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What Did You Learn in 2015?
Tomorrow’s the day for New Year’s predictions and resolutions. But before making them impulsively, join me in reflecting a bit on 2015.
What was the most important thing you learned in 2015? Specifically,
- What was the most important new insight you had about American politics?
- What trend or event surprised you most?
- What was the most important new insight you had about global politics?
- What trend or event surprised you most?
If you were surprised, what underlying assumptions led you astray?
Published in General
The most important question is the last one — what underlying assumptions or cognitive biases led you astray?
I think that it had never happened before in those markets. I’ve experienced limit moves in agricultural commodities before, specifically cotton and corn, but not equities.
Additionally, the magnitude of the move. In less than 60 minutes the NASDAQ 100 was down 7%. The move was on the order of the start of the crash of 1929 and October 1987 and all occurred before the cash markets were open.
We study these things for compliance testing, but actually seeing it was much worse than imagined. I confess to wondering if the world was ending that morning in a flash of high speed leverage vanishing before our eyes.
The market was in an intermediate downtrend at the time, but this was akin to going over a waterfall.
It’s not anything profound or of broad significance. But perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned this year is that the college where I teach does have some humorless, bureaucratic attitudes, after all. I’ll tell you the story.
For a few years, the school bureaucracy has been making us include some boilerplate legalese on their Americans with Disabilities Act compliance in all of our course syllabi. Since this is the same text the students get in each class and not specific to mine, I’ve put it at the end, under the heading of “Bureaucratic Boilerplate.”
I’m on sabbatical this term, so I’ve been away from campus since the summer. A few months ago, out of the blue, I got an email from my department’s acting chairman (we’ve been playing musical chairs, this fall). He said he’d been informed that I’ve been putting this “Bureaucratic Boilerplate” heading in my syllabi for years, and it doesn’t matter whether I’m trying to be funny or not, because THAT’S NOT FUNNY! And it could lead to a student being afraid to have his disability accomodated and could lead to a complaint against me and to stop it right now.
I steamed and fumed at the harshness of the email, because this was completely unexpected, and I’ve gotten along wonderfully with everybody in the department for the last twelve years. I bit my tongue and replied only, “Got it.” But it grated on me for days, and I couldn’t figure out why anybody had bothered to look at years’ worth of my old syllabi. Finally, I remembered: I’m up for full professor, and it was the Promotion Committee.
Aw, crap.
3. The fact that a million “refugees” stormed the gates of Europe and that a large percentage of Europeans welcomed them with open arms. I put quote marks on refugees because a refugee to me is a woman, child or old man taking shelter in a country neighboring the crisis, not an able-bodied male 2,000 miles away.
On the domestic front, I was most surprised and dismayed by Roberts’ contortions to uphold “SCOTUSCare”. By all accounts, Roberts was a straight shooter on statutory wording, and he was expected to uphold the law’s plain language. His decision showed that the last corner of public life in which words say what they mean and mean what they say — viz., SCOTUS’s conservative wing — could no longer be relied upon for that. All of our institutions are now fully postmodern and fully politicized.
Separately, I had some personal experience that taught me a lot: I taught financial risk management at the graduate level, as adjunct faculty. Of my forty students, 37 were from mainland China. The upshot of my experience is that the decline in American universities is real — and it is a symptom of a larger decline.
We are experiencing not exactly a brain drain, but a failure to cultivate US brains. US students don’t pursue quantitative subjects, so the university takes on lucrative full-pay foreign students. But the full-pay students don’t subsidize faculty R&D; rather, the financial logic of marginal return (and the agency problem) promotes the hiring of more and more administrators. In my program, there are nearly as many administrators as faculty.
Meanwhile, few of my students will get visas to work in the US. So they will take their knowledge and skills home, where they will train the next generation. In many areas of higher education, we are effectively slowly exporting our capital stock of knowledge.
I did a lot of reading about the American Revolution and the debate over the constitution in 2015 and found that the issues haven’t changed one iota in over 200 years. We tend to think that the founders were dealing with a quaint, esoteric set of issues completely unrealted to the realities of the 21st century. I believe that the founders would instantly recognize today’s political environment as a fundamental struggle over the role of government and would also recognize the progressive, conservative and populist movements. I also believe they would be horrified at the extent to which Americans have been willing to cede their rights in exchange for physical and economic security.
–That PAC’s were going to be even less important than I thought they would be.
–That people who should know better are buying this Trump thing as a real deal.
–That people are really as ignorant of history as they seem to be.
–That I was as surprised as I was about the last statement.
PS I discovered Ricochet and I joined it.
The underlying assumption was that American power and presence in the world still meant something regardless of who was in the oval office. I didn’t realize Obama was as effective as he is at shrinking not only the office of President, but the whole nation as well.
I see that I wrote my entry without looking “below the fold,” and I missed your specific questions, Claire. I think what trend surprised me the most in domestic politics (#2) was that President Obama’s approval ratings have held pretty steady in the low-mid-40’s:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
I really did expect them to drop down into the 30’s, with the steady stream of bad news everywhere. But perhaps the key is that our unemployment rate has been decreasing by traditional measures:
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name=LN_cpsbref3
Regardless of whether or not this measure really captures the “real” unemployment rate, if Obama’s lukewarm supporters hear that things are getting better, that might be enough to keep them from turning on him.
(P.S.: Sorry for not embedding the links, but I’m on an iPad.)
I think the word ‘perceived’ works very well inserted before ‘physical and economic security.
Great comment.
I was reminded
How unpredictable politics is.
I was also reminded
Of how fragile civil rights
Are and how quickly they can go away. (And how important our Constitution is.)
