State of the Discussion

From the BBC: Google boss says trillion-dollar AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

In comments echoing those made by US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in 1996, warning of "irrational exuberance" in the market well ahead of the dotcom crash, Mr Pichai said the industry can "overshoot" in investment cycles like this.

"We can look back at the internet right now. There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound," he said.

In the middle part of the interview he muses about the huge energy costs of AI, only to conclude that new energy sources are going to be necessary to avoid constraining the economy. The environmental cost seems already to have been written off as a concern there. No doubt that will be taken care of automagically by the power of The Singularity.

As for the jobs thing:

AI will also affect work as we know it, Mr Pichai said, calling it "the most profound technology" humankind had worked on.

"We will have to work through societal disruptions," he said, adding that it would also "create new opportunities".

"It will evolve and transition certain jobs, and people will need to adapt," he said. Those who do adapt to AI "will do better".

So if it works it's going to suck up tons of energy and put people out of jobs, and the irrationality surrounding its growing pains will crash economies and ruin small investors and a lot of the less secure AI firms.

And once the survivors finally get AI off the ground we can look forward to them enshitifying it as thoroughly as they have the internet, which was probably at its best in the brief moment just before every idiot with an MBA and an in with a venture capitalist kicked off the boom with a fuzzy business plan and a dream of early retirement.

Lovely.

I've been reading about this for a little while. I already moved a good chunk of my retirement holdings from stock funds to bond and money-market funds. I was already up well enough and am getting closer to retirement, so it wasn't too radical a step.

Even without the bubble speculation, the indices were staring to make my spidey senses tingle. The AI-bubble stuff I've been reading just pushed me out of complacency.

Brighter minds than mine will surely chime in to explain why this is not a matter of concern.

I think what you mean is, more credulous minds than yours.

At current valuations AI would have to bring in $400 per year per US resident for the AI companies to produce a decent return on investment. Which isn't happening in the foreseeable future.

"Bubble" is exactly what we're looking at. The question is when, not whether, it will pop. And how big an impact that will have on the economy overall. Personally, I'm going nowhere near stock in any company which is big into AI. But then, I've been avoiding bitcoins like the plague, too.

Also treating this as an open thread: this is an piece from today's NYT, about the Tucker Carlson - Nick Fuentes interview and more importantly the Heritage Foundation's reaction, and on to Vance's response to so much of what has been happening around the tolerance of Nazi/fascist opinion among the right:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/opinion/tucker-carlson-trump-groypers-fuentes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E8.dcFB.iS10t8lip43s&smid=url-share

The Larry Summers thing is interesting. First, he can go piss up a rope for all I care (or, as my mother used to say, "sh*t in his hat"). I have no interest in defending him. That said, in his communications with Epstein after Epstein's conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, he told Epstein he didn't want to be within a million miles of Donald Trump.

Because Summers worked for two Democratic presidents, was president of Harvard, and was a fellow at the Center for American Progress, he's easily associated with Democrats and "The Left." That likely will make him a target for Trump, the GOP, and MAGA.

The wrinkle is that he preferred associating with a known pedophile than with Donald Trump. That's not exactly flattering.

I understand that this is the first time the assigned DOJ attorney has ever done a prosecution.

Well, as I understand it, the reason she got assigned is that DOJ professionals looked at the case and concluded that there was nothing to it. So they declined to prosecute. The Attorney General had to find someone inexperienced enough (or foolish enough) to try to take the case forward.

Treating this as an open thread, because there always is one:

"the Court is finding that the government’s actions in this case – whether purposeful, reckless, or negligent – raise genuine issues of misconduct, are inextricably linked to the government’s grand jury presentation, and deserve to be fully explored by the defense."

This from the magistrate judge's findings in the Comey case. If it weren't a Trump-directed prosecution, my gob would be comprehensively smacked.

Is the client list no longer on Pam Bondi's desk? Or was it never there, which is why she never actually said it was (wink, wink)?

Is it still a Democratic hoax? Or does it incriminate a slew of prominent Democrats and their donors? What if it it's BOTH? That would be wild!

Whether or when that is Bondi's response depends on whether the Senate gets around to a vote on the resolution. Not to mention if they make some kind of amendment which then requires it go back to the House for concurrence. Lots of ways to slow walk the whole thing.

But yeah, once the whole thing is done, Bondi can claim "ongoing investigations." Put one extremely junior and ultra-MAGATrumpist staffer to work reading thru the whole file. Could easily be "on-going" for years.

I posted this on People and Politics, which might now be a kind of defunct thread. But since lj has luckily now posted a thread specifically about the Epstein email releases, I am copying it here. Now that lj has helpfully given us the link, there may be other worthwhile finds.

I guess this is the closest thing we have to an open thread at the moment? I find it hard to know for sure.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that on the Epstein emails release, I think the most interesting thing so far is the correspondence between Bannon and Epstein. It’s an astonishing illustration of moral bankruptcy on Bannon’s part, and to the extent that he is such an integral part of MAGA world I do think it really keeps the heat on.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/15/steve-bannon-jeffrey-epstein-text-messages-publicity

The Axios piece is a bit strange, it suggests that Klein was a driver in having the Democrats not vote for the budget, but fails to mention that it looks like he was left high and dry when the 8 senators did the deal.

Klein is certainly stretching for the middle of the road credibility, he had on Ben Shapiro immediately after the Charlie Kirk assassination, which is a bit like interviewing a stagehand who built the sets about how a play went down.

