Fed to inject $1.5T to prevent 'unusual disruptions' in markets - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/fed-to-pump-more-than-500-billion-into-short-term-bank-funding-expand-types-of-security-purchases.html <comment><USER2> As the joke goes, a trillion here a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about some real money!

But in seriousness, the next week is a critical time in the world. I remember sitting in an airport when news of Lehman Brothers collapse was flashing on the TV screens. I'm reminded of that time.

We learned later about how Hank Paulson got down on one knee and begged Nancy Pelosi to go along with is plan to save the economy. In retelling of that period, it's clear that the world's top economists felt we were perilously close to a full-blown disaster – trucks not bringing goods into cities, things grinding to a halt, etc.

Remember that when you see bold proposals in the coming days.

As I've commented over the past few weeks, I think we've missed critical steps in fighting coronavirus. The lack of testing will maybe turn out to be one of the biggest scandals of my lifetime.

My personal belief is that – at least in the United States – we did everything we could to prevent a short-term economic slowdown and instead we're on the verge of something much longer, much deeper.

But if there were ever a time for us not to be partisan and tribal, it's now. We blew the past few weeks. We can't afford to blow any more. We really do need to come together, globally, but particularly here in the US to try and agree on the right next steps. We need to act boldly, _now_.

<comment><USER3> >But if there were ever a time for us not to be partisan and tribal, it's now.

You say that like both parties are trying to deny testing and are refusing to provide the social safety net for workers to stay home when they're sick. This is very much not a "both sides" discussion. This is: the GOP needs to stop trying to pretend like nothing is wrong and actually DO SOMETHING to prevent this from becoming an even bigger disaster.

Ahh, the old cowardly downvote without comment because you don't like the reality of the situation that there is one party that's very much to blame.

[https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/487258-senate- republican...](https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/487258-senate-republicans- poised-to-reject-house-coronavirus-relief-bill)

<comment><USER4> I think what gdubs was trying to get across is that sure, there are problems, people to blame, etc. but now is not the time. We have to get our act together and handle the situation. We can't have petty fighting betweeen parties.

Now is the time to unite and act. We can fight, argue and point fingers once this is all behind us.

<comment><USER5> They're literally blocking COVID emergency budget bills getting passed in the Senate

This is time to fall in line or be thrown out of your job.

<comment><USER6> Why don't Republicans need to fall in line when Democrats pass much needed relief for coronavirus?

<comment><USER7> That's who he is talking about, the republicans are blocking it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "inject 1.5t" by that do they mean a 1.5t panic bailout for wall street? how can we find 1.5t in the budget but no money for universal healthcare, student loan forgiveness, ubi etc.

The markets wouldn't be so important if there were a safety net.

</soapbox>

<comment><USER9> The Fed isn't printing 1.5 trillion greenbacks and handing out fat sacks on Wall St. They are providing short-term loans to increase the amount of money in circulation (liquidity). The intent is to increase the total amount of trading occurring so that the market can return to equilibrium sooner than later. The Fed wants to prevent firms from not making trades solely for lack of liquidity in the market.

edit: "from making profitable trades" -> "from not making trades"

<comment><USER10> >> They are providing short-term loans

If I want to give my friend a loan, I need to earn that money first by working hard. FED does not conduct any profitable activity that would earn them any money, they DO PRINT that money from thin air.

<comment><USER11> Why do people keep telling the lie that the FED "does not print money"? As you say, these "loans" are the FED printing $1.5t, no other way to look at it.

<comment><USER12> There is at least one other way to look at it. These loans will primarily, if not exclusively, go to large financial institutions. Due to the wonders of fractional reserve lending, those institutions will get to loan out several multiples of the original $1.5T. Another way to look at it is that they've probably "printed" closer to $15T.

<comment><USER13> How does this work? Like any government can just print their way to prosperity?

I mean you just magically put $15T into circulation?

Won't this lead to inflation?

<comment><USER12> Yes it will absolutely lead to inflation. But for the well connected banks who are first to benefit, and coincidentally, I'm sure, the ones who run the Federal Reserve, the money will get to be spent/loaned before it causes much or any inflation. For the rest of us with value stored as US currency, we get fucked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The point here is not where did the money come from, it's why is it needed? And the answer is because there isn't enough liquidity to cover the institutional sell off. Which means that they HAD to do this to prevent a run on the bank. That's more alarming than the virus I think. Hospitals run on money. No money, no doctors.

This article is much less PR: [https://www.forexlive.com/centralbank/!/new- york-fed-to-cond...](https://www.forexlive.com/centralbank/!/new-york-fed-to- conduct-purchases-across-a-range-of-maturities-20200312)

</comment><comment><USER15> I honestly don't think this is going to work. Markets and investors are notoriously greedy and have a very short memory. This infusion will lift the market for a day (if at all) and institutions will make money and the next day the news cycle will take over and the selling will continue. We are in the early phases of negative news so not sure effective this will be.

<comment><USER16> No idea how you get downvoted. Market has already sold off the gains from the stimulus. Lasted a few minutes. Not very well spent money IMO.

<comment><USER17> it's not a stimulus it's loans to prevent a liquidity crisis and the credit markets from freezing up. It was the credit markets in 2008 that nearly killed the world economy. They dwarf the stock market.

<comment><USER16> Still, given the market was like Meh, seems like nobody thought it was very useful.

That said, yeah I see how you are right. Lots of businesses run month to month. When they run out of cash they go bankrupt. Once enough companies do so, the economy takes much longer to recover.

<comment><USER18> Maybe keeping the market from doing something much worse than "meh" was the point, and this was a success?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dev-ns8 Speculation on my part as I still don't fully grok repo markets and only have a vague sense of how the treasuries market impacts equities but I'll continue.

I see some people saying this should alleviate some of the losses incurred by the recent market crash. I however, don't see how that is the case. To me this seems like a move from the fed to make sure we don't enter into a liquidity crisis which doesn't necessarily do anything to signify substantial move upwards in equities. Sure, the fact that investors and traders can now be fairly confident we won't hit a liquidity crunch and therefore kill some fear in the market, but was that the biggest factor causing the fear and selling in the first place?

My understanding was the selling, and rightfully so, comes from the affects of CoVid. Travel bans, event bans, trade bans, lower consumer activity, etc. I don't see how injecting capital into the treasuries market alleviates any of these factors.

If anything I think this would cause equity markets to sell off more in the mid to long term knowing that the fed had to do this to keep shops open and liquidity available to those that need it (I'm talking to you banks). On top of this factor, this move by the fed surely will push inflation higher and I would assume production would slow given all the virus affects mentioned above. This puts our economy in stagflation which has a lot of the hallmarks of a recession...

<comment><USER19> Like you said, this is to make sure we don't enter a liquidity crisis. The market will stay down for a while, but this will allow businesses to weather the storm instead of going under.

<comment> dev-ns8 I agree. I think I'll be adding to my shorts here. I'd still be very interested in hearing a real experts opinion on what this QE move does to inflation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nobody is asking anything about funds now. But so many seems to be angry about healthcare for all. A universal health care can survive this pandemic and also others. This is unbelievable

<comment> munk-a But don't worry! Joe Biden has guaranteed he'd veto such an act even if it got through the house and senate.

<comment><USER21> Not according to his latest statement.

<comment><USER22> Source?

<comment><USER21> My bad, I misread the relevant portion of this article: [https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814717480/sanders-offers- bide...](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814717480/sanders-offers-biden-a-path- to-win-over-his-movement)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can someone tell me, with a straight face, how this won't cause inflation at one of the worst points to have such?

<comment><USER24> The answer would be something like "Increasing the money supply has been very successful at mitigating previous recessions without causing inflation."

Unfortunately, previous recessions were caused by demand-side shocks. So increasing the money supply increases demand and mitigates the deflation that usually accompanies a demand driven recession.

It's not clear whether the upcoming recession is supply or demand driven. Shutting down factories in China causes supply shocks; laying people off because of social isolating will cause demand shocks.

If it's a supply shock recession, they usually come with significant inflation and more money will make it a lot worse.

<comment><USER25> > If it's a supply shock recession, they usually come with significant > inflation and more money will make it a lot worse.

Surely in the beginning, with just China impacted, that was the case. But right now with a global pandemic it's not clear if its a supply shock, or both.

Curious, if supply is lower and the demand lowers more, then what does it mean. A depression??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Coronavirus is not a cause, but it is just an igniter.

