Avoid tuning the wrong string

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” – John Maynard Keynes

A couple of nights ago, I was helping my son tune his cello. I have no musical talent or knowledge of string instruments other than I like how they sound. However, my son tells me I do a pretty darn good job turning the tuning pegs to help him get the instrument in tune. There are four strings on the cello and hence, four pegs. Usually it is one pesky string (C, I believe) that needs tuning. I know the C string is the top left peg, so I am used to tuning that one. This time my son needed the A string tuned. I honestly didn’t know which peg corresponded to the A string. Considering there are only four strings and I could eliminate two strings—C and D—as they are on the same side of the cello’s neck, I had a 50% chance of turning the right peg. My son told me to turn the bottom right peg, so I did without thought. He bowed the string and no change. I tightened a little more like an idiot and again, no change. Suddenly my son and I looked at each other in horror as we realized we were tightening the wrong string—a millisecond before the string snapped violently!

I thought of this embarrassing personal event this morning when Bloomberg News reported, “Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, in a prepared text for a speech in Philadelphia, says a tightening labor market with falling unemployment is unlikely to budge inflation because price expectations have been held in check by an explicit inflation target.”

 

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