Last month, when I was in the Washington, DC, area for a week, there were two places I knew I wanted to make the time to see: the Washington National Cathedral and the Tysons Galleria shopping center…

Gloria Caulfield had expected a different reaction.  Speaking at the University of Central Florida’s commencement ceremonies last weekend, Caulfield, the vice president of Strategic Alliances for…

Kevin Warsh has a reputation as an inflation-hawk. He resigned from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2011 after it embarked on a second round of quantitative easing (QE) and became a critic of…

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to impeach President Trump, just lost his primary race. Trump-backed Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming will now compete in a runoff. Here’s the . . .

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Culture In Search of Undead Malls The sacred endures, but all things profane pass away. Last month, when I was in the Washington, DC, area for a week, there were two places I knew I wanted to make the time to see: the Washington National Cathedral and the Tysons Galleria shopping center in Fairfax County, Virginia. The combination of these two particular sights would not be at the top of every tourist’s list, but what can I say? The sacred and the profane have always intersected in interesting, unexpected ways in my life. The National Cathedral was, of course, as overpoweringly majestic as it had always appeared to me when I saw it during the televised state funerals of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, although I was unprepared for the way its smaller nooks and crannies—the numerous chapels around and under the main nave and altar—invited reverent contemplation. It will be a long time before I see a sight as striking as the bright morning sun piercing the stained glass and casting colorful shards on a statue of George Washington. Yet, in its own unrepentantly materialistic fashion, my visit to Tysons Galleria was just as memorable—for better and for worse. “Dead malls”—that is, shopping malls that have entered an irreversible state of deterioration and shopper indifference or disuse—have become an object of popular fascination, but no mall for me is ever truly dead. No matter their condition, malls remain the site of so many memories, especially the malls from my youth in New Orleans. How could I forget my father buying me my first sport coat? Or my mother buying herself a cross necklace? Or my father taking my brother and me along to buy my mother, apropos of nothing, a gift so special she almost never used it (a purse with a bamboo handle)? Alas, although I have not been to New Orleans in many years, it takes only rudimentary Googling to find that the mall where these memories happened is not what it once was. Some of the stores are gone; others have been reduced in size and scale. This specific mall may not be among the dead, but it is certainly not in the prime of life.  So, after I completed my tour of the National Cathedral, I went to northern Virginia in search of an America insulated from our present economic woes and reliance on the internet for everything. Having briefly lived in suburban Maryland a few decades ago, I remember Tysons Corner as being a vibrant shopping destination. I remember, too, that the adjacent Tysons Galleria was even tonier. Might I find that shopping malls were not mere Proustian madeleines from my youth? When I entered the Galleria, the signs were encouraging—at least for a Tuesday afternoon in the spring. Shoppers strolled amiably from one high-end retailer to another: Cartier, Gucci, Lilly Pulitzer, and so on. Seeking nothing in particular, I sauntered inside the Ralph Lauren store, where I was greeted by a courteous clerk who offered bottled water with no expectation of a purchase being made—although a purchase was made, next door, at Ralph’s Coffee: nothing provides mid-afternoon sustenance like quality baked goods bearing the branding of America’s preppiest retailer. So far, so good—very good.  As I did my window shopping, I kept looking for cracks in the high-polished façade, some sign of the mall’s imminent decline. Even Neiman Marcus, spread out perhaps too generously over three floors, seemed to be in fine form—to my astonishment, given my low expectations for pleasant retail experiences, the fabled department store contained within its hallowed walls a café that served a delicious, seemingly freshly prepared hamburger.  Finally, though, the spell was broken: As I wandered into Saks Fifth Avenue, I noticed something amiss—or should I say “nothing” amiss? The space had been cleaned out of most obvious merchandise to reveal little but racks and tables and mannequins. As it turned out, I had gone to the Galleria at the same time that Saks, one of its anchor tenants, was shutting down and selling what furnishings remained—part of a batch of store closures that have coincided with its bankruptcy proceedings. (Neiman Marcus is part of the same company, though, for now, it hangs on in northern Virginia.) This experience was sobering. My shopping mall dreams of days gone by must remain just that—dreams of a past, and we all know what novelist L.P. Hartley said about that place: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” But I now feel that to have seen the National Cathedral and gone to Tysons Galleria on a single trip provided a useful education to me: The cathedral endures for its eternal truths, while even the fanciest malls, like the fanciest anything, are subject to decline and decay. What are dead malls but a metaphor for the fate that awaits all earthly things?  The post In Search of Undead Malls appeared first on The American Conservative.