The true cause of a crisis is pumping money into institutions which should bankrupt years ago. Pumping because we were too much afraid of normal crisis back then and now we get that crisis, but multiplied by 10 in terms of impact and time period.

Crisis is good in economy. It let big, old and damaged trees to fall and to give more sun light to small healthy trees which may start to grow.

Instead of pumping money into stock market which only feeds the richest ones, we should let them bankrupt to make a space for more healthy businesses. Unfortunately people on average do not understand it and still elect interventionists. It postpones crisis, increases income gap and make crisis at the end much more damaging.

We are very close to see a bankruptcy of Italy. Then banks which bought their bonds will follow. With the Deutche Bank on top.

<comment><USER27> Finally.

I agree with you!

Need to see wood not just trees.

That's also why I'm so triggered all the time when some bozo talks about "recession risk" again as if that was the problem.

This is a systemic crisis (in fact, my bet is on system collapse) and it's been years in fact decades in the making. If it hadn't been "coronavirus" hysteria it would have been something else to ignite the tinderbox.

Good riddance. It's kind of inconvenient for me personally but I think the system is stupid, evil and not accessible to reason or even pleading for change. As long as some portion of people can happily profit from status quo, they ride roughshod over everybody else and compensate their conscience with meaningless social wokeness and virtue signaling on IG/Fakebook.

Let the system burn down, maybe then people will listen to reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That worked for about 45 minutes and then the market dropped right back down again. Incredible. At this rate there won't be enough liquidity to cover these sell-offs if they continue. I don't think that's ever happened before.

<comment><USER29> This isn't and will never be a liquidity problem. This is a real crises. Economic activity is going down to 1980s levels

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me of the legends of the Plunge Protection Team (PPT)[0]. A group of people who report directly to the POTUS who're attributed responsibility by pro traders to do large buy orders when the markets are dropping sharply.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection- team....](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/plunge-protection-team.asp)

</comment><comment><USER31> In times of panic, remember that in the worst likely scenario, this virus will slow consumer spending, increase demand for hospitals, stagnate productivity for about 12 months, and kill about 0.4% of the world's population (using Spanish flu infection patterns for reference, which infected ~25% of the world population). At that point, there will be sufficient herd immunity (and likely effective treatments or vaccines) to allow the virus to decay into obscurity.

Then the economy will pick up the pieces again, with actual technology, hard capital, and active workers in the workforce still existing after the hard times. I expect this market crash to look most like 1987, which saw new highs 2 years later.

The long term consequences, besides loss of life, are that most market interventions will protect interest rates for large businesses with huge credit lines and existing debt, while small businesses go under, furthering consolidating income inequality.

Would a crash be worse without intervention? Perhaps. But the long term consequences would also be more natural and redistribute resources more fairly, in my opinion.

<comment><USER32> Past performance is no guarantee of future success. Using the worst case scenario so far as meaning "worst possible scenario" is a fallacy (consider that the past "worst case" was already surprising to people back then because it was worse than the "past's past").

Not to imply we should panic over a low probability event, just pointing out that we should be careful about Kurtosis.

<comment><USER31> Note that I wrote "worst likely scenario" not "worst possible scenario."

Worst possible scenario is not really useful for short to mid term planning in an unconstrained event space (gamma ray burst or massive meteor hits Earth, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So here's the thing: 80% of the population doesn't own stock. When fed pumps such massive money to prep the stocks, where does that money end up? I guess the idea is that then we pump the stock so companies continue to hire people so unemployment remains low. Considering the vast majority of jobs are low paying, if not outright minimum wage jobs, this means these trillions of dollars of fed charity is basically meant for nothing but making sure people gets paid minimum wage for next couple of months. On the other hand, if US government equally distributed 1.5T to each citizen then each person would get $5000 which is about 1/3rd of minimum wage income for a year. That seems like far better deal than trying to keep pumping the stock.

<comment><USER34> The fed doesn't pump stocks. It buys bonds and gives good deals on loans. It merely increases liquidity. It doesn't just give money to people.

<comment><USER35> Giving Person A a "good deal" on loans so they can loan that money to Person B at a great profit isn't so different from just giving money to Person A.

<comment><USER34> Yes it is, because they have to pay the money back...

The money they make isn't "fake" in some sense, like you're making it out to be. It's real utility that they have generated by providing liquidity. Loaning money is not a get rich quick scheme. There is risk involved.

<comment><USER35> Fair point that the interest accrued is coming out of the pre-existing money supply. Doesn't really change the thrust of my comment that you quoted though - they are being handed the ability to accrue capital.

Also, this is getting a little into the weeds philosophically, but injecting large amounts of capital in this way increases the money supply (and by much more than the amount of capital injected). In a sense, this is a tax on everyone who was not a recipient of that capital via a reduction in the purchasing power of their capital. Generally, consumer prices aren't going to go up in this case... but tons of people who had no investments have been looking at this crash as an opportunity to get in the game, and these efforts to prop up the markets with monetary policy in the face of an honest-to- goodness crisis can feel a little gatekeeper-ish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> When the problem is confidence, an injection of cash fixed the issue.

When the problem is the a bleak economic outlook because of coronavirus, oil prices, trade wars and structural issues, you're just spending money to make a number look good for a few more weeks.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can someone do an ELI5 on this?

Questions:

Is this the same as printing money?

Long or medium term, could this lead to inflation?

Where is this money injected into? "The economy" is too vague. Who specifically gets it or gets access to it? Why them and not others?

Ridiculous question but wondering what the rules are based on: Can a DAO get some of it?

Could the money (or liquidity) instead be targeted differently, either say as a one-shot stimulus given to individual taxpayers or as a short-term sample of UBI? or alternatively toward some beneficial area such as the sustainable energy sector?

Are insiders and old boys networks pocketing a windfall here?

Are they going to sabotage my long awaited opportunity to buy low?

Need a refresher on basic macroeconomics I guess.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is direct inflation. How is Gold not soaring right now?

</comment><comment><USER39> We could prevent this by actually have universal healthcare, better funding to CDC, and better sick leave.

Yes, unfortunately, it have to be political. There is no escaping it, when it comes to healthcare.

It is much more urgent when country keeps on creating new viruses and we become more globally connected.

<comment><USER40> Better sick leave and CDC funding would not do anything to alleviate volatility in the repurchase operations markets.

This is providing loans to banks so they can more easily capitalize themselves during this period of severe volatility. It is the specific purpose of the reserve banking system. It's not about stopping the virus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As I understand, they stepped in to bridge the bid/ask spread and act as a temporary market maker to solve a liquidity crunch. Can someone more knowledgeable tell me why the bid ask spread is so wide to begin with?

<comment><USER42> Probably because the people wanting to loan the money don't think the people wanting to borrow the money are going to be able to pay it back, so they're charging larger interest rates to compensate them for the risk. That's really all the interest rate is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I thought that the US never really unwound QE and the risk there was that when another financial crisis hit there wouldn't be any more tools in the kit to fix the economy. Is that where we are now?

<comment><USER44> They never unwound. The two main tools of monetary policy are the federal funds rate (FFR) and the assets side of the Fed's balance sheet.

The FFR started to rise in 2016 but never reached 'normal' levels before declining again in July of last year.[1][2]

The balance sheet started shrinking in 2018 but only managed to reach 2013 levels before expanding again in Q4 last year.[3]

All the while, the FOMC has been talking about "policy normalization", but they've punted on it again and again.[4][5]

It's not clear what kind of event we're seeing now or how much they'll be able to help. It's not even clear how much they helped last time. Counterfactuals are hard.

Edit: There's also the IORR rate, which Bernanke created in the last crisis.[6] As such, there's no historical 'normal' for it (other than zero, perhaps). I've never seen an economist even claim to understand what's going on with IORR -- and not claiming to understand something is a big deal for economists.

[1] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qkTu](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qkTu)

[2] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS)

[3] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

[4] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policy- normali...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policy- normalization-discussions-communications-history.htm)

[5] [https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policy- normali...](https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policy- normalization-qa.htm)

[6] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IORR](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IORR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Amazing how this relief just materializes. Student loan debt in the United States, a financial catastrophe waiting to happen, is at about $1.5 trillion.

<comment><USER46> Apparently college students wait till after they pay off their debts to vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What can a retail investor really do ? Is this even a free market. Cannot even do passive investing safely enough.

