Tag: worried

  • How worried are we about the future? Let’s quantify it.

    How worried are we about the future? Let’s quantify it.

    Fear. Uncertainty. Those are human emotions that many people are feeling these days. It turns out you can quantify fear and uncertainty by looking at the stock market.

    Stocks are shares of a business that people can buy on a public market, betting that the business will grow and profit and the shares will be more valuable over time. But share prices also rise and fall based on how people feel about the economic future. 

    So individual stocks, as well as whole sectors of an industry or the overall market in general, can rise or fall on economic or company reports, politics, geopolitical events, unexpected news and whether investors are optimistic or pessimistic about the future. 

    When these kinds of changes or reports cause stocks to suddenly and frequently rise and fall, we say the market is “volatile.” 

    Throughout 2025, the U.S. stock market, which is the biggest in the world, has been pretty volatile. One way to measure it is through the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, which is a snapshot of 500 major company stocks. 

    Politics and plunging markets

    From mid-February to early April, the S&P 500 index plummeted 19% as U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war that raised fears of inflation, a recession, job losses and a swelling national debt.  

    The U.S. market has largely recovered those losses in response to Trump pausing his tariff wars and lowering tariffs from scary levels. As of 30 June 2025, the stock market was dancing in record high territory. 

    Robert Whaley, a finance professor at Vanderbilt University and director of its Financial Markets Research Center, developed a way to measure a stock market’s volatility by keeping track of stock options — contracts that gives investors the right, but not an obligation, to buy or sell a stock at a predetermined price at a set future date. 

    It is popularly known as the “fear index” and goes by the symbol VIX. 

    The fear index is a measure of how much volatility is expected in the next month. Historically, its long-term average has been 17. During April, it was 40-50. In comparison, the index was at 85 in the COVID-19 market crash of March 2020 and at 89.5 during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. 

    Buying and selling on fear

    What happens during market volatility? High volatility usually implies higher risk because price movements are less predictable. While some short-term stock traders can make money during market volatility, longer-term buy-and-hold investors might get jittery. 

    Mutual fund cash holdings were at a 15-year high in March. That means that professional money managers held onto cash and stayed on the sidelines. What do global investors crave? Stability and predictability. 

    “The VIX as of now (intraday June 30) is at 17 so things are calmer which is surprising given what is happening in Ukraine and Iran,” Whaley said. “It seems the markets have become quite comfortable about it.” 

    He underscored that the fear index is intended to help institutional investors — such as those who manage pension funds or retirement accounts that many people invest in — predict market volatility over the next 30 days. For people who might not be actively involved in the stock market, all of this still matters. 

    “It reflects how institutions are feeling about the marketplace,” Whaley said. “An analogy would be if you own a house on the beach and learn a hurricane is coming. How much might insurance cost if you could actually buy it that late?” 

    Reading the market

    Whaley said that young people should develop an intuitive feel of stock market volatility, since it is an expression of nervousness. 

    “In essence, it’s a fear gauge,” he said. “If people are getting nervous buying put options [that gives investors a right to buy] that drives up put prices. If VIX was at 30-40% institutions are scared to death. Right now at 17%, there’s no concern in the short run.”

    Whaley said the index is normally around 15-20%, but a reading below 15% would reflect that investors are complacent. 

    As for the limitations of the fear index, Whaley said some people read too much into it and some institutions might overpay for VIX options and futures to try to insure their investments against losses. 

    While the fear index was born on a real-time basis in 1993, Whaley calculated that it would have reached an intraday high of 172 and closed at 156 on October 19, 1987, the date of the global stock market crash known as Black Monday. Whaley said other market earthquakes that caused big percentage drops included the 2008 financial crisis and Trump’s tariffs. 

    Whaley said viewed in a historical context, the fear index is like any other index — like the Dow Jones Industrial Average — that has a market value. “Indices are useful in terms of their history,” he said. “A barometer of fear. If VIX is higher, figure out what is going on.” 

    Questions to consider:

    1. What type of news might cause fear in a stock market?

    2. If there is a lot of uncertainty in a stock market, what do many professional investors do? 

    3. Can you think of another way to measure how fearful people are about the future?

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  • Americans worry about AI in politics — but they’re more worried about government censorship

    Americans worry about AI in politics — but they’re more worried about government censorship

    As artificial intelligence technologies make their way into political ads and campaigning, Americans are expressing growing concern. But they’re not just worried about deepfakes and deceptive content’s impact on elections —  they also fear how the government might use the fight against misinformation to restrict free speech.

