Kevin Drum 🕸

Income and spending data were released today along with the inflation figures. Here's the latest: Adjusted for inflation and population, month-over-month disposable personal income went up 4.2% (on an annualized basis) while personal spending went up 5.8%. On a dollar basis, that's an income increase of +$2,400 and a spending increase of +$3,100. On a ...continue reading "In October, income was up but spending was up even more"

The core PCE inflation rate plummeted again in October: Core PCE checked in at 2.7% in October and the headline rate came in at 4.1%. Both are lower than last month, but core in particular has now had two consecutive huge declines. I am, as usual, highlighting the core rate (inflation excluding food and energy) ...continue reading "Core PCE inflation plummets to 2.7% in October"

Here are average retail gasoline prices over the past year: In most of the country, the average price of a gallon of regular is $3.32. Here in the People's Republic of California it's $4.81. In both cases, if you adjust for inflation we're now below the prices of a year ago.

Over the past day I've read at least a dozen pieces explaining how stupid it would be for Apple to toss Twitter out of the App Store. But was Apple ever thinking of doing this? Elon Musk visited Cupertino to find out: Good conversation. Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being ...continue reading "Surprise! Apple never planned to kick Twitter out of the App Store"

Here's an interesting comparison of an artwork with itself in the Orange County Museum of Art. This is a normal exposure that shows what the piece looks like to the naked eye, and I initially took it only to make fun of it. A blank white canvas? Please. It's been done. But then I noticed ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Today Eurostat released its flash inflation estimate for November. Here is my usual presentation of the data: monthly core inflation with a trendline to smooth out the noise. The headline inflation rate was 10% thanks to high food and energy prices, but this is due mostly to Vladimir Putin, not to underlying economic conditions. Monthly ...continue reading "Core inflation in the Euro area is dropping steadily"

What should we think of the railroad contract that's been rejected by several of the rail unions and raises the prospect of a nationwide strike that would sorely test the economy? Let's review. First off, the railroad carriers have agreed to a 24% wage increase over five years (from 2020 to 2024). That sounds pretty ...continue reading "Who’s got the best argument in the railroad talks?"

Here is my best estimate of the change in the murder rate over the past decade: Data for the years 2010-19 comes from old-school FBI Uniform Crime Reporting. The years 2020-21 come from the FBI's new NIBRS reporting. The year 2022 comes from combining population weighted local reporting for big cities and FBI reporting for ...continue reading "Raw data: The US murder rate over the past decade"

I am in an abusive relationship with my tablet. As you might remember, I'm a Microsoft Surface Pro junkie. It's nice and big. The screen is sharp and bright. It runs vanilla Windows, which means I can sync it with my desktop computer and carry around a clone of my desktop everywhere I go. These ...continue reading "My review of the Microsoft Surface Pro 9, ARM version"

This is a kid descending from a tree in Square Louis-XVI, a small park just a few hundred feet from our apartment in Paris. He didn't do anything while he was up the tree—or perhaps he failed at whatever he was hoping to do—and eventually he shinnied down.

The Wall Street Journal points out today that our ongoing yield curve inversion is getting worse and worse: Judging from this, we were already due for a natural recession to start sometime in the first half of 2023. Then, a few months ago, the Fed started jacking up interest rates, which will put downward pressure ...continue reading "Two recessions are barreling toward us next year"

Traffic fatalities have increased 15% since 2013. But the increase hasn't been evenly spread: Since 2013 urban fatalities have grown a whopping 46% more than rural fatalities even though urban miles driven are up only about 10% more than rural miles driven. Why? The question here is not why there are more urban fatalities. In ...continue reading "Raw data: Traffic fatalities in rural and urban areas"

This is a bulk carrier chugging west out of LA/Long Beach Harbor. It is skirting Santa Catalina Island, which is just off the frame to the right.

Two weeks ago I posted a chart showing that Republicans had won the House popular vote by 5%. There were still votes yet to count, however, so this was just an interim estimate. Since then 6 million votes have been counted and there are hardly any left to be tallied. As expected, Democrats have done ...continue reading "Update: The House popular vote in 2022"

The naivete of the LA Times editorial board is stunning: Here are two heartening things that happened in the past few weeks: the passage of Measure ULA, which will provide hundreds of millions of dollars annually to build affordable housing and prevent homelessness, and the election of Karen Bass, a smart, experienced leader, as the ...continue reading "Let’s please cut the crap on LA homelessness"

Years ago I promised myself that I would never buy another HP printer. This is not because of any problem with printing. They print just fine. The problem is— Well, for some reason I did buy another HP printer, so let me show you. A couple of days ago Marian asked me to take a ...continue reading "Here’s why I will never buy an HP printer again (this time for sure)"

This is just a quick reminder: The first big rate increase from the Fed was in May, and they didn't start pushing through 0.75% increases until June. Since it takes roughly a year for rate increases to feed through into the broader economy and bring down inflation, the current round of increases will start to ...continue reading "About those Fed rate hikes . . ."

John Scalzi has taken up one of the growing practices of the Twitter cognoscenti: Honestly life on Twitter has gotten much better since I switched to DGAF blocking. Be mildly annoying to me? That's a block. Look at me wrong? Blockeroonies. Like a post from a racist shitbag and I see it? Blocktown, population you. ...continue reading "The great question of our day: Block or mute?"

Gyles Brandreth, the queen's biographer, passes along the latest scuttlebutt about her final days: I had heard that the Queen had a form of myeloma — bone marrow cancer — which would explain her tiredness and weight loss and those 'mobility issues' we were often told about during the last year or so of her ...continue reading "Multiple myeloma: Not just for us commoners anymore"

This is good news: On an absolute level, an M-protein reading of 0.79 is no great shakes, but the fact that it went down last month is good news indeed. It means that I'm plodding along fairly safely rather than steadily going up—which would mean having to find a new chemo regimen fairly soon. This ...continue reading "Health update"