Kevin Drum 🕸

Ballgirls exchange a look behind Madison Keys and Taylor Townsend during a changeover in the second round of women's doubles at the French Open. Keys and Townsend won the match but then lost in the semifinals to Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula.

Last night was dex night, so I spent some time hanging around Twitter. At one point I ended up writing something that I've hinted around at here but have never quite come out and said outright. So let's take care of that. I've been watching the climate change fight for 20 years now, waiting and ...continue reading "Geoengineering is (probably) in our future"

Marian and I flew to France in mid-May and came home in early June. Everything went smoothly: the flights were on-time, everything was hassle free, and lines were short. Were we just lucky? Or did we pick the right time to go to Europe? Whatever it was, the Wall Street Journal reports that things sure ...continue reading "Airline CEOs should probably all be fired"

The LA Times reports on CoreLogic's latest report on Southern California housing prices: The region’s six-county median sale price was $750,000, down from $760,000 in May....Although median prices tend to peak in the summer, the average increase from May to June was 1.78% over the last decade....The last time prices fell from May to June ...continue reading "Housing prices drop in Southern California for the first time in a decade"

Are Hispanic voters abandoning the Democratic Party? Fox News and the Wall Street Journal want you to think so, but Gallup disagrees: Gallup's best mechanism for tracking political inclinations over time is political party identification, a measure included in all Gallup surveys for decades....The results show that Americans' party identification swung dramatically toward the Republican ...continue reading "Raw data: Hispanic support for the Democratic Party"

Another week, another 17¢ decline in the price of gasoline. We are now down 60¢ from the June peak, a yearly savings of about $300 per driving-age adult: Kudos for President Biden, right? After all, he was allegedly responsible for the big increase, so he must be responsible for the big decrease too.

Question #1: Do you know what the following acronyms stand for? MRA FDA EMA GMP For the record, they are: Mutual Recognition Agreement, Food & Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Good Manufacturing Practices. Question #2: If you didn't recognize all four of these acronyms, did you nonetheless have a strong opinion about whether the ...continue reading "Why doesn’t the FDA have an MRA with the EMA for GMP on pharmaceuticals?"

I spent so much time mucking around with this chart that I'm no longer quite sure what I was looking for in the first place: What it shows is that since 2012 the number of housing units per adult has declined by about 1% and the number of rental units per adult has increased by ...continue reading "Raw data: Housing in the US"

When we were in Paris the opera house became a bit of a joke. It was something both of us wanted to see, and it was only about ten minutes from our apartment, but for some reason we kept missing it. Finally, a couple of days before we left, we made it over on a ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Bloomberg reports that supply chain problems are visibly easing: Supply strains, while still afflicting many consumers and businesses, are becoming more mundane than menacing like they were six months ago, especially in the U.S. Snarls have eased since their pandemic peaks and some are already adding less inflationary pressure. ....But the gradual end of the ...continue reading "The economy is set to improve this year — if we want it to"

I got bored, so I made a chart: I was curious about how core inflation was doing here vs. other big countries in Europe. Unfortunately, the Europeans don't seem to produce seasonally adjusted figures, which means the raw monthly numbers are so volatile that you can't make any sense of them. It's just a bunch ...continue reading "Raw data: Core inflation in the US and Europe"

I know this isn't a joking matter, but . . . That's my kind of report: everyone is to blame. But wait: 400 law enforcement officers? 400? What in the everlasting fuck was going on down in Uvalde?

The US may be suffering through high inflation, but so is everyone else. And our overall economy looks pretty good. The rest of the world sure thinks so, anyway: That's the exchange rate of the dollar against a broad basket of other currencies, and it's been going nowhere but up for the last year and ...continue reading "Raw data: The US dollar is the strongest currency in the world"

Monkeypox reporting has been atrocious. Alternatively, I've lost the ability to use Google and am now all alone in the universe. I'll let you decide. The question I have on my mind is whether the CDC has responded to monkeypox with an effective testing regime. According to the bulk of the news media, along with ...continue reading "Does anyone know what’s really going on with monkeypox testing?"

A few days ago the New York Post reported that the FDA had delayed its inspection of a monkeypox vaccine facility in Denmark. As a result, the US was unable to import vaccine doses made in the new facility, and this in turn was laying waste to an entire generation of Americans. Here's a followup ...continue reading "Monkeypox vaccine is on its way from Denmark"

Here is Hilbert looking entranced by . . . Charlie, of course. Charlie was chasing a moth around and Hilbert was pondering whether to join him. Sometimes he does, but this time he just watched.

From Ruy Teixeira, a longtime progressive scholar, on why he's gotten tired of the relentless identity politics among the left: I’m just a social democrat, man. Trying to make the world a better place. I don't know if Teixeira is right about conditions at the Center for American Progress, where he worked for the past ...continue reading "Quote of the day: “I’m just a social democrat, man.”"

According to the Wall Street Journal, retail sales were up 1% in June. This is, needless to say, incorrect. When you account for inflation retail sales were down -0.3% from May. (As John Maynard Keynes sort of said, I can whine about correcting for inflation longer than you can stay sane listening to me. You ...continue reading "Retail spending was down in June"

Are you tired of inflation geekery? Me too, actually, but I got curious about something so I'm going to show it to you anyway. Voila: Let me explain. First I charted the past year of data for four measures of core inflation: CPI (Consumer Price Index) PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) PPI Goods (Producer Price Index ...continue reading "Yet another geeky look at inflation"

This morning I went in for a post-op visit for my new eyes, and everything seems fine. They're still a bit blurry, but basically OK, and I have high hopes this time around that they're going to function really nicely after a few days of settling in and letting the swelling go down. The lens ...continue reading "New eyes are working fine so far"