<comment><USER48> This is to help an otherwise very healthy US economy (low unemployment rate, solid gdp growth, income increases) from being taken down by an one time external, expiring event and panic that flows from it.

What is the point not supporting crucial companies in the stock market? Are you really better off if target or chevron or Hilton goes under? And tons of people have no jobs and there no access to staples?

<comment> munk-a Unfortunately the US economy isn't very healthy - it's over-leveraged on debt and has been artificially propped up by cash injections into the market. In actuality this recession may be caused by corvid-19 but it was ready to go at the first serious economic hiccup.

<comment><USER49> I think if anything, the Fed was probably overjoyed about COVID-19; they were just waiting for an excuse to do a massive cash injection without sparking massive backlash and protests.

The new rules against gathering in large crowds are an added bonus; the Fed is not only excused, they are legally protected from any possible backlash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://archive.md/DFXnu](https://archive.md/DFXnu)

</comment><comment><USER51> Is this really required?

Markets were really inflated before the virus crisis now they are overreacting, let the markets settle before announcing any stimulus.

I think this is premature and frankly too much of an interference from the Fed

</comment><comment><USER52> If you print $100 in your basement it is counterfeiting, punishable with 25 years in prison.

If you print 1 trillion as a banker it is called" "a bold initiative to calm market tumult".

<comment><USER53> This is a misrepresentation of the complexities of financial services, monetary, and fiscal policy.

Say what you will about the carelessness of risk-taking, shortterm thinking of the banks, but please don't misrepresent reality

<comment><USER54> Same nonsense we were told in 2008. The financial stuff is far too complicated for us mere mortals to judge, leave it all up to the bankers. All of this despite the fact that economics is a corrupt pseudoscience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> People sold stocks and cryptos to hold onto cash to save themselves from the fall.

And Fed comes and dilutes other people's cash further.

</comment><comment> munk-a How much more effective would it be to put this purchasing power toward simply combating the virus? Probably a lot...

<comment><USER56> The Fed doesn't have that power though, nor should they. That's up to congress to decide

<comment><USER57> Exactly. The fed controls monetary policy and acts independently. The US Executive + Legislative branch control fiscal policy, which would be where they could spend on virus programs.

The fed is independent precisely so it can act fast in times like these. It's a limited scope but it's something, whereas the extremely partisan congress + Trump likely won't move as fast if at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I start my first real programming job tomorrow, and the stock market crashes today.

I think I am going to have to keep looking.

</comment><comment><USER59> Not saying that fiat money is necessarily a good idea, and not clamping down on gold standard currency, or anything, but the article doesn't say that the money would be printed. If I'm not mistaken.

If what the mostly conspiratpry documentaries say is true, then the Fed lends "the state" money (at interest) which is then needed to be paid back.

That would mean that the Fed probably has money reserves on its own.

<comment><USER60> I think you may have some basic misunderstandings of how money works in today's world. _All_ money is debt, which is to say, it's a ledger entry that gives the holder a claim on future productivity. Whether that ledger entry is purely electronic or rendered onto a physical artifact (a coin or a bank note) is irrelevant. At the end of the day it's all just bookkeeping. The national debt _is_ the money supply. The key to nirvana is keeping the money supply in balance with the actual value of goods and services in the economy in order to keep prices stable. But that also has to be balanced against the need for short-term liquidity. That's the tricky part because what is happening right now is that the actual value of goods and services in the economy is shrinking, but the need for liquidity is growing. Those present two conflicting demands on the Fed, which controls interest rates which (indirectly) control the money (debt) supply. There are no "reserves", there is only the policy and decision-making that ultimately controls how much money is out there, and thus the value of that money in terms of purchasing power. Too much and you have inflation, too little and you have deflation and liquidity crises.

<comment><USER59> That may very well be. So correct me where I'm wrong here.

The Fed prints (or issues) currency, lends it to "the state" at interest.

The state eventually pays at least a part of that money back.

All I'm assuming is that if that paid money doesn't vanish, then the Federal reserve will have a Federal reserve containing that money.

<comment><USER60> No, the Fed lends money _to banks_ , not to the state. Banks then in turn lend that money to borrowers who hopefully use it to fund productive activities which produce a profit that allows the loan to be repaid. It is actually a pretty cool system and it generally works very well. Being able to control the money supply as a simple matter of _policy_ rather than, say, relying on the laws of physics to do it for you, is a very powerful economic technology. (But, of course, like any technology, it can be abused.)

The state borrows money by issuing bonds which it sells to savers. That money, like all money in a central-bank-based monetary system, ultimately comes from the Fed, but only indirectly. The Fed _could_ loan money to the government directly by buying government bonds directly, but it usually doesn't. Instead, it buys bonds from banks who buy them from the government.

See:

[https://www.thebalance.com/how-is-the-fed-monetizing- debt-33...](https://www.thebalance.com/how-is-the-fed-monetizing-debt-3306126)

also:

[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/monetary-...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/monetary- policy-recession.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Amazing how all this money can be summoned out of nowhere when it's rich people who are in trouble. But paid sick days for restaurant workers? No way. I've been in a position where I was working at McDonald's and literally running to the back of the restaurant to vomit in a trash can and they still didn't let me go home, even without pay. Have fun eating out for the next couple months.

</comment><comment><USER62> Where does that money come from?

<comment><USER63> Like all fiat money, it's conjured up out of thin air. And since money is ultimately debt, every dollar conjured up has to be worked off by the people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Free markets demand that loses of financial elites have to be socialized.

</comment><comment><USER65> What does this actually mean and how can I profit from it?

<comment><USER66> Not sure what effect this stimulus will have, if any, but long term economic fundamentals are sound, so right now might be a buying opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Adblock wall on safari mobile with Firefox focus...

</comment><comment><USER68> US Treasury successfully completed today's 30Y auction. NY Fed was just worried that without $1.5T injection, the auction would have failed.

They're not as stupid as you might think.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yet another bailout for wall street. Why couldn't these investors stop buying starbucks every day and save up like the rest of us?

<comment><USER69> This is not a wall Street bail out. This is a main Street bail out. Every American's life savings is in the stock market... Don't conflate the two please.

<comment> munk-a Nope, sorry - this is literally an injection of cash into Wall Street. Political spin can do massively crazy things but this particular injection is specifically going straight into Wall Street - saying otherwise is extremely disingenuous.

<comment><USER69> Just plain wrong. There are financial markets (stock, bond markets, etc..) and there are financial market companies that operate in that market. The two are distinct.

This is analogous to: oil in the ground (the financial market) and companies like Exxon and Chevron (financial market companies).

The financial markets are connected to every aspect of the "average" American's life. 65%+ of working-age Americans are invested in some way through the markets - either a brokerage account or a retirement account (401k, IRA, defined benefit plan, etc...).

So if the US Government steps in to stabilize the markets with an injection of capital, yes, you can argue ad infinitum that this helps the Goldman Sachs of the world. But guess what, financial market companies love volatility. That's when the real money is made. So sure, theyll make money on the way up, but they will also make plenty of money on the way down as well.

An injection of capital into the markets helps the average American. It brings stability to people's nest eggs and retirement funds. It puts a floor on panic selling.

There's nothing disingenuous in my distinction of financial markets vs financial market companies. I a merely pointing out that the market is way more complex and interconnected than is being portrayed in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> That smells a lot like panic move and I am not sure it will move the needle much. Economy will severly shrink no matter what Fed do.

<comment><USER71> It's not a panic move at all.

It's a required reassurance to investors and companies to prevent actual panic moves (i.e. complete market crash).

I agree that the economy will shrink nonetheless, but there's a difference between a small recession and a full blown depression.

<comment><USER72> I would normally agree with you, but whatever the intentions were, the market pointedly shrugged it off. I might even suggest that this FED move along with last week cut is part of the reason for the panic..

<comment><USER73> The financial economy is much much bigger than just the equities market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Universal healthcare? Too expensive.

$1.5T to bail out wall street? Sure!

<comment><USER28> I don't think you fully understand the subject. This money did not 'bail out wall street', it made sure the bottom did not drop out of the market which would affect pensions and savings plans of very large numbers of people. The thing to worry about is that _it did not work_.

