Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

TRUTH:

AND NOT IN A FUN WAY:

GOOD ADVICE FROM MY CONGRESSMAN:

Though it’s really advice for Mike Johnson and John Thune.

Related: Voter ID law and election integrity should be top priority in new Congress. Voters want it, and with good reason.

UPDATE: From the comments: “It would be interesting for Johnson and Thune to prepare and circulate the aforementioned list of five things I got done last week. From this distance we can’t see anything happening and it is disconcerting.”

CHANGE OF THE GUARD:

OZEMPIC: BIG TROUBLE FOR THE BOOZE INDUSTRY. “In the US, the sector’s most important market, alcohol consumption per person fell 3 per cent last year in the biggest drop since the prohibition era a century ago, according to research by Bernstein. Drinking is now languishing at its lowest level since 1962, down 20 per cent on its 1980s peak. . . . Studies show that weight-loss and diabetes drugs, such as Wegovy and Ozempic, could cut opioid and alcohol abuse up to half. . . . He added that social media was making young people more focused on how they look and behave, which acted as a further deterrent to heavy drinking because of its weight-gain effects.”

With my distilled spirits class on a field trip to a liquor distributor, our host said that they’re really feeling the “Ozempic effect.” Though he also echoed this statement: “We suspect Gen Z’s relatively low absolute spend on alcohol has more to do with the group’s lower earnings profile.”

This article does miss that many players in the industry are also turning to cannabis products in the hopes of future growth; I don’t know how that will work out for them.

THERE’S A LESSON HERE: The Dumbest Investment in the World Was Better Than Owning Safe Treasurys: Argentina’s century bond defaulted but ended up a winner, an important lesson for investors.

Investors who bought Argentina’s 100-year dollar bond were laughed at in 2017 for their naiveté in buying such a long bond from a serial defaulter. Sure enough, the country failed to pay after just three years.

But investors who stuck with the country are having the last laugh. The bonds they were given in the default, plus the fat coupons on the original century bond, are now worth more than the original investment. Not just that: They are worth far more than if the dollars had been invested in “safe” U.S. Treasurys.

The turnaround in the Argentina bonds was due to President Javier Milei taking a chain saw to the bloated Argentine state, while managing to maintain his popularity.

People always said that such deep cuts were politically impossible. But the impossibility was due to ruling-class satraps protecting their rice bowls, not to what the actual voters actually wanted.

GRIFTERS GONNA GRIFT:

ICYMI, FROM SATURDAY:

A LITTLE ON-THE-SPOT TWITTER-JOURNALISM:

I should note that as we approached this rally we saw several Chinese couples and one woman with a stroller moving away quickly and looking worried. I don’t know if they were afraid of violence or that it might hurt their visa status to be seen there.

YEAH, THIS IS PRETTY ASYMMETRIC:

Related:

CAN’T THE CCP PROVIDE THE GUARDS? HE’S THEIR ASSET MORE THAN OURS, RIGHT?