He also had Amit Segal on about the I/P conflict and prefaced the interview with basically a trigger warning about the views, saying that Segal is 'far to the right' of Klein.

You could ask me what do I expect Klein to do, well, that's his choice, but if it were me, I wouldn't want to cosplay Gen Z David Broder.

Copied and pasted something about Ezra Klein from Axios, but didn't notice it contained several links so it's awaiting approval. If anybody wants to rescue it, that would be great - sorry!

Thanks wonkie, I'll note that I a saw a post yesterday with a photo of Chris and the two other Democrats running in the primary for that House seat, everyone looking very jovial. So possibly more practical to wait until after the primary to donate to whomever ends up being the general election candidate. But I don't know anything about the mechanics of running a campaign, campaign finance, etc.

... more Democratic votes in that district won’t win the seat, but those will be votes to re-elect Ossoff to the Senate.

But consider, if a strong candidate could move the district from 65-35 last time to 60-40 (or better), and then we see the sort of blue wave election in 2026 which looks increasingly possible? Might actually happen. Probably temporarily, but still worth doing if it happens.

I realize this is pretty much OT, but is politically related. Just seeing on social media in the last two hours that a friend of mine has announced he is running for Congress in Georgia’s 11th district. He is a lawyer and has been working mostly in the family law, situations where children have been put in state supervision, that kind of thing. He drew up my first estate documents 12 years ago when he was a newly minted lawyer, I had contacted him in the last few weeks about getting them updated.

Getting messages from a mutual friend about this as I type. I had joked about calling our friend Don Quixote, since a Democrat can’t win that district, my friend acknowledged that, but said it’s important for contributing to overall statewide turnout, more Democratic votes in that district won’t win the seat, but those will be votes to re-elect Ossoff to the Senate.

Chris Harden for GA 11!!!

lj - nous, is it out of the realm of possibility to imagine Elizabeth Warren? I was looking at seniority and Patty Murray is actually the most senior, I’d like to think that a woman would send a message, though youth is also good.

I don't think Warren is out of the realm of possibility. If we look at current Democratic leadership, and we eliminate Schumer and Durbin (retiring), then we have Klobuchar (MI), Booker (NJ), Warren (MA), Warner (VA), Sanders (VT), Baldwin (WI), Cortez Masto (NV), Schatz (HI), and Murphy (CT).

If you want to elevate a woman, then I'd eliminate Cortez Masto right off the bat over the shutdown votes. Think what you will of the practicality of it, her decision is not going to help change the impression of the Dems or inspire anyone who is disillusioned. Warren is great, but her media presence reinforces the liberal wonk image. She also reinforces the elitist image a bit by virtue of her still sounding like a professor. That leaves Baldwin and Klobuchar. If Klobuchar still plans to run for President, then Baldwin would be the best choice IMO. She's a bit more vulnerable on the electoral front (WI is very purple and their GOP is deeply awful), but that also positions her as someone who has overcome a lot of prejudices and still succeeded in a rural state in the middle of the country.

Murray has served a long time, but despite this she isn't in party leadership. That makes me wonder if she would be a good choice.

Otherwise, looking at the existing leadership, I think Booker, Schatz, or Murphy. Warner isn't as reliable a D vote. Sanders is great, but older and seen as a socialist. Schatz is less well known, but is seen as a future leader. Murphy is solidly in the middle of the party and is usually supporting the party in his votes.

I saw a thread over on Bsky arguing that the job of the Dem Senate leader is not to be a popular leader, but to be the one who can talk to everyone and hold together the largest possible number of senators for a coalition. Their claim was that Schumer was the one best suited to that task and that to change now was to make someone else learn the hardest job in government on the fly. Who, they asked, would be able to replace him and do as well?

I don't know. But I also don't think that is the right question or the right way to think about this situation. It's not just about maintaining a coalition, it's about communication and leadership and moral presence as well. Schumer has never been half of what Pelosi was in the House.

I think Klobuchar could probably do at least as good a job, and has enough experience that she would not be learning from scratch. She's about the center of the Democratic spectrum. She could still hold presidential ambitions, but they aren't going to go much of anywhere. This would be her peak.

I'd prefer Booker. He'd give the Dems a younger presence with more charisma, but he's also probably a bit farther left than some of his colleagues might prefer, and he may want to take a shot at running for president himself. Still, he's been effective at working with others and has a lot of leadership experience for someone with fewer than ten years in the Senate, and I think he'd be more inspirational than either Schumer or Klobuchar.

Whatever the case, I think the Dems are about to hit a tipping point where the leadership starts to age out, and the prominent younger members are going to be trending more progressive and more willing to fight. Best to start reflecting that a bit more with the public face of the party in the Senate.

russell - if I was, say, 30 or 40 years old I’d be seriously pissed right about now.

And they are.

And it gets more dire the younger you go. My 17-25 year-olds in my class are even more cynical and pissed than I was as a young punk in the 1980s, but with more of a sense of powerlessness because they are watching all of the progress we had get taken away.

We have to give them some reason to hope or else we are ceding the most angry and nihilistic of them straight to the alt-right.

"No. The point being that..."

The point I was making is what I was referring to, so yes. I know what point I was trying to make. You have a different point.

And I don't think it matters one iota what I say on a blog. It has nothing to do with anything other than sharing thoughts with a small number of people. I'm not helping or hurting the Democrats one bit, so I'm not concerned about electoral strategy or legislative maneuvering or anything like that when I complain about politics here.

The world doesn't care.