<comment><USER75> The number of affected people is pretty large, but it's also worth remembering that about half of American households have no direct exposure to stock markets: no pension, no 401(k) plan, no direct holdings. If you're trying to prop up the stock market you're only directly benefitting, at most, half the people.

<comment><USER28> Fair enough. But half the people is a substantial number. What bugs me is how short lived the 'up' was. You'd expect more from such a massive injection. All it seems to have done was prop up the market long enough for some laggards to exit their positions as well and then it was back where it all started. Very scary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> They're just going to cause more panic, honestly.

<comment><USER77> They pushed the button that makes the ecomony go. Why doesn't it go?

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Cool, glad we can try to artificial support the boomers 401ks, meanwhile the SMBs won't see a dollar of that and live month to month

</comment><comment><USER79> Gotta soothe those Animal Spirits.

</comment><comment><USER80> It'll be very interesting to see how individuals who value "pure" capitalism where market dynamics handle everything reckon with the realities of disaster and epidemic response.

</comment><comment><USER81> Really love how people are on Twitter and other outlets blaming this action on Trump already when it literally has absolutely nothing to do with him and he has opposed almost all action the Fed has taken so far. Social media and the hive mind read the title and not the information mentality is really getting tiring for me..

</comment><comment><USER57> we're about to witness the limits of Quantitative Easing. I predict this will be the first of several such moves, to diminishing effects.

</comment><comment><USER49> When the Fed says that they will "pump 1.5 trillion dollars into the financial system", in reality what they mean is "pump 1.5 trillion into Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and all other crony-capitalist institutions which already have a ton of money and which couldn't exist without this constant injection of free cash".

The Fed has turned the system is a giant pyramid scheme which rewards the rich for being rich and systematically locks out value producers.

This new Fed money is not going to reach value producers; it will go to straight financiers, venture capitalist, investment bankers, shareholders, lawyers, fund managers. In the meantime farmers in the US are committing suicide and nobody gives a crap. This is profoundly immoral.

I bet the Fed chose this very opportune moment to announce this injection because they know that with the Coronavirus news, people are not going to gather in large crowds to protest. They're exploiting the situation to give their cronies handouts.

</comment><comment><USER82> Only corporations get a welfare net.

</comment><comment><USER83> Wait for it. Next week stock buybacks will be all over the news. I bet AT&T will be leading the charge.

<comment><USER84> Next week the coronavirus cases and death tolls will be 2-3x what they are today. Little chance of a V-shaped recovery. We are a long way from the bottom.

<comment><USER85> Exactly. This is just the beginning, and our efforts are a lot more lax than these other countries combating this issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Guys this is low-level plumbing work to keep the market moving. If they DIDNT do this, then people wouldn't be able to make trades, and that would cause trust to be lost in the system, and that would be really bad. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this money is for what are effectively loans that will get paid back in a very short amount of time.

<comment><USER87> Maybe trust SHOULD be lost in this system if it can't withstand the real world without falling into chaos...

This money could do so much good in our society, and yet we're using it to prop up a broken capitalist system that contributes to economic problems for Americans.

<comment><USER88> I actually tend to agree with you philosophically. But practically the outcome of inaction on the fed's part would very likely be disastrous to regular Americans.

Think about America during the great depression. Modern fed theory and policy is all aimed toward preventing something like that from happening again. It's possible that without TARP, QE, etc. in 2008 (and onward) the great recession would have become great depression 2.0.

While a complete economic reset might be in order, the question is how well would America fare during the transition?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I had a conversation with a "very serious" economist the other day about monetary policy was basically solved, and that the Great Moderation proved that we were totally in control...$1.5trn...govt debt monetized, every time we pull back the market collapses, and now we are on fire again...this is connected, if you give a heroin addict more heroin, their health will improve...keep doing it, and they will get sick.

The game is over. The market saw this, and kept falling. It is over...hopefully, things will improve from now and we stop pumping money into markets (and we realise that central bankers had no fucking idea what they were doing...they were just doing whatever was politically expedient, which is...hand out free money).</comment>


MIT to Offer Joint Degree in Computer Science and Economics - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-creates-new-major-computer-science-economics-data-science-0904 <comment><USER2> This means entrepreneurs with such degree needn't necessarily add a co-founder with major in MBA from an ivy league college just so that they could get past investor's prejudice - "You are just a tech guy, you wouldn't know how to run the company you founded without a co-founder from management background". Let's not be naive, even Elon Musk faced it.

P.S BTW when I did my CSE, we had full semester subject on economics & management studies. Isn't that the case in top institutions?

</comment><comment><USER3> Economics is a sham discipline. Economists are like the witch doctors of the modern era, spinning whichever narrative they feel is the correct one. I wish MIT would just call the field something else like "social dynamics". Sort of like how physiotherapy is offered at Universities instead of the chiropractic mumbo jumbo.</comment>


ISP Fought a Secret Surveillance Order, Court Denied It Access to Relevant Law - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/provider-fought-secret-surveillance-order-court-denied-it-access-relevant-law <comment><USER2> Given the constraints imposed upon those seeking to challenge secret courts, it seems almost nonsensical to use a common-law court model except to present a veneer of respectability. It's essentially a tribunal with members of the judicial branch (presumably) presiding instead of flag officers or civilian bureaucrats.

</comment><comment><USER3> What the article is purporting is a bit mis-leading. According to the redacted opinion released by EFF's FOIA lawsuit - the context of the law is irrelevant to its interpretation in this specific circumstance.

So it refuses to provide context for decisions. Still, that does seems to ascribe the FISC an air of infallibility.</comment>


Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x <comment><USER2> AI is going to be like nukes, sounds like a great idea first and then everyone freaks out once the cat is out of the bag.

<comment><USER3> I'm imagining a Battlestar Galactica situation where things are only networked if absolutely necessary. The internet, now serious business, couldn't be trusted with a bunch of super-intelligent AI connected. I'm imagining the internet reverting to its early days where just visiting a site is potentially dangerous. A curiosity but no place you'd trust with your address or credit cards

<comment><USER4> >I'm imagining a Battlestar Galactica situation where things are only networked if absolutely necessary.

... and all it would take is one rogue (or unaware) agent to plug in a USB stick somewhere and it's game over..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good article, Musk's logic seems more sound than most of SV. Of course he's also the one building cars and rockets while everyone else's business boils down to fancy websites.

I admire his individualism. For such an innovative place, I find SV to be one of the loudest echo chambers in the world. God help you if you're Republican and if you use jQuery in 2017 you might as well kill yourself. There's a cult mentality, a smugness among those drinking the koolaid that they're somehow better than everyone else.

To me, messing with AI feels like what would've happened if nuclear energy had been discovered by private industry. We have 1000's of companies competing, tinkering, trying to build the smartest AI to power their systems. Right now, nobody has any idea if we're 5% away from prompt critical and an immense all consuming fireball. Well, maybe a few companies know, but its "proprietary information". As the past has proven repeatedly, private industry has no issues playing with something wildly dangerous.

Historically, most regulation starts life as a knee-jerk reaction to companies doing terrible things. Especially in staunchly capitalist societies like the US, where the government is seen as a necessary evil. I hope human military is enough to stop the first singularity from destroying the earth so we can get some reasonable regulations in place.</comment>


Idea to paying customers in 7 weeks: how we did it - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks-how-we-did-it <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. A lot of good points I don't mind being reminded of. Especially the much more minimal than you think. And once you confirm it'll sell, sell it, its ready!</comment>


How to get kids to pay attention - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/621752789/a-lost-secret-how-to-get-kids-to-pay-attention <comment><USER3> I often wonder whether this has a lot to do with how we treat our kids. I often catch myself acting uninterested in my daughter's interests (she's two and often wants to show me things for the 50th time that were pretty boring in the first place.) She doesn't have any attention or behavioral issues in general, but I was amazed when a friend of mine came to visit who is an early music educator. They didn't do anything music related, but watching her interact with my daughter was eye-opening. She was very present and respectful with regards to my daughter's interests and what my daughter wanted to do. I guess more or less she treated my daughter more or less like an adult. Thinking about it, it's so easy to be flippant or dismissive about what our kids are doing or are interested in without even noticing.

I was really amazed to see how much my daughter reciprocated the attention and my friend was able to get her to pay attention to this or that or be much more engaged than I usually can.

This is obviously a very small sample, but it really made me think about the ways that we don't treat our children like adults (and how maybe they act like children because we treat them that way.)

