The Boston Globe - 20.08.2019

TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2019 The Boston Globe Opinion A

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Plan to build over Pike

looks like a tall order

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Infrastructure, housing aren’t

keeping pace with big building plans

I was excited to read of the approval of the project to build

over the Mass. Pike at Back Bay (“Aiming high over the

Pike,” Page One, Aug. 17). It is certainly a desolate and un-

derused area. But the addition of 600,000 square feet of of-

fice and hotel space raises obvious questions: How will the

employees and guests get to work? Where will the employ-

ees live?

As Boston continues to grow and increase work loca-

tions, transportation infrastructure and housing availabili-

ty lag behind. What Boston really needs is more moderate-

and low-income housing. This is not as exciting, and usual-

ly not as lucrative, as it is to construct office buildings, ho-

tels, and high-end residences, but it is more necessary.

What are government officials doing to address this?

Perhaps, instead of offering tax breaks to businesses to relo-

cate here, they should be offering significant abatements to

companies that build much-needed housing and do more

to ensure that the profits from constructing office build-

ings, hotels, and similar facilities help fund vital improve-

ments to transit and housing stock. Boston’s success should

not be its undoing.

ED MANN

Framingham

Are we tempting fate

by building over the Pike?

Bridges everywhere are crumbling and rusting and need

constant maintenance. So how can massive buildings built

on decks that are basically bridges be expected to survive

on foundations that are exposed to salt spray, moisture, and

exhaust fumes? So far, so good, with a supermarket and ho-

tel in Newton from the 1960s and buildings near Copley

Square. Will two more towers be the final straw?

CAROLYN BISHOP

Belmont

First, solve how we’ll get there

Another article about more building in Boston, and still no

strategy for solving the public transportation issues that al-

ready exist and the current commuter congestion. Please,

no more building without a comprehensive plan for travel

to and from Boston.

JUNE CASSIDY

Westwood

Re “Pot edibles ending up in kids’ hands” (Page One, Aug.

17): I have been smoking pot since the 1960s. Now, as a re-

tired person, I’m glad to see the legal status of marijuana is

finally being made appropriate to its risks.

But once again, commercialism has trumped common

sense, with the proliferation of foods infused with canna-

bis.

If there’s money to be made, which certainly there is,

then some people are going to go all out to make a profit re-

gardless of the ethical considerations.

Back in the day, if we wanted to consume our pot in

food, we’d make brownies or some other edible.

All these cookies, vaping pens, oils, and other delivery

systems today provide way too many dangerous options.

But gummies? Give me a break.

As the saying goes, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, we’re seeing exactly what can go wrong.

The only thing that should be for sale is “flower” — the

bud itself. Then, along with that, they could offer cook-

books so that consumers can create their own edibles. That

bit of extra effort just might make people stop for a mo-

ment and think of the consequences of leaving drugs in

places available to their kids. Not to mention pets.

RICK CUTLER

West Barnstable

Kids’illsunderscoredangerousfolly

ofmarketingpotedibles

Re “After Trump tweets, Israel bars congresswomen” (Page

A4, Aug. 16): As a child I was taught by my Jewish parents

that Israel was a democratic oasis in the Middle East. As a

Jew I was taught the importance of treating others justly.

Six decades later, what has Israel become?

Governmental policies subjugate and abuse the Palestin-

ian people, and to gain entrance to Israel one needs to de-

clare unquestioning loyalty to the state.

On top of that, two aspiring dictators (Donald Trump

and Benjamin Netanyahu) are working in tandem to meet

their own self-centered political ends.

If my parents were alive today, they too would be

ashamed of what Israel has become.

MARK GOLDEN

Newton

ThisisnolongertheIsrael

hisparentsheldupasexample

Re “Kennedy mulling run at Markey” (Page A1, Aug. 18):

There is no way young Joseph P. Kennedy III can be a better

senator for Massachusetts and the country than Edward

Markey is already. If Kennedy wants to become a senator,

he should work to help Elizabeth Warren become presi-

dent, and run for her Senate seat when it becomes vacant.

ALBERT S. WOODHULL

Leyden

QuestforMarkey’sSenateseat

wouldbeamisstepforKennedy

E

dward Lorenz, the pioneer

of chaos theory, famously

suggested that the flapping

of a butterfly’s wings in

Brazil could set off a

tornado in Texas. Even a

tiny disturbance, he

argued, can have huge effects in a complex

system governed by nonlinear relationships.

But since 2016 we’ve seen the opposite.

President Trump, far from being a butterfly

in the Amazonian rain forest, is the 800-

pound gorilla right at the center of the

world. If anyone can cause chaos — in

practice as well as in theory — it’s him.

Elected, unexpectedly, to the most

powerful job in the world, he has spent the

past two-and-a-half years not just flapping

his wings, but wildly swinging his fists, as if

intent on starting a global tornado. And yet

the consequences of the gorilla’s antics have

been remarkable for their smallness.