Culture Generation AI Has Its Doubts Young Americans raised alongside artificial intelligence are growing uneasy about the future it promises. Gloria Caulfield had expected a different reaction.  Speaking at the University of Central Florida’s commencement ceremonies last weekend, Caulfield, the vice president of Strategic Alliances for Tavistock Development, had approached the microphone in long black and gold robes to speak positively about the sweeping improvements that artificial intelligence will bring to the next generation of workers and entrepreneurs. But what Caulfield had not considered was the simmering frustration among the several thousand students. Caulfield spoke triumphantly. “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution!” And that’s when the jeers, instead of cheers, began. Caulfield awkwardly laughed and turned to her fellow speakers. “What happened?” Caulfield asked as she sought support. One student’s voice rose among the crowd. “AI sucks!” Turning back to the students, Caulfield admitted she had “struck a chord,” though it was clear that she struggled to comprehend which note had disturbed the College of Humanities students she was addressing. “May I finish?” Caulfield attempted to power through her written statement. “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.” A giant cheer rang through the auditorium.  Once again, Caulfield turned toward the speakers and threw her hands up in disbelief. The camera cut to a shot of more than a hundred students, their faces beaming with joy. Some stood and defiantly shook their fists in support of Caulfield’s admission that artificial intelligence played but a small and remote role in the lives of Americans “only a few years ago.” “OK, we’ve got a bipolar topic here,” replied Caulfield.  But her assessment of the issue, and the prepared remarks she read, had clearly missed the mark. This was not a “bipolar topic” at all—quite the opposite. Here, among the graduating humanities students at UCF, was evidence of a broader generational tension: young people may be the most AI-dependent generation in history, but they are increasingly uneasy about what the technology promises. The students expected to inherit these tools are also the ones most exposed to their consequences. For Caulfield, a Florida business executive who favors the use of new technologies to drive innovation and capital, AI is a golden goose late in her career. Its emergence has created an entire new sector filled with the alluring promise that change is coming. For executives and investors nearing the apex of their careers, AI represents productivity, efficiency, and untapped markets. For students entering the workforce, it increasingly represents competition. That dilemma was the question on the minds of many students listening to Caulfield’s unrestrained AI optimism in central Florida this weekend.  “And now, AI capabilities are in the palm of our hands,” Caulfield exclaimed as even more jeers rained down from the student body.  “Oh, I love it,” Caulfield retorted in jest, as if the matter at hand was a simple disagreement of taste. What Caulfield failed to recognize is that the controversies over the rise of AI—and over the future of those who will live with its consequences—is not something that can easily be addressed through the democratic process. The students booing Caulfield are not anti-technology Luddites. In fact, Gen Z is the most AI-saturated generation in American history. In a March poll conducted online by Gallup which surveyed 1,572 people between the ages of 14 to 29, more than half of respondents say they use AI technology either daily or weekly. Another 11 percent say they use the technology at least once a month. Yet the same surveys show rising skepticism, falling optimism, and deep concern about AI’s impact on creative work and employment.  Compared with similar polling by Gallup a year ago, respondents report being angrier and less hopeful about the emergence of artificial intelligence. Rising concern is no doubt exacerbated by the uncertainty many recent graduates feel as they enter workplaces where AI is quickly eroding entry-level opportunities. Coding, copywriting, design, legal research, translation, and white-collar internships are increasingly vulnerable as AI spreads. And despite dismissals from some that such claims are overwrought, it would appear the youngest generation most clearly anticipates where this is all headed. Older Americans, particularly in creative industries, are also confronting the realities of artificial intelligence. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival this week, the actress Demi Moore confidently stated that AI is here to stay.  “To fight it is to fight something that is a battle that we will lose,” Moore admitted. “So to find ways in which we can work with it, I think is a more valuable path to take.”  Her comments come only months before the premier of As Deep as the Grave, a new film that will use Val Kilmer’s AI-generated likeness and voice a little more than a year after the actor died of pneumonia. And as AI-generated musicians and actors take on roles once exclusively performed by humans, Taylor Swift and Matthew McConnaughey have applied trademarks to their voices and images to protect from artificial intelligence impersonations.  