<comment><USER4> An indirect way of encouraging this is including kids in what _you_ are doing, as opposed to engineering activities for them.

A lot of kids' world these days is an artificial reality, made for them. School, soccer, art class, play dates. The reason the activity exists is to give kids an experience. We're not interested in it, because it's kid stuff.

When I was a kid, some of the most formative activities were fishing, sheep farming & vegetables gardening (grandparents on a farm), home repair jobs like painting or brickwork.

When I was very small (2-4), if my parents were painting a room, I was also in old clothes with a paintbrush "helping". Same with spring cleaning or whatnot. I had a little hammer I could bang, to help my dad assemble IKEA furniture.

You don't have to conciously "engage" in their stuff, just let them engage in your stuff.

<comment><USER5> > When I was very small (2-4), if my parents were painting a room, I was also > in old clothes with a paintbrush "helping". Same with spring cleaning or > whatnot.

One of my favourite childhood photos is me mowing the lawn (with a plastic "bubble spewing" lawnmower). A thing I used to walk behind my father as he mowed the lawn.

It never really had the soap to make bubbles in it. Didn't care about that. I was _helping_

<comment><USER6> I second this. I'm a father of a 5½ year old boy. Like the grandparent said, I try to treat him as an adult with no experience, knowledge or skills and with a plastic mind.

Small kids have an instinct to learn: they follow you around and copy your behavior. It takes great responsibility to shape the future of a person. And with your own flaws replayed in front of you, you change, you become a better person because of it.

I remember that age. And I loved when I was doing stuff with my dad. Before I was 7 I had worked with wood, handled the axe and knife, welded metal, messed with bikes, capsized a boat, tied knots and shot rifles. I wasn't good, I didn't contribute, I was just given small tasks to free my dad to do the real work. I felt I was on the team, and I learned a lot.

My father always answered all my weird questions, and if he wasn't able to, he looked it up and told me at bed time.

When I was 12, and enthusiastic told him about a game have played on my Commodere 64. He listened and was understanding of my enthusiasm. Then he said: "But did you program that game?", and I replayed "No, of course not...". And my Dad replayed: "So you are only running other peoples programs...". That sentence is the reason I'm in IT and reading this site...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty much how I was raised in a small midwestern farming community. I was in charge of the laundry by the time I was 6, and the lawn when I was 8 or 9, and summers were pretty much filled with activities that my friends and I could organize.

Moving to the burbs where play was organized sports and kids had everything done for them was a really big shock.

It was hard to believe how inept at life most of my peers were when I went off to University. They only things they knew were what was on tv or from school.

<comment><USER8> I can relate, I was born/grew up overseas and was raised this way before my parents moved back to the states. I moved back with them, and it was surprising how little my friends had in life skills. I had learned to cook (from watching/learning) already and would cook for myself after school for example, while most of my friends would have zero ideas on what to do.

It's sad how the U.S. Government prevents native American kids to have this experience in populated areas. There's a cultural vibe of individualism preventing overwatch of kids by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive autonomy that I had as a kid.

I was told by my mom that at the age of 4 years old, I hailed a taxi cab alone in the Philippines while she went to the bathroom in a McDonalds. That would never happen here in America.

<comment><USER9> >There's a cultural vibe of individualism [where?] preventing overwatch of kids [whose kids?] by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive [prohibiting what?] autonomy that I had as a kid.

I don't quite understand what you're saying here, but I'm genuinely interested. Could you clarify?

Active listening: What I thought you said is that in, say, the Philippines, there is a culture of individualism that prevents adults from hovering over kids (not sure how that follows), which leads to the kids having significantly more autonomy than in the U.S. (and maybe you used the word "prohibitive" incorrectly?).

I was also raised by American parents in a village in equatorial Congo--thus my interest.

<comment><USER10> Not OP but I read it as prohibition of the autonomy (of children by today's culture) that they used to have. I can relate, as a child I was expected to be self-sufficient in a way that would be unrecognisable to modern children.

Rather than being ferried by car to the school, and taxied to a series of child appointments, I walked to school alone or with friends. That including crossing a 4 lane highway, at the lights, in a major city. I must have been doing that at age 5 and 6 as at 7 we went to a different school. I don't remember my parents ever taking me apart from the very first time. Maybe a couple more times at most then. Same for everyone else - we all walked. Now every school is near unreachable thanks to the hundreds of cars from parents who are usually near enough to walk.

When playing out I was often told not to come back until dinner, so we'd go off and do stuff.

Every adult around, and everyone else's parent would give us a telling off if we were being out of line. A shopkeeper or stranger might come out to yell. Everyone seemed to have half an eye out for all the kids.

The individualism of today's adults all around has led to them ignoring, or putting up with the excesses of, everyone else's kids. Few would dare say anything, and would probably get a torrent of abuse from the parent if they did.

The over-hype of abuse and stranger danger hasn't helped either - <USER2> things, but not exactly as common as the media imply. Adult males have double the reason not to speak to or tell off someone's child.

<comment><USER11> I grew up with much the same freedom: in small town Iowa, the school bus was for kids 20 miles away. My street would join the larger neighborhood's kids for the 5 mile walk to and from everyday, rain, thunderstorms, winter snow storm or not. If snow was really bad, dads with snowmobiles would ferry the kids, pulling trains of sleds. Rain was okay, no matter how hard.

After school, the "bike gangs" of kids would be roaming free, stop in for dinner, and then back out till dark. Everyone had this freedom.

As the kids became teens, this being the late 70's, a tax law created incentive for publishing and insurance corporations to move to Iowa. Their families brought major city / coastal teen attitudes, including appetites for a drug culture that Iowa was not sophisticated enough to manage. That Iowa Innocence seems to have been lost. Now it is just another generica in the US corporate sameland, with the original Iowa Natives unable to understand what happened to their culture.

<comment><USER12> > Now it is just another generica in the US corporate sameland, with the > original Iowa Natives unable to understand what happened to their culture.

Is this a very cleverly disguised allegory for the loss of indigenous culture by invading hordes, descended from Europeans who settled the coast of what is now the United States? Do you actually consider small town mid-20th century midwestern US culture to be the culture of the "original Iowa Natives"?

<comment><USER11> I am referring to the fact that all the States had unique cultures, transplants from their original countries, many idealist moved to the middle states and tried to create utopias in the New World. None of that worked, but there was unique culture, distinct in different parts of many states. Many of these people never move, so they are the original descendants from some religious idealism that fizzled.

I course I recognize these are not the original Iowa Natives. I am referring to the ideal of small towns and their community culture. Which was very real not that long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's really interesting to me is this same thing can be applied to adults too.

The article writes:

 _> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?'_

I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living".

<comment><USER14> > I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same > question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that > instead of being pressured into "making a living".

I imagine we'd have an abundance of pilots, and actors and a severe lack of toilet cleaners.

<comment><USER15> Personally I think there are more people than you think who would be perfectly happy to clean toilets as their contribution, so long as they were compensated fairly for it.

<comment><USER16> Isn't that the entire point of the free market? To find the price that incentivizes the necessary level of production of a good/service?

The alternative is a central authority setting prices, which has historically had disastrous results.

<comment><USER17> Well, in romantic theory, yes. But unfortunately, society doesn't value folks that clean toilets and folks that clean toilets need income to buy food, shelter, and other things. The balance of power seriously works against the person cleaning toilets, and they have no real power over the wages they are paid.

The market forces that determine pay are more competition between folks that hire others to clean toilets. If all of your competitors pay twice as much as you, you might not have quality employees... or any at all, if a job is readily available. If you have a lot of folks desperate for income, you can pay less. If there are few folks that are willing to clean toilets, you probably pay more. You could go without folks to clean toilets, but your average Western accountant probably isn't going to clean the office toilets or breakroom willingly unless it becomes standard for office jobs everywhere. Many places simply cannot leave dirty facilities - and in some jobs, you probably would rather have separate staff cleaning (hospitals, for example).

Luckily, there are a lot of levels between "unregulated, free-market-will- take-care-of-it" and complete control from a central authority. Minimum wages, worker rights, workplace safety, safety nets that ensure less desperate people, and so on.

<comment><USER16> If the supply of people able and willing to clean toilets is great compared to the demand for toilet cleaning service, the wage for toilet cleaners will be low.

We can redistribute profits from investors to low wage workers like the people who clean toilets, but the consequence of that is lower return on investment, and with it, lower rates of investment/economic-growth.