Prophesies of political and financial disaster

have proved wrong.

Until now.

August is the month when a large

proportion of the people in the Northern

Hemisphere (around 90 percent of the

world’s population) either go on holiday or

work half-heartedly. Unfortunately, history

consistently refuses to go on vacation in

August. Indeed, I increasingly suspect

history of having become a workaholic.

This August has produced a mighty

storm of geopolitical and economic

mayhem. It has taken longer than expected

for the 800-pound gorilla to smash what is

sometimes (misleadingly) called the liberal

international order or the pax americana.

But he has done it now. Or so it seems.

In Asia, Hong Kong teeters on the brink

of another Tiananmen Square-style

massacre. Meanwhile, the North Korean

regime is firing rockets like a drunk

teenager on July Fourth. And in the Middle

East, rumors abound of an imminent

showdown between Iran and Israel and its

allies.

These political risks coincide with

multiple signs of a global economic

slowdown. Britain’s economy shrank in the

second quarter, but don’t blame Brexit,

because so did Germany’s, and Italy’s did

only slightly better. Trade within the

eurozone is down sharply.

Most worrying is the fall in long-term

interest rates. Last week the yield on 30-year

US government bonds fell below 2 percent

for the first time ever. Long-term bond

yields are now below short-maturity debt —

an inverted yield curve, in the argot of Wall

Street. Such an inversion has preceded

every US recession since the 1960s. The

only people who seem not to have noticed

are American consumers, still shopping ’til

they drop, according to the latest retail sales

data.

So is chaos coming to Main Street? Back

to Professor Butterfly. It was back in 1972

that Edward Lorenz gave his famous

lecture, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a

Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado

in Texas?”

“Two particular weather situations,” he

argued, “differing by as little as the

immediate influence of a single butterfly,

will generally after

sufficient time evolve

into two situations

differing by as much as

the presence of a

tornado.”

However, Lorenz

added an important

caveat: “If the flap of a

butterfly’s wings can be

instrumental in

generating a tornado, it

can equally well be

instrumental in

preventing a tornado.” In Lorenz’s view, this

was what made long-range weather

prediction so very difficult.

The same applies even more to economic

forecasting. In 1966 the Nobel laureate

economist Paul Samuelson — like Edward

Lorenz, a professor at MIT — joked that

declines in US stock prices had correctly

predicted nine of the last five American

recessions. I know economists with much

worse batting averages. They predict a

financial crisis every year, and once a

decade they are right, at which point the

media hails the stopped clock as a prophet.

Economic forecasters are in fact far worse at

their jobs than weather forecasters.

Of 469 downturns in national economies

since 1988, according to Andrew Brigden of

Fathom Consulting, the International

Monetary Fund had predicted only four by

the spring of the year before they began. As

for the great financial crisis of 2008-’09,

only a handful of economists saw it coming.

That means that we should treat with

skepticism those who confidently predict a

US recession next year. And if there is one,

we should treat with even more skepticism

those who blame it on Trump.

The real point about the gorilla effect,

remember, is how little the swinging of the

gorilla’s fists has really mattered since he

climbed atop the White House. Just like the

butterfly, the gorilla may have prevented as

many tornadoes as he caused. Indeed,

Trump’s economic policies have almost

certainly been, on balance, more conducive

to economic growth than the opposite. True,

he has imposed tariffs, but he has also

presided over a sugar-rush of deregulation,

deficit spending, and monetary easing.

As the sugar wears off, and the United

States follows the

rest of the world into

a slowdown, if not a

recession, all

Trump’s opponents

will have an

incentive to blame

him. But perhaps the

truth is that the

gorilla and the

butterfly are not so

very different in our

complex,

interconnected

world. The only difference is that the gorilla

insists it’s all about him.

“You have no choice but to vote for me,”

Trump declared at a rally in New

Hampshire on Thursday, “because

[otherwise] your 401(k) [retirement savings

plan] is down the tubes. Everything’s going

to be down the tubes. So whether you love

me or hate me, you’ve gotta vote for me.”

That’s a line that could come back to

haunt Trump if everything goes down the

tubes before November of next year, when

Americans will decide if he’s a one- or two-

term president. But if he gets lucky, and the

economic weathermen are wrong again, it

might just get the 800-pound gorilla four

more years of fist-swinging.

Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at the

Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Predicting a recession?

Mightaswellpredict

the weather

ILLUSTRATION BY LESLEY BECKER/GLOBE STAFF; ADOBE; GLOBE FILE PHOTO

Therealpointaboutthe

gorillaeffectishowlittle

theswingingofthe

gorilla’sfistshasreally

matteredsincehe

climbedatoptheWhite

House.

NIALL FERGUSON

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