All of this signals a confusing future that many young Americans are no longer certain they even want. The students booing at UCF were not simply rejecting technology itself; they were rejecting an assumption that every technological advance automatically represents social progress. Raised alongside algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence, Gen Z may become the first generation expected to champion a technological revolution they fundamentally distrust. The post Generation AI Has Its Doubts appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Kevin Warsh’s Challenge The new Fed chairman’s dilemma: Should he please the president or fight inflation? Kevin Warsh has a reputation as an inflation-hawk. He resigned from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2011 after it embarked on a second round of quantitative easing (QE) and became a critic of “institutional drift” at the central bank. This would presumably put him at odds with President Donald Trump, a fan of lower interest rates in his New York real-estate developer style, who has dismissed the idea of affordability politics as a “hoax.” Yet Warsh in recent weeks has set aside Warsh 1.0 in favor of Warsh 2.0, who echoes the president in calling for lower interest rates while still maintaining that he will maintain “central bank independence.” The president’s most recent board appointee prior to Warsh, Stephen Miran, has walked in lockstep with Trump in voting for rate cuts and insisting that inflation should not get in the way. As the head of the most powerful central bank in the world, Warsh faces a dilemma. Both the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, the Fed’s favored measure of inflation, and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) have lingered above the Federal Reserve’s stated inflation target of 2 percent since March 2021. The Producer Price Index (PPI) last month reached 6 percent year-over-year, or 4.4 percent if you exclude volatile commodities like energy and food. Despite some of the most aggressive rate hikes in the central bank’s history beginning in July 2022, inflation has remained elevated and the Federal Reserve has not reached its target.  This eats away at the average consumer, who may see his salary catch up to sticker price inflation but will not see it keep up with home prices. The president may offer 50-year mortgages as a proposed solution to higher home prices, fueled by artificially flooding markets with new money to lower interest rates, but this will not address the increasing unaffordability of homes to young people.  In fact, failure to tamp down inflation and the lowering of interest rates will simply lead to climbing inflation numbers. Not every Fed chair has the stones to be “Tall” Paul Volcker and raise interest rates to 20 percent, overseeing plummeting prices for assets that the first beneficiaries of inflation stocked up on. Warsh has the challenge of addressing inflation before it becomes an even greater issue to the economy––lowering real wages, redistributing wealth to the first receivers of new money, and devaluing savings––all while the president who appointed him to the role wants lower interest rates to boost the economy and encourage investment. But the Federal Reserve’s own policies may have undermined the other half of their dual mandate.  Many Americans worry about displacement from artificial intelligence agents, which have seen a boom in recent years. Companies like NVIDIA have soared from their close involvement with AI production, while companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral have not reported actual profits. To an Austrian economist, this has a whiff of the bubble and the beginning of a business cycle about it.  The Fed under Jerome Powell seems uninterested in investigating if its monetary policy may have a role in the subsidizing of an AI bubble. Michael McKee of Bloomberg asked Powell directly after the October FOMC meeting whether the jobs market may be harmed by lower interest rates boosting up AI investment and keeping these unprofitable companies running. “Yeah, I don’t—I don’t think interest rates are an important part of the AI—the data center story,” Powell replied, dismissing the premise. The Fed began to cut rates in late 2024 even as inflation lingered at 2.5 percent, not moving meaningfully lower. This provided the needed credit for large venture capitalists to invest in equity; this in turn has kept companies like OpenAI afloat, even as their costs for training and maintaining their models remain higher than their revenue. OpenAI expects to run losses until at least 2029, something that is unsustainable in a higher-interest-rate environment that is necessary to combat inflation. These AI companies are simply inefficient, kept afloat in a sea of easy money. The longer the Fed holds down interest rates, the worse inflation will be and the larger they will become. AI may become “too big to fail” under these circumstances, which may lead to bailouts of Silicon Valley and Wall Street at the expense of the American taxpayer––the same taxpayer whose job market prospects have been shredded by the artificial support of these very same companies through inflationary monetary policy. Warsh has a reputation he could live up to. The president’s desire is to play the game of political business cycles: To enjoy the cheap credit and apparent “boom” in his own term and leave his successor holding the bag of higher inflation and the eventual “bust” of the boom-bust cycle. Warsh’s term as Fed chair will expire after the Trump presidency, but how he appears to cooperate with the administration will make all the difference to whether he is renominated or not. The Fed chair is not miraculously isolated from political influence; he is both accountable to Congress as well as subject to the political pressures of banking lobbies and presidents when he comes up for renomination. The myth of a neutral Fed is just that––a myth. Warsh is in a dangerous political game, and the stakes are the U.S. economy.  The post Kevin Warsh’s Challenge appeared first on The American Conservative.