In the long, policies that lower economic growth rates are very detrimental to all classes of workers. What increases wages for people like toilet cleaners is high levels of production relative to population.

Investment is the mechanism by which we increase production, and profits are how 1. resources are distributed to those who are most effective at growing the economy's level of production 2. people are incentivized to invest to increase production.

There's no escaping economic laws, and no free lunch from policies that redistribute income from high income earners to low income earners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's very hard to compare a hunter gatherer / traditional village society to the modern urban & educated society and have meaningful takeaways.

The crux of the matter is the requirement for responsibility. Rather than have this goofy teenagehood that runs from 13-25, forcing the matter of responsibility at an earlier age and _accepting the failures_ is a critical difference.

Protecting children and ensuring they are not morally damaged runs exactly counter this reality. There's a good deal of cognitive dissonance and parental self-delusion going on here as well.

I have generally grown to have a dislike of child labor laws that prohibit or limit working after 14. It's doing a great disservice to the young adults who could be doing something constructive in character.

Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet litter, etc.

<comment><USER19> > Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in > household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet > litter, etc.

It is insane that some parents I know would like to reply to this part of your answer like this: "Kids should be kids you shouldn't force them to be adults too soon or you might steal their childhood". I've literally heard that.

<comment><USER20> You might steal from their adulthood if you refuse to teach them life skills, maybe something to reply with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have 6 kids, and I've found it's pretty simple to get kids to pay attention (or anything else). Be consistent, and willing to discipline if necessary. Here's the order I follow:

1\. Polite request

2\. Polite command

3\. Stern command

4\. Warning

5\. Push-ups

6\. Spanking

They know I love them and because of that love obedience is required. Situations rarely escalate past step 2, and step 6 is memorable.

ETA: for anything past the polite stages, I try to always follow-up with gentle counseling after they've had a couple minutes to think about it. "Do you know why you got into trouble? How could you have handled the situation better?". Complete amnesty is the rule during counseling, i.e., no matter what they confess, they will NOT receive punishment. I want them to learn by reflection.

<comment><USER22> Don't spank your kids. It has no benefit, and many negative effects.

<comment><USER23> Indeed. I was spanked as a child (I was very stubborn and looking back it's clear that nothing else really worked with me). As a result, I suffer from a condition known as respect for others. It's a terrible affliction to have in this day and age.

<comment><USER24> Strange, I was also spanked as a child and somehow I still ended up with several flaws. I feel like the experience retarded the age at which I was able to achieve self actualization by many years and seriously impacted my ability to have a healthy adult relationship with my father who has himself changed and grown tremendously as an individual since the years he spanked me as a child.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I and my wife discuss programming matters in front of our kids. And my kids listen to the discussions and want to be part of it.

Then I start teaching the basics, they are a bit more willing to hear.

Here the incentive for them is to be part of the club where interesting things are happening.

We laugh at coding jokes which kids don't appear to understand which leaves them confused.

So, it seems they are aware they lack some understanding because of which they are unable to understand us.

The same idea has worked for math, playing musical instruments like keyboard/ukelele, physical exercises like skipping ropes or air pushups.

If I simply give them a computer or ukelele, they won't be interested as they don't know how to hold a ukulele or have no one to tell them how to hold it right and how to fuse a chord progression with the strumming pattern. These things are not obvious by just watching or hits and trials on a guitar/ukelele.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for an idea. As part of developing a rough-quantitative feel for physical properties, I like associating measures with real-life adult-world examples. Eg, a Newton-meter torque is reopening a 2L plastic soda bottle.[1] But my mindset was 'make the associations transparent and low-barrier', and do 'number->example, to allow easily exploring the measure space"'. But what if there was more mystery, struggle, challenge, tease? An adaptively tuned barrier.

Instead of 'touching a thermometer scale at some temperature instantly yields a video about making chocolate', or a video clip of a tv news weather report, what if instead a video had temperatures bleeped/blurred out, and required an act of effort - "give me the temperature, d*mnit! it should be around here somewhere...". Then maybe related videos (of similar temperature or topic) aren't just more surfing, but payoff? An unlocking. "Ohhh, change the temperature of that step and you get a different kind of chocolate!"

Maybe a little animated critter that watches videos with you, and cheers for temperatures, or jumps on them, and sometimes makes it so you cant hear/see them, unless you shush the critter, or move it.

Anyway, random brainstorming - I'm exploring maybe doing a temperature education app. Thanks for your comment.

[1] [http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torq...](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torque)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you > didn't have to do anything else?'

In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive activity such as playing video games, or watching videos on youtube.

<comment><USER27> > In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive > activity such as playing video games, watching videos on youtube or > something similar.

I was a relatively free-range child. I had a bike, I had a pocket full of quarters to call home if I needed to, and if I wanted to I could stay home and play video games (we had an NES, followed by a SNES, but not that many games).

What did I do? I rode my bike to the library and took out books from the programming section. The first ones were video-game inspired. You could get the source code of a game in a book and type it into the Vic-20. I was obsessive with it. Once I'd gone through all of the game-books they had, I started making my own. And then we got a used XT and it. was. on. Quickly went from QBasic to a C compiler (PowerC, if I recall). Around '97 or so we got a Pentium 1 and I heard about this thing called "gcc" which was apparently a better C compiler, so I ended up installing Linux.

And here we are, 20 years later and I've turned all of that into a great career. At the time, my parents were pretty dismayed that I wasn't into baseball, or soccer, or basketball, or whatever... But they did a great job at keeping things balanced. Don't want to play sports? That's ok, but we've got to go take the dog for a walk.

I fully accept that a lot of the computer-related activities are significantly more addictive now (and passive) than they were back then. If I wanted a new game, I had to ride my bike to the library! But... I'm always leery of people who suggest heavily restricting screen time just because it's screen time. If that's the direction someone's going, they might just need a little nudge to make it a more productive learning experience.

<comment><USER28> There's a big difference in active and passive screen time. I got into computers in the early 90s and back then there was always a certain hands on aspect to it. From installing RAM to clearing drive space or making custom boot disks... Games actually thought me a lot!

Now... Not so much. Much of the hardware is locked, nevermind the software. So kids get to thinking they _can 't_ make anything, that it's a primarily passive experience.

To me, that's the big problem, to become passionate about passiveness.

For the record my 5 year old runs KDE on a fanless laptop. It's been great for him to learn letters at school

<comment><USER29> I agree except for the idea that hardware and software being locked somehow prevents creative activities.

If you want to do programming, you can do a huge amount just using browser APIs (and that is kind of nice because it is very easy to share what you do by sending people a link). You can do graphics (canvas, svg, webgl), audio, and so many other things.

But to use a computer creatively you don't have to be a programmer. You can use paint programs, 3d modeling programs, music programs such as DAWs, word processors/text editors for writing, and a huge number of other kinds of software that allow non-passive, creative activities.

The problem, as I see it, is that so many passive things are available too, and many are very attractive to kids.

<comment><USER30> Three problem with locked-down software and hardware is that it is the environment. An immutable environment leaves no room for creativity.

Sure, you can go find an open environment, but when I was growing up, I was already there; and that made all the difference. I didn't need a mentor to introduce me. I was free to stumble into the world of software via my own interests.

<comment><USER31> That's just not true. Plenty of creativity is available in immutable environments. Working around limitations is a key factor of creativity in my opinion.

<comment><USER30> Sure, but it's a different kind of creativity.

The limitations are arbitrary and nearly impossible to get around. Computers, especially smart phones, tablets, etc. are being treated less as property of the buyer and more as property of the seller/manufacturer.

For example: When it is very difficult to unlock a bootloader, then most people do not find it interesting to try other operating systems. Very few are more creative, and the rest are just prevented from exploring/learning/creating just because they have the wrong device.

<comment><USER29> The kinds of creativity that are allowed are far more relevant to the question of kids and attention and the effect of electronic devices. My four year old has a chromebook, which she uses for a lot of things (of which watching inane videos on YouTube would be her default if I didn't intervene regularly to point her to better stuff).

She'll probably be coding by the time she is 8, but she mostly does graphics and music now (for instance, she uses piano-karaoke software I developed that runs in Chrome on most any device). The "unlocking the bootloader" issue hasn't cropped up yet, but maybe I would be more frustrated if we had an iOS instead of chromeOS, Android and MacOS devices.

