Money

The Economist has a Special Report on the US economy titled “The envy of the world” (subscription required). It makes a very compelling case that, although things aren’t perfect, the US economy is doing much better than rich world peers and mostly better than emerging economies like China and India. The first piece of the puzzle is productivity. Overall labor productivity in the US is much higher than in Europe and increasing at a faster rate even adjusted for the greater number of hours US workers tend to put in over their peers.

The rates on short term bonds and CDs are insane right now. Over the past few years under ZIRP those instruments were very boring and didn’t give you enough over cash to bother with. Now is a completely different matter. I’ve been buying three-month CDs through E*TRADE starting at the end of last year to manage cash and the rates went from 5% to 5.25% to 5.5% to 5.7% now. It makes things a little more complicated because you have to look at it and, on real terms after netting out inflation, probably not more beneficial than getting the ~1-2% on cash balances in a money market in the past.

The FTC has proposed a rule to ban non-compete agreements. This is great. A employer shouldn’t be able to prohibit people from pursuing their career wherever they want. Non-competes give employers way too much leverage over their employees. The evidence is clear that it suppresses wages and working conditions. Trade secrets and the like can still be protected. That’s company property and should not be abused by ex-employees. But, it’s un-American to deprive someone of their pursue Happiness and switch to any other job they might prefer for any reason.

Sometimes you just dodge a bullet. A little over a year ago, I congratulated Hashicorp on going public and mused a little about buying shares. However, I did not because the valuation seemed a little high. Based on this chart, I would say that’s a correct assessment. I’ve missed on my share of stocks. The one I really blew was Coupang. I fell for that one hook line and sinker. Part of my problem there was that I’ve been to Seoul a couple of times in the past five years or so and really like it.

I always wondered why when you use a card for a purchase you are asked on the screen “Debit or Credit?” Doesn’t the machine know? Isn’t it encoded in the card? This nifty article by Patrick McKenzie explains that and more about how ATMs work. It’s much more complex than I had thought but makes a lot of sense. Essentially debit and credit use two different networks for payment so the question is really about which network you want to use.

The Ringer had a great article about the recent news that USC and UCLA are joining the Big 10. I couldn’t care less about either USC or UCLA football, but this is just the latest change pushing all of the elite college football teams into the Big 10 and the SEC. As the article points out, this might lead to some interesting games in the short run but really dilutes the real fun behind college football: rivalries.