’s CFPB was to garner headlines for sticking it to the man, even if the consumer ended up suffering from diminished access to credit and financial services.

We had to destroy the village to save the village.

‘For years, Chopra’s approach earned him vigorous condemnation by industry groups, which in recent days had released statements calling for the president to remove him from the position.

‘Those groups have also filed lawsuits against many of Chopra’s regulations, which are ongoing. Trump’s pick to lead the agency is expected to dismantle some of his achievements.’

Thank Trump’s Iconoclasm for the ‘Deferred Resignations’ Masterstroke

Stress-testing a system is not a new concept.

Apparently, stress-testing the government is.

‘The Trump administration’s experimentative approach to identifying and excising government waste has been many things, but unenthusiastic is not one of those. The executive branch’s approach seems to have been to shut off as many spigots as they could all at once and wait to see which wheeze first. That approach produced a lot of wheezing, and some of the administration’s most controversial (and legally dubious) maneuvers have already been paused.’

FDA Deregulation of E-Cigarettes Saved Lives and Spurred Innovation

Would people be less likely to take drugs if the FDA stopped the approval process?

Or would the companies innovate at an accelerated pace with individuals willing to take the personal risk in exchange for potentially improved outcomes, leading to a general increase in welfare?

‘A key takeaway on the slowness of FDA drug regulation is that it took 9 years before nicotine gum could be sold with a higher nicotine strength, 12 years before it could be sold OTC, and 15 years before it could be sold with a flavor. Further, a recent editorial laments that there has been largely non–existent innovation in FDA–approved smoking cessation drugs since 2006 (Benowitz et al., 2023). In particular, the “world’s oldest smoking cessation aid” cyctisine, first brought to market in 1964 in Bulgaria (Prochaska et al., 2013), and with quit success rates exceeding single forms of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) (Lindson et al., 2023), is not approved as a drug in the United States.’

Europe’s Climate Almost-Epiphany

When countries compete to advance their own interests, policies that may be globally superior are the first casualties.

That these mandates for rapid transition to zero-emissions vehicles lasted as long as they did speaks to the consensus of the elites in power for the last four years, really the last almost twenty years.

Let them eat cake isn’t a sustainable policy framework.

‘The plan, formally the Competitiveness Compass for the EU, is Brussels’s attempt to meet economic challenges from the U.S. and China while assuaging European voters worried about stagnating economic growth. One of the flashier proposals is to rethink the EU’s electric-vehicle mandate, which currently requires all new cars and vans to be zero-emissions by 2035.

‘European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose brainchild this report is, hints at some new flexibility in the intermediate targets that already are taking effect. She suggests the rule could change to be technology-neutral—meaning it won’t mandate battery cars.’

Los Angeles Offers a Wildfire Climate Exception for Rebuilding

It shouldn’t surprise that rich people who suffered the tragedy of the LA fires get a break.

‘California’s wildfires are exposing the high cost of its environmental obsessions—and its progressive contradictions. Look no further than Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s decision to suspend her city’s “all electric” building code—but only for homes rebuilt after the fires.

‘The City Council in late 2022 banned gas appliances in new construction, including stoves, furnaces, fireplaces and water heaters. Progressives said this would help save the planet and save residents money. Not so much.’

Trump’s War on Bureaucrats Is the Anti–Student Loan Bailout

Where will public sympathy come for the displaced bureaucrats?

‘At the same time, Biden’s efforts alienated a lot of people given that college graduates still make up a relatively privileged minority in the United States. The bailout did nothing for working-class Americans who couldn’t afford to attend college or to those who did go and toiled to work through college or who made sacrifices to pay off loans.

‘It strikes me that Trump’s move will play out in the opposite manner. Federal workers represent just a bit more than 1 percent of the workforce and are viewed by most as a group lucky enough to hold cushy jobs with lavish benefits. The average pay of a federal worker is $106,000, which is far more than the typical private sector job. While it’s true that federal workers tend to be older and more educated, a 2017 CBO analysis found that, at the time, at most education levels — but for those with professional or doctorate degrees — federal workers earned more than private sector counterparts in salary and benefits (government workers with no more than a high school degree earned 34 percent more, on average).’

Is Europe Bound for a Trumpian Economic Reset?

This is a severely underreported story, perhaps because of the cynical view that these are just empty words.

‘Having posited last week that the incoming Trump administration eventually would force Europe to shape up its own economy, I still must profess surprise at how quickly this process is unfolding. Witness the new growth strategies unveiled in Brussels and London on Wednesday.’

Britain must stop funding the world’s bureaucrats – our own are bad enough

Why should the British government fund international bureaucrats at multilateral institutions when they have a tough time getting their domestic bureaucracy to work well?

Is this a case of international elites working together at the expense of the people?

‘For decades, politicians have promised a “bonfire of the quangos”, yet none have dared to challenge the global quangocracy - an unelected elite shaping policy while taxpayers pick up the tab. Starmer is just the latest in a long string of Prime Ministers more focused on his global reputation and international consensus than on delivering real solutions at home.’

DeepSeek AI Is the Competition America Needs

Wafer-scale compute has the potential to rethink the architecture of modern enterprise computing. It’s being held up over concerns about national security because of the connections of one of the leading innovators to China.

So, if I have this straight, the US will impede its progress on the frontier of computing because of concerns about China and in so doing will enable China to surpass us.

Sounds legit.

‘The chief obstacle to the success of such ventures is the U.S. national-security apparatus, which somehow imagines that by inflicting sanctions on China, it can help Americans. Beyond the huge challenges of replacing the existing paradigm of semiconductor fabrication, Mr. de Heer’s main obstacle is his previous links with Tianjin University in China and his Chinese students at Georgia Tech. He is under investigation by a congressional committee on China for alleged links between his research and the Chinese military. Mr. de Heer said several of his students are back in China, collecting about $350 million in investments for a wafer-scale project.

‘Technology is the key adventure of human progress, and it is intrinsically global. The key test of the Trump administration will be whether it can come to terms with this fact of life and enterprise.’