<comment><USER30> These limitations aren't constrained to toddlers. I have met plenty of teenagers who are stuck with similar devices.

This is a problem that has been somewhat avoided in the Android ecosystem, but the trend is definitely negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My father was short tempered, very loud, and an unusually large man in stature and presence. Additionally he worked nights, got a couple hours of sleep, and then woke up and took care of my brother and I for breakfast / school before sleeping more. He was not someone to mess with in general, let alone at 630am on a Tuesday.

I think the threat of being screamed at and intimidated made my brother and I two of the most well behaved kids I knew. I would see my friends going bananas and think, "are you guys out of your minds?"

I'm not advocating this style of parenting, and I won't replicate it, but I can't deny that the old school mechanism of raising kids was basically "sit down, shut up, or else!" and it made kids much more likely to listen. And the view of children as mini adults who could be useful, if properly trained, has been the default parenting style for thousands of years.

<comment><USER33> Another anecdote people might not like: Sunday school was an amazing form of early-childhood education for me. Some of my first experiences with music, art, and reading were in Sunday school. It taught me to love drawing and singing which I still like to this day. We were taught to obey our parents or go to Hell, to pay attention or go to Hell, to share and be kind and to empathize... or go to Hell... Which everyone of course realizes the implications of, even at very young ages.

I once had a very interesting conversation with a high school teacher of mine who taught very high-level math. Speaking only of his students who were in honors courses, he said that there was a clear divide between students from religious homes and students from secular ones. The religious ones were much more diligent and willing to learn. The non-religious ones may have been smart but were sometimes unmotivated or couldn't handle the rigorous pace of work. The religion itself didn't matter - we had Hindu, Christian, and Jewish kids in the class, maybe one Muslim but I don't remember. He himself was a Christian so maybe he was biased, but I believe it.

<comment><USER34> Interesting theory, I think there's something to it.

There's probably some selection bias going on with the religious homes thing. Like the hidden variable that both religious adherence AND discipline/work ethic are caused by: a belief in a meta-order that one should conform to and operate within.

i.e. It's reasonable to assume that more traditionally religious parents are people that tend to prefer (a) explicit order and structure, and (b) conformity or deference to authority. If you value those things, you will likely place a higher degree of value on discipline and work ethic in your own life and in your children's lives.

On a more subtle level -- and this will likely be unpopular on here -- I believe that sincerely religious people are also more likely to have a certain "default stance" towards life / the universe... that their actions matter, that they want to be "morally good", that they must take into account a perspective other than their own (either God's perspective, their priest's, their parents', etc). That combined with a kind of earnestness... seems like a good plan for success in life.

Obviously not saying those are exclusively or even principally religious attributes.

Also not saying that that stance is absolutely the best one. You can likely index too far that way too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Text-only link because NPR couldn't be bothered to make their GDPR compliance page link to the correct page: [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789)

<comment><USER36> How did you find this? I looked all over but was unable to find it after declining and going the the plaintext site.

I would love the text-only site... if it worked.

<comment><USER37> You can copy the story ID from the original URL. It's the "long" number just after the date — e.g. in the following URL:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/6217527...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/621752789/a-lost- secret-how-to-get-kids-to-pay-attention)

it's 621752789. I would then click any random story on the default "plain text site" ([https://text.npr.org/](https://text.npr.org/)), to quickly get a base URL for a story, and then replace the sId in the URL with the copied number. Thus:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> wu-ikkyu It's amazing how so many in our society wonder why kids naturally don't want to be forced to sit down, shut up, and passively consume arbitrary, impractical, and obsolete information. Our teaching and testing methods are stuck in the 19th century. Children who don't fit the mold of a cog in the industrial machine are drugged into submission.

>We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

-Buckminster Fuller

</comment><comment><USER38> As someone who has spent a bit of time traveling in the Mayan parts of Guatemala and Mexico, it seems difficult to me to compare parenting styles without also considering the fact that quite a few of the Maya in general are living in abject poverty with very little social mobility and with often 3+ generations of family living in close proximity, and I suspect as their financial situation improves and they have better access to distractions like tv or internet, the differences will fade away. I'd be very surprised if it even survived one generation of living in Guatemala City, let alone after moving to the US.

It's one thing to let your kids free roam in a village that has a single dirt road going through it and almost everyone around you is a cousin or has known your family for generations. It's quite another in the suburbs where you have only had a 5 minute chat with one neighbor in 3 months.

I'm also sort of skeptical of applying a value judgement to one or the other — I'm not sure that it would be beneficial to raise your kids that way in the developed world, although it sounds nice in the abstract.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have so many problems with these kind of articles / studies. For starters, does any of this matter? There seems to be a moral assumption that more motivated kids are somehow better.

I also dislike the 'more autonomy' argument - somewhere in the article it says something like ' we can't give kids that much autonomy because it would be dangerous'. So it's setting up a morally superior scenario and parenting approach and then discounting it as inapplicable in the modern context. What does that tell you about kids? Nothing. But it tells you a lot about society's priorities.

I've got a counter conclusion; the American kids have seen the toys before and they're just not that interesting. The Mayan kids have fewer toys so are interested in playing with them.

</comment><comment><USER40> Autonomy,

      What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?
      Then create space in their schedule for this activity

and the time to focus on their interests.

I'm curious if their measurement of paying attention to an unrelated task performed by someone else is a measurement of attention or curiosity.

<comment><USER41> I am so grateful my parents didn't need to "create space in my schedule" for anything. I created my own schedule (outside of school). That is autonomy, not your parents creating spaces in your schedule.

<comment><USER40> Can you explain the difference? to me both statements appear the same with the difference a matter of perspective. Your parents scheduled some of your time as your time outside of your schedule for school. You scheduled that time and your parents respected that.

<comment><USER42> Well, I think first you need autonomy without direction before you can figure out what you want to do. Without space to be bored, it's hard to find the time to be creative, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm disappointed to see this article trot out the "unsafe" trope, especially after, earlier in the article, citing the Maya mother stating her child knows how to avoid traffic.

> Now, many parents in the U.S. can't go full-on Maya to motivate kids. It's > often not practical — or safe — to give kids that much autonomy in many > places, for instance.

I'm not asserting that traffic is the only US safety concern (or that it's even comparable for that example), but I would have hoped the authors would at least put in a link to an article regarding safety concerns or the controversy, without implicitly taking sides.

<comment><USER44> Traffic safety is the main reason that US kids aren't out there playing. Because we're "rich" we've created a car-choked hellscape where nobody can be outside. We're so much more "rich" than those backwards people who have to walk to the store or ride a filthy bus.

<comment><USER43> This is not supported by, at least, this chart, comparing the US and Guatemala:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- related_death_rate)

Now, it may still be true that pedestrians or child pedestrians are killed at a higher rate (per capita, per car, and/or per mile driven) in the US than in Guatemala (or other countries that are not "rich"). However, for that possibility to be plausible, there would need to be at least a credible, substantive explanation.

<comment><USER44> It's more about the perception than the reality. People won't let their kids out because it appears to be rather dangerous. They drive them everywhere instead.

The dig at Americans' self image as "rich" is a reference to the famous line by Enrique Peñalosa: a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars; it's a place where the wealthy ride the bus. I live part-time in Switzerland where the traffic violence rate is a small fraction of what it is here in the US. I let my kids roam the city because it's safe. I won't let them roam around in Oakland where we don't even have sidewalks. My neighbors consider themselves to be very rich compared to my neighbors in Zurich. They have a huge tacky mansion and two Porsche SUVs, and their kids are stupid and fat and have diabetes.

<comment><USER43> > It's more about the perception than the reality.

What's the "it" here? The article's statement? If so, that's my disappointment. They could easily have added the adjective "perceived" or ommitted the part about practicality.

> The dig

A dig is not, in general, substantive, and I fear that your use of words like "hellscape", "backward", "filthy", "tacky", "stupid", and maybe even "fat" have a tendency to inflame and thereby distract from whatever on-topic point you may have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> For what it's worth, what the Maya families are doing is a version of the central principle of Montessori early education (and what my company is trying to scale). That is, build a capacity for deep concentration in early childhood using (1) high autonomy pedagogical practices and (2) an environment with a structure that makes it possible for children to contribute to practical life.

</comment><comment><USER46> Text version for EU users [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789) , since declining tracking does not redirect to the correct article. It should work well with your browser's reading mode.

