Kevin Drum 🕸

The Fed has decided to boldly reduce interest rates by a whopping half point instead of a piddly quarter point: As usual, their explanation is provided in Fed-speak: The Committee has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent, and judges that the risks to achieving its employment and inflation goals are ...continue reading "Fed cuts interest rates half a point. Hooray?"

Here is last night's lunar eclipse. Can you see it? Huh? Can you? It was a 3.5% eclipse, and I didn't even catch it at its high point, so all you can see is a bit of a shadow at the top. Meh. I took it with my new camera and lens, and it's not ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Tyler Cowen points to a new paper today that reminds me of something: We argue that workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises.... The impact of inflation on worker welfare is determined by ...continue reading "Wages have been outpacing inflation for five years"

Right about now, Marian and I have been married for exactly one-third of a century. Not bad!

Here is the simplest possible story of the price of oil: Up until 2001, it hovered around $41 per barrel. We invaded Iraq. The price has been volatile ever since, averaging about $100 per barrel. Will we ever manage to get the price of oil back down to $41 on a durable basis? Unless we ...continue reading "Raw data: The price of oil"

Elon Musk and his Twitter army are on the warpath tonight: You’re not gonna believe this, but @GavinNewsom just announced that he signed a LAW to make parody illegal, based on this video 🤣🤣 https://t.co/bdykNuxe6G — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 18, 2024 This is all over the conservo-sphere: California wants to ban memes! But this ...continue reading "California banned campaign deepfakes four years ago. They’re still banned today."

Here's the headline of the day: Possibly involved sabotage? Ya think?

A standard liberal plaint goes like this: How is it possible that Donald Trump still has a chance of winning November's election? He lies constantly! He says crazy stuff! He wants revenge on everybody! He seemingly has no knowledge of anything. This is totally fair. But it doesn't matter. All of it has been priced ...continue reading "What does Kamala Harris need to do to seal the deal?"

My rule of thumb is that Kamala Harris needs to win the popular vote by 4-5% in order to win the election. According to the Economist tracker, she's there: If Harris can expand her popular vote lead by another point or two, I think she'll be the very likely winner. If she expands by three ...continue reading "Kamala Harris is getting close to a durable lead over Trump"

Hey! Donald Trump is right about something. Sort of: Auto insurance has been getting steadily more expensive for a long time, but it's skyrocketed recently. Premiums have gone up by half over the past couple of years, and they're up by a third even after accounting for overall inflation. I don't really know why. I've ...continue reading "We are paying the price for crazy driving"

This is sunset over the Harbor Patrol building at the far end of the East Basin at Dana Point Harbor.

This is a little down in the weeds, but Josh Marshall today points to another analytic estimate of how many Haitians actually live in Springfield, Ohio. We all agree that various data points suggest a moderate population increase up through 2022, but what if the big surge was in 2023? David Jarman at The Downballot ...continue reading "OK, maybe there are 4,000 Haitians in Springfield?"

Health care, in broad outline, is pretty simple. The free market, for obvious reasons, doesn't do universal. It sells stuff only to people who can pay for it. That’s why, for things like roads, national defense, the postal service, and old-age pensions—all of which we’ve decided ought to be available to everyone—we let the government ...continue reading "Donald Trump doesn’t want to broaden health care coverage"

Adjusted for inflation, retail sales and food services declined 1.6% in August at an annualized rate. But despite more than three years of flatness, it's still above its pre-pandemic trend: In March 2021 there was a sudden spike in retail sales, and that level has been maintained for more than three years. But what happens ...continue reading "Retail sales decline in August"

Exciting news! Next week I'll be starting a new multiple myeloma treatment called Talvey, aka talquetamab. Technically, it's similar to the Carvykti CAR-T treatment I had last year, but instead of targeting the BCMA antigen it targets two receptors called GPRC5D and CD3. Because it targets two things it's called a bispecific. Unlike Carvykti, it's ...continue reading "Health update"

There was no change in border crossings in August: Out of a total of 107,000, about 58,000 were caught trying to cross the border illegally. The rest were asylum seekers who presented themselves at border stations or gave themselves up after crossing between stations.

Over at National Review, Noah Rothman laughingly calls yesterday's wannabe assassin of Donald Trump "a highly impressionable figure radicalized in the support of progressive causes": That might shock the press, but finding a single Trump supporter who is surprised by Sunday’s news would be a struggle. The political media are constantly on the lookout for ...continue reading "Political violence in America"

This is a Red River hog at the Los Angeles Zoo. The zookeepers have hung a 5-gallon water bottle from the fence and the hog plays with it continually. Basically, he just knocks it around with his snout and seems to get endless joy from it. Kinda strange.

Republicans are chattering once again about imposing work requirements as a condition for receiving Medicaid. The CBO has estimated the effect this would have: This option would decrease federal spending...about $15 billion per year, on average, because about 2.2 million adults would lose Medicaid coverage. That reduction in enrollment represents a substantial portion of the ...continue reading "Work requirements for Medicaid would have no effect on spending"

According to the Washington Post, here is the partisan lean for all men in the US with names that start with "Ke": I'm pleased to note that Kevin is the most bipartisan name of the bunch, leaning only slightly Republican. Oddly, Kenneth is +14 Republican while Kenny is -15 Democratic. Apparently there's something Republican about ...continue reading "I have a very bipartisan name"