Crypto News: Bulletproof backpacks are no substitute for gun laws

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There's profit to be made in hardening schools.
The economy won't have a soft landing. Counterpoint: Shut up.
The CHIPS Act isn't so chippy.
Biden made the right call on charter schools.

When Aristotle proclaimed "Nature abhors a vacuum," he was merely offering a hot take about physics. But we have subsequently adapted the phrase to mean that if anything important goes missing (leadership, love, a Netflix subscription), then something else will rush in to take its place.

Take gun control. America is, as we learn every few weeks or so, the only country in the world where people are routinely mowed down in schools, churches, Walmarts, concerts and the like by men with assault weapons. This is because most other countries find this lifestyle undesirable and put tight limits on guns. Americans, in contrast, respond only with thoughts, prayers and vague ideas about "hardening" schools and other soft targets.

Into this breach have flowed the entrepreneurs. Where you see senseless slaughter, they see opportunity. Your dystopian reading for the day is Ben Schott's A Children's Treasury of School-Hardening Equipment, a compendium of companies cashing in on our inability to protect our children with laws. And hey, who needs laws when you have bulletproof clipboards, whiteboards and backpacks? Or a "classroom lockdown kit" for extended sieges (includes: toilet paper; does not include: a gun)? And what kid wouldn't want to hang out indefinitely in a coffin-sized panic room? Most of them, probably, but teachers can make it more tempting by loading it with treats and toys, the way you might acclimate a puppy to sleeping in a crate. That's freedom, baby. Read the whole thing.

Today was yet another day of suffering through Schrödinger's Recession, which will continue to be both alive and dead until the official arbiters at the NBER open the box and look inside. Right now, the six measures they use to date recessions suggest we're not in one. But we seem to be talking ourselves into one nevertheless. Bill Dudley doubts markets appreciate that the Fed will have to engineer a bad recession to stop inflation. Mohamed El-Erian agrees the recent market rally has been about technicals and not fundamentals, which he still deems scary.

On the other hand, Conor Sen points to Amazon — as near a simulacrum of the US economy as you can imagine these days — as an example of how a big, complex organization can compartmentalize and withstand economic pain. Our Prime Overlord has taken some hits lately from the sudden drying-up of pandemic e-commerce. It has shed warehouse space and invited workers to spend more time at home, where they can use the bathroom normally. At the same time, it's still making gobs of cash on its web services and other businesses, Conor notes. It's kind of like the US economy, which is suffering from interminable supply headaches but has an apparently bottomless appetite for workers and consumer stuff.

And maybe we should enjoy this inflation while it lasts; Eduardo Porter suggests that, once it's gone, we'll go right back to the late-teens trend of secular stagnation. And you can bet we'll complain about that, too.

One recent accomplishment of the freakishly productive 117th Congress has been overlooked, coming as it did just before President Joe Manchin's shocking kumbaya moment with his fellow Democrats.

Congress last week agreed to throw billions at US semiconductor manufacturers, in an effort to bolster supply chains and help American companies and apple pie and the Bible. Except it kind of doesn't accomplish any of that, writes Tim Culpan. It gives little money to chip designers, the denizens of the chip food chain that add the most value. Instead it lavishes funds on domestic laggards and overseas competitors.

Without more skilled immigrants, even the chipmakers who do get cash won't be able to take advantage of it, writes Bloomberg's editorial board. And without oversight and competitive incentives, this deal risks becoming a permanent subsidy for a sad-sack industry. Otherwise, no notes!

Bonus Sausage-Making Reading: Rather than cursing Manchin, Dems should try to find more Manchins to get things done. — Matt Yglesias

Don't count on OPEC+ being able to pump more and lower prices, warns Julian Lee. That's partly because the "+" in "OPEC+" mostly stands for "Russia."

President Joe Biden was right to scrap rules that would have stunted charter schools' growth. — Mike Bloomberg

Nancy Pelosi's Taiwan visit raises a lot of questions with grim answers. — Niall Ferguson

Even Evergrande's business model made more sense than Neom's. — David Fickling

Social media won't be able to hide from regulation behind the supposed inscrutability of its AI. — Parmy Olson

Giant sequoias are so accustomed to fires that they use them to reproduce, but today's fires are just too hot. — Faye Flam

Covid booster shots will be easier to pitch in the fall when they're targeted at new variants. — Lisa Jarvis

Russia rejected a Brittney Griner swap deal.

How does Elon Musk spend his day? Turning off potential Tesla buyers, for one thing.

Bought a Rolex on the cheap? Thank the crypto crash.

RIP, Nichelle Nichols.

Brace for a Halloween candy shortage. (h/t Mike Smedley)

The murder hornet has a new name.

Is this George Jetson's birthday? (h/t Scott Kominers for the previous two kickers)

Notes: Please send Halloween candy and complaints to Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net.

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