Kevin Drum 🕸

Today is full of good news. First Jim Jordan threw in the towel and now crackpot lawyer Sidney Powell has done the same: Sidney K. Powell, a member of Donald J. Trump’s legal team after he lost the 2020 election, pleaded guilty on Thursday morning to six misdemeanor counts instead of facing a criminal trial ...continue reading "Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell pleads guilty to election conspiracy"

I see that Jim Jordan has decided not to become a three-time loser, instead ending his run for Speaker of the House. What a wuss. Kevin McCarthy was willing to endure 14 rounds of humiliation before he finally became Speaker. So what now? It's not too late to go back to McCarthy. Maybe a few ...continue reading "Jim Jordan is out"

The COVID pause on student loan repayment is over. With 28 million borrowers now having to make payments again, will this slash consumption and take the US economy down with it? Probably not. The New York Fed analyzed some recent survey results and concluded that the impact would be minimal: On average, borrowers expect to ...continue reading "Student loan resumption will only barely affect the economy"

Matt Darling is puzzled: "In recent years, however, homeownership has become unavailable to more people than ever before, including white-collar workers and even members of the managerial classes." ??? https://t.co/jmByEZ0eXt pic.twitter.com/XVpsjhyAjK — Matt Darling 🌐🏗️ (@besttrousers) October 18, 2023 It's true that the overall homeownership rate hasn't changed much recently, which might cause you to ...continue reading "Homes have gotten pretty expensive these days"

Jim Jordan, in an apparent attempt to bolster his tax cut bona fides, has suggested he would support raising the cap on the state and local tax deduction. This would cut taxes by about $50 billion, mostly for the affluent, but even some Republicans are unimpressed: Senate Finance GOPer Tillis called this “the worst possible ...continue reading "Surprise! Jim Jordan is not a fiscal conservative."

This is a white wagtail, photographed in Giverny while I was avoiding the crowds at Monet's cottage.

I don't remember: have I posted this chart before? I guess it can't hurt to post it again: There are technical differences between the CPI and PCE measures of inflation, but they mostly only show up over long stretches of time. Over short periods, as you can see, they're generally quite close. Except during the ...continue reading "Why did CPI and PCE inflation diverge during the pandemic?"

Paul Krugman says that signs are good for a soft landing even though the Fed has hiked short-term interest rates sharply and long-term rates have followed right along: If you had told me two years ago that interest rates would soar like this, I would have predicted a nasty recession with spiking unemployment. But in ...continue reading "Can the economy continue to shrug off high interest rates?"

When Robin Sipes went in to see her pulmonologist, he gave her some instructions: That's my kind of doctor! In case you're wondering what set this off, Sipes recently lost her cat and was feeling sad. She's known her pulmonologist, Earl King, for 15 years, and he felt that getting a new cat was the ...continue reading "Medical advice of the day: Get a cat"

Here's an interesting poll from NPR/Marist: The topline numbers don't mean much at this point, but what's interesting is that when the pollsters added RFK Jr. to the mix he took nine points from Trump and only five points from Biden. Apparently both Trump and RFK Jr. appeal to the folks who want to set ...continue reading "RFK Jr. takes more votes from Trump than Biden"

If you bought long-dated treasury bonds in 2020, when interest rates were low, you've lost a ton of money: That's quite a crash in only a few years. But who wants to buy an old bond yielding 1% when you can buy a shiny new 20-year bond today that yields 5%?

Jim Jordan has already lost five votes and the roll call is only through the Ds, so he's not going to be elected Speaker of the House today. Better luck tomorrow, Jim. UPDATE: Jordan won only 199 votes today, less than the 200 he won yesterday. Things are not improving for Jim Jordan.

Here's a brief little timeline of Donald Trump's recent cognitive decline: September 16: Says you need ID to buy a loaf of bread. (No you don't.) September 18: Claims that under Biden, we would be in World War II. (World War II already happened.) September 18: Says he beat Obama in 2016. (He beat Hillary ...continue reading "Donald Trump is showing strong signs of dementia"

David Leonhardt complains today that planes, trains, and automobiles aren't any faster than they were half a century ago. Fair enough. That's true. But then he adds this about a typical person taking a cross-country flight: They leave their homes several hours before their plane is scheduled to depart. Many sit in traffic on their ...continue reading "The US is not in decline"

Vox points me today to an an interesting fact: the number of retractions in academic journals has skyrocketed over the past two decades. However, since the total number of journal articles has also skyrocketed¹ I adjusted the raw numbers to show the percentage of articles retracted: Even accounting for the growth in journal articles, the ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Lots of journal articles are being retracted these days"

This is a gargoyle hanging outside Sacré Couer in Paris.

Now we're talking. Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky says free will is a myth: After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of ...continue reading "Free will is mankind’s biggest myth"

As I write this there are already nine Republican votes against Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House. He can only afford to lose four, so it looks like he's not going to win on this round, at least. UPDATE: Yep, he lost, receiving only 200 votes out of the 217 he needed. Tough luck, ...continue reading "Jim Jordan losing vote for Speaker of the House"

Consumers are splurging, says the Wall Street Journal. Retail sales were up 0.7% in September, an annualized rate of 8.9%. Shazam! But you might recall that inflation was high in September. If you adjust for that the annualized increase is only 3.9%. And if you compare retail sales to a year ago, the annual increase ...continue reading "Retail sales were flat in September"

Paul Krugman has an odd column today. He says that America is as powerful economically as ever and that Joe Biden has conducted a strong foreign policy. Nevertheless: Serious students of international affairs are noting that the world seems to be becoming more dangerous, with many local cold wars turning hot, and suggesting that we ...continue reading "Pax Americana isn’t declining. It never existed."