Camelot This Ain’t Steven Mnuchin and Louise Linton, mascots of Trump-era “glamour.”
IN SNOWCAPPED DAVOS last month, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin casually diverged from two decades of U.S. fiscal orthodoxy and accidentally tipped the value of the dollar further into a spiral with a single sentence. “Obviously,” he said, “a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade and opportunities.”
“It was distressing to me because it just shows a disregard for basic competence in governing,” said a former top economic official in Democratic administrations—referring specifically to the Treasury secretary’s not seeming to know he had any obligations beyond giving voice to his own personal preferences about things like, oh, say, monetary policy. That a weak dollar was not, actually, the policy goal of the government made it an obvious gaffe. But it was also a phenomenon now common in the Trump era: a political blunder in which the blunderer seems to not know or care how much destruction he has just wrought. The comment ricocheted throughout the world, sinking the dollar to a three-year low in currency markets and prompting clarifications from the president (himself no stranger to this kind of Alfred E. Neuman–in–a–china–shop mess and someone who had, for a while, cheered the possibility of a weak dollar). For his part, the Treasury secretary seemed just annoyed. “I think I’ve actually been quite consistent on my comment on the dollar,” he said on CNBC. “In the short term, where the dollar is, is not a concern of mine, okay?”
Denne historien er fra February 5–18, 2018-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra February 5–18, 2018-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.