<comment><USER47> Thanks, now I understand what reading mode is for :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "The parents intentionally give their children this autonomy and freedom because they believe it's the best way to motivate kids." This is basically the philosophy behind self-directed learning: unschooling as well as learning communities like Sudbury schools, liberated learners centers, and agile learning centers.

I work at one of these schools, and our kids are really good at paying attention. ADD is a real thing and still affects some of them, but we also have a lot of kids who were diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal.

<comment><USER49> "diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal."

Of course the problem is that, even when something is interesting to the person at a high level, there may be subsets of that activity which are dead boring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> So it comes down to the choice of the kids. Apparently, making an origami jumping mouse is interesting for mayan kids, but not for american ones. The article doesn't even try to convince me that autonomy is the critical factor.

When a professor starts a sentence with "It may be the case that" it is clearly just personal opinion and not published scientific fact. The professor intentionally makes the disclaimer that she has no proof for the hypothesis.

<comment><USER38> Yeah the reason is that they can't afford to buy talking Paw patrol toys.

I've handed a bunch of Mayan kids my iPad and they didn't give it back to me for hours. They totally forgot their beautiful handmade toys in an instant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> > "Of course she can go shopping," Tun Burgos says. "She can buy some eggs or > tomatoes for us. She knows the way and how to stay out of traffic."

I wonder how much this has to do with the value of child life.

What are the statistics of Mayan children being run over / kidnapped?

I can't imagine it's somehow safer in Mexico, just somehow parents are more willing / less informed to take this risk.

<comment><USER52> If people believed in statistics they would let their kids roam free like their parents and grandparents did. It's much safer than it used to be. Alas, US parents are overly protective.

<comment><USER51> I believe it's because parents and grandparents never looked at statistics and so because in communities where there wasn't a story of children getting kidnapped or being killed on the road then they just never thought about the chance happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I guess my follow up is: which is better? Is it better not to pay attention to tasks and imagine other stuff or is it better to focus on the task no matter how trivial?

In other words, should the Maya kids be learning from the Americans?

<comment><USER54> Interesting question. I certainly have had many great ideas while not paying attention and being bored out of my mind in school.

<comment><USER55> I agree. Personally, I don't remember what boredom is. I stop paying attention whenever I can get away with it, happy that I just reclaimed some time from a bullshit situation - time which I can use to think about problems that interest me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The way my step sons live strikes me as having much less autonomy than I had at their age. I'm still boggles that young kids aren't allowed to walk to school by themselves.

Most of the time, I tend to think as long as good basic care is taken of kids, they can work out all sorts of weird child rearing environments just fine.

Something that has given me pause though is the astonishing addictive power of the various "screen" which occupy so much attention. Unibiquitous telecommunication is something new in human history, and it really grabs hold of people, the young as much as anyone. My concern is that our highly tuned psycho-physiology has not evolved to handle the type of activity, and it's distorting our consciousnesses, and ability to pay attention, in ways that are unhealthy.

(Similarly to how humans have a hard time with too much access to processed food with high calorie amounts.)

</comment><comment><USER57> > "If you do better on the task, it would end sooner," Esterman says. "And you > can get out of the lab sooner."

My boss never tells me this :(

<comment><USER58> I have a friend (a programmer) whose employer decided to try shortening the work day to 6 hours as long as the work still got done at the same pace. The owner was under the assumption that work will expand to take the time allotted. The experiment worked, and they still have 6 hour work days a couple years later.

I think the theory that work will expand to take the time allotted is true, and I bet the motivation of getting done early is a big contributor as well.

Maybe you can pitch it to your boss :)

<comment><USER57> The problem is really that I'm the one making the time-estimations. So if I can get the work done faster, I could (in theory) go home earlier, but if it takes more time than expected, then to be fair I'd have to do night-work.

<comment><USER59> Honestly if you get your work done faster, you will probably just get more work until your schedule is full again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Be aware that the conclusion is not rock solid:

 _So maybe the Maya children are more attentive in the origami /toy experiment — not because they have better attention spans — but because they are more motivated to pay attention. Their parents have somehow motivated them to pay attention even without being told._

They say _maybe_... I can think of other reasons why Maya children seem to be more interested in anything happening in a western lab, than western kids. I don't know the details because I haven't read the original paper, but reading the article I'm not sure this effect has been ruled out.

</comment><comment><USER61> Control-F 'montessori' ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education)

The conclusions are not new. Maria Montessori researched this 100 years ago.

\- Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options. \- Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours. \- A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction. -

</comment><comment><USER62> If anybody is interested in this, then it's worth looking at the RIE approach for babies and toddlers (Janet Lansbury's blog is a good place to start [http://www.janetlansbury.com/](http://www.janetlansbury.com/)). A large part of it is about allow babies and toddlers to choose what they pay attention to. Anecdotally, I very loosely followed it with our two and they have amazing attention spans compared with most kids their age - certainly both their teachers have commented on it. It's also much more relaxing as a parent I found, letting your children be in charge of what they want to pay attention to most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER63> At [https://www.schoolze.com](https://www.schoolze.com) \- we are looking at the problems faced by Schools from all these angles. From Attention, to engagement, to fundraising, to measure all the aspects of a successfull K-12 classrooms.

That's why looking at the participant of the education system is very important. Be it Kids, Schools, Teachers or PTAs. All will have to work towards this success.

</comment><comment><USER64> The genereal idea is to let the children themselves want something with passion and they will pay attention. (not only to child in fact). However, one of the simple way to do that is NOT autonomy as the article suggest, but to make that thing sparse, precious and difficult to get. The children does not have the right to be well educated, will pay more attention comparing to those who have plenty already.

</comment><comment><USER65> This is the second article on HN in the last few weeks from NPR praising the virtues of traditional Central American child rearing.

</comment><comment><USER66> "You are a product of your environment" \--Clement [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect)

</comment><comment><USER67> > For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you > didn't have to do anything else?'

Wow. I don't have to do anything else right now, and I'm reading HN :(

</comment><comment><USER68> These sorts of stories should require every commenter to disclose how many children they have. Nothing like parenting stories bring out the parenting experts with zero experience.

</comment><comment><USER69> TL;DR: Autonomy; which holds true for adults and children.

<comment> s-shellfish Adults don't have to be any different from children in terms of autonomy.

We get these weird ideas of what gives us personal security, what keeps our lives from devolving into chaos, what we are able to do and what we were never good at. Those ideas are what take away autonomy for adults, because the opposite is often demoted to a triviality like 'the innocence of children', brain plasticity (mind like sponge), etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> > _The other kid was told to wait._

> _One little boy started making explosive noises, pretending a toy on the > table was a bomb_

Hm, perhaps some Ritalin could fix this?

Perfectly normal behavior; little boy waits and plays small games to pass time. Incompetent teachers blame kids and "fix the problem".

<comment><USER71> Depends on age whether normal. For 5 years old, yes. For 8 years old, absolutely no. Normal 8 years old should be able to wait two minutes without being disruptive when teacher is focused on somebody else.

The kids who can't should absolutely get special help and assistance. However, if the healthy kid can't, then the solution is not to excuse it, but rather teach them patience and less egoism.

<comment><USER40> But what's the range? Maturity isn't a hard line

<comment><USER71> No, it is not exact line. I would have to check the exact lines in studies, but basically expectations rise with age.

But largely, I think that the goal should be to _teach_ kids to have abilities like patience and functioning when you are not center of attention instead of categorizing them into "good enough" and "bad" categories. Ultimately, don't blame child.

That teaching won't happen if adults knee jerk to wave everything away.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ex-FB Exec – "You don't realize it, but you're being programmed" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MustaphaItani/ex-facebook-executive-you-dont-realize-it-but-you-are-being-programmed-2b35db8a421 <comment><AUTHOR> I know this has been said alot, but I think we're reaching a tipping point where the average fb user is realizing, they ARE the product. Free apps raise suspicion now.</comment>


CC Search is out of beta with 300M images and easier attribution - <AUTHOR> https://creativecommons.org/2019/04/30/cc-search-images/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19791073](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19791073), which was earlier and is by someone working on the project.</comment>


Show HN: HAgnostic News – HN Reader for the Web and React Native App (Android/iOS) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grigio/HAgnostic-News <comment><AUTHOR> Added missing links</comment>