Author: David Wright

In the mid-late 1990s, there was a golden age. Not in stocks, not in tech, not in film or art or scientific discovery.

It was the golden age of professional wrestling.

If you were born between 1975 and 1990,  you’re probably right on board, here. To me, the thing that drove the all-time peak for this sport was competition (and a healthy dose of demographics):

What would be dubbed the “Monday Night Wars” began… and slowly but steadily, the popularity of the wrestling business in general began to grow during this period, driven largely by the direct competition between the two wrestling shows.

Want a better product? Take a lesson from wrestling:

raise the stakes and credibly threaten incumbents.

Nothing less than the promise economic annihilation can produce genuine effort.

The NYT reports that Conde Nast is the anchor tenant for WTC1:

“We built a new reality at the World Trade Center, and this transaction will be the exclamation point on that turnaround,” said Christopher O. Ward, executive director of the Port Authority.

Felix comments:

It looks as though Condé is getting the bottom 22 floors of the building; one assumes that the 1.6 million square feet of office space in the 48 floors above Condé will go for even more [than the $80 / sq ft Conde is paying].

I scream “BS”. From the rooftops.

My boss and I both immigrated to the US long after 9/11 and he flirts with the idea of possibly moving to WTC1 when it opens (we’re already downtown). I don’t know, I suppose I’m mildly opposed.

The guys that were here during 9/11? Opposed.  Violently opposed. Like, each guy was at his 99th percentile freaking out opposed.

Conde is going to have a pile of furious employees on their hands.

There’s no way Conde takes on that morale burden without some sweetheart deal.

And imagine how this sentiment changes as you go UP. Nobody is going to forget what happened to the last set of tenants UP THERE.  And the next tenant isn’t even going to get as sweet a deal as Conde.

And now think of the other side: public servants are desperate to pretend like they’re running a profitable business.

The incentives here point to a deal that makes the WTC LOOK like it’s break-even but, deep in the shadows of the fine print, be all but guaranteed to annihilate vast stores of public wealth.

Today’s politicians can bathe in the happy-feeling and tomorrow’s politicians can unearth the dark secret and righteously point their fingers.

A powerful economic idea is that government spending is good during times of recession (‘slack’).

The only argument for it that I think I understand is that stimulus holds back the tide of atrophy in human capital. A common corollary focuses on the greatest economic calamity of the 20th century and its supposed ‘cure‘. Wars as stimulus. Ok, got it.

Well, in response, I’d say that I find this unsurprising.

Nearly 30 percent of young veterans end up unemployed for some length of time after returning home. Critics say it’s a combination of poor transitional training by the Pentagon and ignorance in the private sector about the soldiers’ skills.

As an employer, my healthy respect for veterans is tempered by the fact that they’re learning skills I don’t find useful and that wars are extremely destructive to human capital. So the answer is government jobs? Is that stimulus, too?

Another thing that I find irritating is that I can’t get it out of my head that people confuse rates and levels on this. If you destroy humans and things, can you really deem the scurrying around to rebuild a boom?

I don’t understand inflation but here’s what I’ve learned from a few people:

Nick Rowe has taught me that money is super weird. The reason why money is weird is that its value can be simultaneously expressed in terms of EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD, even itself. Continue reading Inflation… ugh.