    In a recently released FIRE poll of registered American voters, conducted by Morning Consult, one concern stood out: government regulation itself. Nearly half of respondents (45%) said they are “extremely” or “very” concerned that government regulation of election-related AI content could be abused to suppress criticism of elected officials. That’s a powerful signal that while Americans see the risks posed by AI, they don’t trust government regulators to police political expression fairly.

    When asked to choose between protecting free speech in politics or stopping deceptive content, a plurality (47%) said protecting free speech in politics is more important, even if that means allowing some deceptive content. Just 37% prioritized stopping deceptive content, even at the expense of limiting speech that would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. These sentiments are held across the political spectrum, but are stronger among Independents and Republicans, than among Democrats.

    This isn’t just a preference — it’s a principled stand in favor of the core freedoms the First Amendment exists to protect. Political speech lies at the heart of those freedoms, and Americans clearly recognize that any government attempts to police what can or can’t be said pose a far greater threat to democracy than free speech itself.

    Regulation threatens participation

    The chilling effects are already measurable. About 28% of voters said they’d be less likely to share content on social media if the government began regulating AI-generated or AI-altered content. (That’s right: All content, not just AI-generated or AI-altered content.) That may not sound dramatic at first glance, but that’s more than the average voter turnout during the last midterm primaries. As our political culture is increasingly shaped online, discouraging speech — even unintentionally — can have real consequences for public discourse.

    These findings suggest a troubling trajectory: Government regulations justified in the name of protecting the public from AI could end up silencing the public instead. 

    While some polls show that a similar percentage of voters (41%) say it’s important to protect people from misinformation, that concern cannot be used to justify censorship. About 39% said that preserving freedom of speech should be the government’s top priority when crafting AI laws. Only 12% said that view doesn’t describe them at all. In other words, most Americans believe that protecting speech isn’t just one goal among many — it’s the central concern.

    And they’re right to think so. The First Amendment doesn’t permit the government to restrict speech simply because it believes the public might be misled. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not less.

    These results should serve as a warning to policymakers: The public views efforts to regulate AI in political campaigns as a risk to free expression. FIRE has been actively engaged in legislative advocacy to safeguard First Amendment rights, including vague and overbroad bans or disclosure requirements imposed on AI content. 

    If voters already believe regulation will be abused — and are already pulling back from political expression using AI — that’s not just a theoretical harm. It’s a chilling effect in action.

    Instead of rushing to regulate, elected officials should reaffirm their commitment to protecting political speech, no matter the medium. The technology may be new, but the principle is not: In a free society, the government doesn’t get to decide which ideas are too dangerous to be heard.

    The poll was conducted May 13-15, 2025, among a sample of registered voters in the US. A total of 2,005 interviews were conducted online across the US for a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Frequency counts may not sum to 2,005 due to weighting and rounding. Topline results are available here.

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  • Scientists worried after Trump halts NIH grant reviews

    Scientists worried after Trump halts NIH grant reviews

    Orders to freeze travel, meetings, communications and hiring at the National Institutes of Health—and all other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services—has some federally funded researchers on edge just days into President Donald Trump’s second term.

    Scholars say they’ve received emails canceling key meetings that determine which research projects to fund and they’re worried about how those and other disruptions could stall the billions of dollars in NIH-funded projects universities oversee.

    “I suspect that folks outside the sciences don’t understand just how disruptive even a short delay in funding decisions can be,” Adam Forte, an associate professor of geology at Louisiana State University who runs his own lab, posted on BlueSky Thursday alongside numerous other concerned scholars. “This is how we lose huge amounts of scientific capacity, scientific capacity we as a collective have already invested huge amounts of time and money in, just lighting it on fire to watch the flames.”

    If they leave, it’s not like there is much chance they’re coming back to that, or a similar position. That expertise is just gone as they are forced to move onto something else to pay the bills. A spectacular waste from a “short” delay in the machinery that funds science. 5/6

    — Adam Forte (@topoismyforte.bsky.social) 2025-01-23T12:23:24.069Z

    Some research policy experts say a pause is typical for the initial days of a new administration and that it’s too soon to tell whether this week’s order is a cause for concern. Others, however, are interpreting it as part of a larger message from Trump, who has repeatedly undermined scientific findings about COVID-19 and climate change and nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who falsely claims there are no safe or effective vaccines, to lead the HHS.