One technical note: If any editor sees a “flag” raised on ToryWarWriter’s post, please ignore it. That was me, trying to click “like.”
There is certainly a post (if not a whole series) in this.
I was surprised by the complete lack of effectiveness by the Republican party, who won the mid-terms, and their seemingly frozen in place attitude toward the Obama agenda – I don’t feel represented by those currently in place.
I was surprised at how the western world is so completely unprepared and confused by the refugee crisis, why it became a crisis, and letting it get to that point.
I will continue to be surprised by how half the country actually thinks Hilary is an effective leader, met the goals of her job as SOS, believes her lies, and that they cannot come up with a decent alternative candidate, except an elderly socialist.
I was not surprised by the rise of Putin, but surprised that so many world leaders were.
Surprised that we actually made “a deal” with Iran – very surprised.
What I learned about global politics this year is that the bad guys seem to be winning….
Yep. It’s suicidal.
I’m with you on all of that, but why were we surprised by it? What were we missing that should have been our clue? To be surprised by something this big means we’ve been working off the wrong set of assumptions. What were they?
These are deep questions to ponder.
Apologies for TWW for stepping in his conversation.
The anger that opened the door for someone to run as Trump has isn’t surprising. See Front Seat Cat’s previous comment.
If someone asked who is a potential candidate, in or out of politics, that could/would harness some of the anger toward republicans or this most recent vintage of populism Trump may not be last on the list, but definitely in the bottom 5.
The rise of the Trump phenomenon doesn’t surprise. What surprises is that it is him riding the wave.
1. The country has become too serious. This leads to an incompleteness problem. That is, we only focus on what we are serious about and can’t see the other things.
2. That people become so wildly and passionately bonkers for something today and seem to have completely forgotten about it next month.
3. World leaders seem to react to one thing at a time without looking at the connections.
4. John Kerry taking James Taylor to sing to the French. In fact, I don’t believe anything in my life will ever top that.
I was searching for the right qualifier there but came up empty. You nailed it!
I have a question for Claire: As we end this year, what person/situation to do see as the most dangerous, as we begin a New Year?
The Trump reaction by those on the right. It has been: Over the top; and above all ineffective. Astray: Thought they were both more even tempered and insightful than they are.
The price of oil. It will have a huge effect and has yet to play out in middle eastern politics as the Saudis and Russians go broke. These are good things but it seems no one is taking this into account. The deflationary bubble is also having a huge effect on Brazilian politics as things turn very nasty there. Astray: Thought Saudis and Russians would reach a deal, but haven’t.
How unlikely the American foreign policy elite’s views are to have desired effects and how stuck in dogmatic unreality they are. Astray: Thought they would see trends, get ahead of them, and learn how to benefit. No such luck.
That the EU has not cracked up yet. Inept leadership (Merkel in particular) combined with debt and invasion have not done it in yet. Astray: they are more resilient than I thought.
1. What was the most important new insight you had about American politics?
The vast majority of Republican commentators and voters are as hopelessly addicted to tribalism as Democratic commentators and voters are.
2. What trend or event surprised you most?
The over-the-top celebration of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner was surprising; frankly it was sort of bizarre to see the whole media complex celebrate transexualism in such an ebullient and wall-to-wall way.
3. What was the most important new insight you had about global politics?
The political weakness of the EU is sort of surprising to me; previously I would have thought of it as fairly dominant but given the rise of nationalist parties like SNP (who are pro-EU), PEGIDA, the Swedish Democrats and the National Front in France as well as the increase in UKIP’s presence in England there seems to be a building disintegration of the European identity. It’s a total reversal from the old days of the emerging European superstate that was forecast on the strength of the Euro pre-2008.
4. What trend or event surprised you most?
The Paris Attacks tops the list for me, not just because it happened but because I was able to follow it almost in real time on Twitter from news outlets and people in Paris.
I’m guessing Putin.
My comment is on the single most important thing I DIDN’t learn in 2015: Is David Stockman’s forecast of doom well founded or not:
I’m with you on all of that, but why were we surprised by it? What were we missing that should have been our clue? To be surprised by something this big means we’ve been working off the wrong set of assumptions. What were they?
I remember back when I was kid in the 1990s telling someone that the 90s were like the Roaring 20s. Then the next decade was to be the thirties. The Bush years, were a weird pause on that but certainly the Obama years have been the 30s.
What did ‘we’ miss? The set of assumptions that everyone was working on was that evil was actually banished. That we had somehow evolved beyond the classic archetypes. That our so called ‘elites’ had truly solved the issues that had plagued the Elites of the 30s. That we were somehow so much smarter than those who came before us. That by doing the exact same thing that the Elites did in the 30s that we would avoid there fate.
I feel a lot like Churchill. I can see it all coming and believe me its coming. I am desperately trying to warn people, but they refuse to listen. As I told a German friend of mine from their Air Force. “A whole lot of people are going to die to fix this.”
His reply. “Yep.”
I’m actually thinking it’s the level of political polarization in the US. That half of America so deeply hates and distrusts the other half makes us very vulnerable.
What has surprised me the most is that nothing has surprised me. We seem to be in the grips of a tyrannical machine.
I’m watching the PBS series The Roosevelts, and it is really interesting. Woodrow Wilson ran his reelection campaign on the notion that he had kept us out of war and would continue to do so. His hand had barely left the Bible he was sworn in on and we were immersed in World War I.
Of course we were. For a hundred years the Democrats have been lying to people, and their constituents accept their lies. They always have and they always will. I do not know how Republicans can combat the lies.