• Well, given the competence of the current administration in Washington (outlined here by Matt Yglesias), there’s not much optimism for the future of US as a representative trading partner (and perhaps not even as a global financier).  See David Wallace-Wells must-read NYT opinion piece It’s Not Hard to Imagine a Chinese-Led Global Economy – and for a small depressing aside, Daniel Piketty’s blog post Rethinking the world without the US.

• Tom Friedman weighs in, and he’s not optimistic.  Read his I Have Never Been More Afraid for My Country’s Future in the NYT. A relevant excerpt:

“This whole Trump II administration is a cruel farce. Trump ran for another term not because he had any clue how to transform America for the 21st century. He ran in order to stay out of jail and to get revenge on those who, with real evidence, had tried to hold him accountable to the law. I doubt he has ever spent five minutes studying the work force of the future.”

• The always-excellent Ezra Klein has a terrific interview with Paul Krugman on the Trump tariffs, available as a podcast and in print in the NYT – ‘Paul Krugman on the Biggest Trade Shock in History’

• Well, better hope the next pandemic is not right around the corner – because we definitely won’t be ready.  Katelyn Jetelina expounds on the body blows public health is taking from this administration in her latest Your Local Epidemiologist.

• There are of course innumerable opportunities for corruption in this new administration; here the Washington Post comments on one of the more egregious, re. cryptocurrency. An excerpt:

“Trump, who evidently sees crypto as a vehicle to make money, is increasing the urgency of this conversation by providing cryptocurrencies with a new nefarious use: funneling money into the president’s pocket in exchange for governmental favors.”

I think Matt Yglesias is right with this sentiment:

“It drives me crazy that the very same progressives who shit on Democrats for not being able to stop bad things Republicans do after they lose elections spend all the time before elections shitting on the idea of being more pragmatic and moderate and winning more seats. If there were four more House Democrats, none of whom supported any policy changes in a progressive direction whatsoever, that would still give Democrats a majority and the ability to block all kinds of GOP fuckery. That’s true on DOGE, it’s true on Medicaid and SNAP for billions of poor kids. It’s actually a really big deal. If you want to stop Republicans from doing bad things, you need to win races. You need to back moderates in red-leaning districts and encourage party leaders to take popular positions and win.”

• I have to agree with Zynep Tufekci, writing on the Texas measles outbreak in the NY Times:

“All governors should be launching campaigns to increase measles vaccination coverage, but some states are led by people who promote falsehoods. And some Americans live deep in echo chambers where most of what they hear about vaccines are lies and disdain. It won’t be possible to reverse all this quickly. Perhaps the best we can do is inform parents skeptical of vaccines what they’re risking, before it’s too late.”

• A fun post from Steve Newman’s Am I Stronger Yet Substack discusses AI capabilities: We’re Finding Out What Humans Are Bad At  I’d recommend it!

• The heavy-handed, indiscriminate, and woefully uninformed attempts at budget cutting by Musk and his seeming puppet Trump continue with the imposition of a 15% “indirect research costs” cap at the NIH. Researchers (like, alas, many others) in the US are under siege by people wielding hammers whose authority is dubious at best. For more details, read Jeremy Faust’s February 8 Substack post here. And/or see Harlan Krumholz’s 5 minute video.