Kevin Drum 🕸

Here is PCE inflation for November. It's close to zero: As usual, this is month-over-month inflation adjusted to an annual rate. The core rate, which the Fed considers the key inflation figure to follow, is down to 2%, which is their official target. The headline rate is even lower at 1.3%. (If you insist on ...continue reading "Inflation has practically disappeared"

This was at the bottom of the first story the New York Times printed about Donald Trump's tax returns: The new tax data showed that while in the White House, Mr. Trump made charitable contributions in cash, something the House committee said warrants further investigation. “We would have inquired as to whether the large cash ...continue reading "Donald Trump really hates giving money to charity"

After the Omicron outbreak of early 2022 subsided, death rates from COVID-19 have been steady and relatively low for the rest of the year: I've included Germany just to provide a comparison with a typical peer country. This still comes out to more than 13,000 deaths per month in the US, so it's a lot ...continue reading "Raw data: COVID death rates in 2022"

This is Monet's cottage in Giverny. I didn't go inside because I'd already seen it and it was jammed with busloads of tourists (like me). However, I did carefully scout out a spot that made it look nice and peaceful, as it should.

The LA Times reports that Los Angeles posted a record-high high school graduation rate last year: For the high school class that graduated in 2022, the percentage of students who earned a diploma in four years in Los Angeles Unified — the nation’s second-largest school system — was 86%....There was about a 4.5 percentage point ...continue reading "Los Angeles sure has improved its high school graduation rate"

From the LA Times: The right of billionaires to travel in secrecy is a niche concern, to say the least. True enough. However, when your paper employs a "wealth reporter" you gotta write about something, don't you? I have to admit that, zillionaires or not, I sort of sympathize with them on this issue. Sometimes ...continue reading "Quote of the day: Tracking the private jets of zillionaires"

Until its implosion last month, Alameda Research was the sister company of FTX. Both were founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, and Alameda was the company that borrowed customer deposits from FTX using inflated crypto tokens as "collateral." The money was used partly to fund risky investments and partly to make loans to SBF and his CTO, ...continue reading "It’s all over for Sam Bankman-Fried"

Nobody wants to read good news, Matt Yglesias says today, and boy howdy is he right. The United States has been practically bursting with good news over the past couple of decades, but no one wants to hear it. We all hate each other so much that we can't stand the thought that lots of ...continue reading "I give the United States a B+ over the past two years"

Let's do another triptych today. This one is of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, which has been closed for the past decade and is now undergoing decommissioning. And just how long will this take? According to the ultimate authority, "Decommissioning San Onofre will take numerous years until the process is complete." Okey doke. Also: ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Copyright news for 2023: On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain, including books from Hemingway, Woolf, and Agatha Christie; movies like Metropolis, Wings, and The Jazz Singer; and music by Irving Berlin & Louis Armstrong. https://t.co/3BHllesUlL — kottke.org (@kottke) December 21, 2022 Only one year until Mickey Mouse ...continue reading "Uncle Sam is coming for Mickey Mouse"

Consumer confidence in December is up! The increase in the Present Situation line looks mostly like noise to me, part of a downward trend that started more than a year ago. Conversely, the Expectations line looks like it really is rebounding a bit. However, as the Conference Board notes, "Expectations are still lingering around 80—a ...continue reading "Consumers still think a recession is coming"

Conservatives are out in full force this morning to mock an attempt by the Stanford University IT Department to use less offensive language: The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity ...continue reading "Language changes. Deal with it."

I may have opposed the release of Donald Trump's tax returns, but that doesn't mean I'm so prissy that I won't write about it now that the deed has been done. Here is tonight's New York Times piece about Trump's taxes: The data, which includes details of Mr. Trump’s federal tax returns from 2015 through ...continue reading "Donald Trump paid no taxes because he never made any money"

This month my M-protein level is up a bit: These small ups and downs are pretty normal, but naturally I'd just as soon see more downs than ups. Still, as long as I'm below 1.0 things are OK. That said, I'd sure like the Carvykti people to find a slot for me. There are not ...continue reading "Health Update"

Selfie, Times Square.

Construction starts for single-family homes were down 4.1% in November. That's hardly a surprise. But starts for new apartment units were up 4.8%: In case you think this is unusual, it's actually part of a very long-term trend: The single-family housing market is a boom-and-bust affair, but with a marked secular trend downward over the ...continue reading "Raw data: Single family starts were down 4% in November"

Yesterday I pondered a question about fentanyl: it first became available on the street in the late 1970s, but it wasn't until 2013 that its use suddenly skyrocketed in the US. Why did it take so long for that to happen, given that it's practically a perfect drug for narcosyndicates? Via Twitter, Beau Kilmer at ...continue reading "Here’s why fentanyl took until 2013 to become popular"

Will House Democrats release Donald Trump's tax returns to the public? A House committee is expected to vote Tuesday afternoon on whether to make public tax returns belonging to former President Donald J. Trump....A rarely used federal law allows the committee to obtain any U.S. taxpayer’s returns. While the statute generally requires lawmakers to keep ...continue reading "House votes today on releasing Trump’s tax returns. They shouldn’t."

Here is the rate of "border encounters" over the past decade or so: Border crossings spiked at the end of Donald Trump's presidency and since then have remained at about 5x the normal rate. Is this a crisis? I think borders should be enforced but it's never been one of my hot buttons. Partly this ...continue reading "The past two years show that illegal immigration isn’t a very big problem"

Here's a chart from the CDC showing the biggest sources of drug overdoses: Here's what I don't understand. The first (known) case of a China White overdose happened here in Orange County in the late 1970s. Since then, various analogs of fentanyl have been available on the street now and again, but it was never ...continue reading "Why did it take so long for fentanyl to become popular?"