    While Kennedy, who previously vowed to enact mass layoffs at the NIH, and Trump’s other cabinet nominees await Senate confirmation, Trump has already issued a blitz of executive orders—including some that roll back diversity and environmental justice initiatives, as well as protections for federal workers and immigrants—since retaking the White House Monday. (In addition to those in HHS, all federal agencies are also under a hiring freeze.)

    “It’s not unheard-of to see some things paused when a new administration takes over, but when we look at the whole package of language and executive orders that have come out this week, they’re all tied up together,” said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The goal is to intimidate, chill and create this exact sort of fear.”

    A Communications Freeze

    That fear for NIH-affiliated researchers came after Dorothy Fink, acting secretary of HHS, sent a memo Tuesday to all HHS division heads, including the directors of the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.

    “As the new administration considers its plan for managing the federal policy and public communications processes, it is important that the President’s appointees and designees have the opportunity to review and approve any regulations, guidance, documents, and other public documents and communications (including social media),” explained the memo, which instructed agency employees to refrain from numerous forms of communications, including issuing grant award announcements and public speaking, until a presidential appointee can review them. The memo is in effect until Feb. 1.

    An NIH spokesperson clarified to Inside Higher Ed via email that the restrictions apply to communication “not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” and that any “exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical” will be made “on a case-by-case basis.”

    On Wednesday, Glenda Conroy, a senior travel official for NIH, emailed NIH employees notifying them that all sponsored travel for HHS employees is also suspended until further notice.

    Disruptions to Research

    As of right now, all these restrictions mean that scheduled meetings have been canceled or postponed, including NIH study sections, which convene scientific experts to decide which projects to fund.

    And university-affiliated researchers make up a sizable portion of the grant application pool. The $44 billion NIH is the largest federal research funding source for colleges and universities, which receive billions in NIH grants each year to support medical and other scientific research projects, including those that have advanced treatments for common diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

    Chrystal Starbird, an assistant professor of biology and a cancer researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine, had been planning for months to attend a study section next week where nearly 60 grants were set to be reviewed, but she got word a couple of days ago that it was canceled.

    “Ultimately, the NIH will continue to function, so maybe it’s not a huge issue, but for the people being reviewed now it is,” she said. “None of those grants will be reviewed on time. The question is: How are they going to get all of us together again to review the grant?”

    And rescheduling the study sections for weeks or months after the communication restrictions lift may disrupt certain ongoing projects.

    “Some people may be using this funding to do research that may have more time pressure,” Starbird said, noting that clinical research typically adheres to strict patient-monitoring timelines. “We have to acknowledge that there’s already a significant impact from this pause.”

    ‘Too Soon to Assume’ Worst-Case Scenario?

    Carrie Wolinetz, a science and health policy consultant who worked for the NIH between 2015 and 2023, said in an email that the communications freeze is similar to memos from previous transitions. Although she acknowledged that pausing study section meetings seems broader than previous transitions, it doesn’t strike her “as tremendously outside the norm of activities that might be paused while a new team is transitioning.”

    And though it’s understandable that all of these restrictions are “causing anxiety,” she said it’s “too soon to assume that worst case scenario.”

    “It becomes a concern if there is a long cessation of activity, of the sort you might experience if there was an extended government shutdown,” she said. “There is likely to be minimal impact in the short term—other than for folks who hopped on flights only to discover their meeting was cancelled, which I imagine was pretty irritating.”

    But others caution that having such restrictions in place for even a short time could force people out of their jobs, create a talent void and potentially stall innovation.

    “Even if this is short-lived bumpiness, the uncertainty in funding can have career-altering implications, especially for young scientists,” Erica Goldman, a former academic and director of policy entrepreneurship for the Federation of American Scientists, said in an email.

    “If conferences or travel are canceled, for example, the inability to present new ideas and network with senior colleagues can have cascading effects,” she continued. “I’m reminded of the experiments, data, and professionals who left the field during COVID-19. Even temporary pauses can have lasting consequences.”

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