Kevin Drum 🕸

Now here's a chart: If Mortgage News Daily is to be believed, the interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has jumped 0.73% over the course of just three business days. Since the start of the year rates have nearly doubled, from 3.29% to 6.28%. So what happened on Friday to cause mortgage rates to ...continue reading "Mortgage rates have skyrocketed to 6.28% since Thursday"

This is the Irvine Spectrum shopping center, a vast and growing conglomeration of all the usual mall suspects. As you can see, the photo was taken at sunrise via drone. After this I have one more drone picture to show you: the one that prompted me to finally buy a drone in the first place. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Asking prices in the Southern California housing market are already starting to show some strain: The share of homes listed for sale that took recent price cuts has more than doubled since last year. During the four weeks that ended June 5, 16.2% of listings in L.A. County had at least one price cut, up ...continue reading "A housing bust is just around the corner"

The Washington Post reports today that Republican voters are eager to nominate candidates for office who repeat Donald Trump's big lie about the 2020 election being stolen: District by district, state by state, voters in places that cast ballots through the end of May have chosen at least 108 candidates for statewide office or Congress ...continue reading "Red state Republicans are eager boosters of the Big Lie"

Here is the price of Brent crude over the past couple of years. The price of Brent crude dipped at the start of the pandemic and then started recovering. This is far before the Ukraine war. The price mostly recovered by July 2020, which is where I start my chart, and then rose 130% ($60) ...continue reading "Ukraine is not the cause of sky-high gasoline prices"

The article of the moment in progressive circles is Monday's Ryan Grim piece in the Intercept that's subtitled, "Meltdowns have brought progressive advocacy groups to a standstill at a critical moment in world history." Quite so. The only surprising thing about Grim's account is that it took so long for someone on the left to ...continue reading "What’s wrong with progressive organizations? Just about everything."

The Wall Street Journal says the Fed is likely to react harshly to recent news about price levels: A string of troubling inflation reports in recent days is likely to lead Federal Reserve officials to consider surprising markets with a larger-than-expected 0.75-percentage-point interest-rate increase at their meeting this week. Before officials began their premeeting quiet ...continue reading "The Fed needs to avoid panicking over inflation"

We are officially in a bear market now. However, I'd like to show you something: There are two things about this chart that are different from most of the ones you see. First, I adjusted the S&P index for inflation. This doesn't usually make a huge difference, but if you're looking at price levels over ...continue reading "The stock market is not really in bad shape. Yet."

The top picture shows Victoria Azarenka playing at this year's French Open. A decade ago Azarenka was ranked #1 in the world but then suffered through some injuries and afterward took time off for the birth of her son. She never regained her top form after that and was ranked 15th going into Roland Garros. ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

For some reason it occurred to me a couple of days ago to think about the sheer number of cranks and crackpots who roamed the White House and bent Donald Trump's ear about election fraud in late 2020 and early 2021. I don't mean people who are just a little conspiracy minded; I mean out-and-out ...continue reading "Crackpots in the Oval Office"

Here's the latest Gallup polling on abortion, conducted "mostly" after the recent leak of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade: Gallup reports that pro-choice sentiment is the highest it's been since 1995. But be careful! It turns out that this is due almost solely to changes among Democrats: Democrats are now more fired ...continue reading "“Pro-choice” is up — but only among Democrats"

Take a look at this photo: How would you describe it? This is a small white house. This is a white small house. The answer is #1, of course. The second description sounds obviously wrong even though it just changes the order of the adjectives. Native English speakers understand this intuitively even if nobody ever ...continue reading "Watch the order of your adjectives!"

A week ago I predicted that the Senate would do nothing on gun regulation. But over the weekend negotiators announced they'd reached a deal. So was I too cynical? Maybe! But keep two things in mind: Nothing has passed yet. There's plenty of time for things to fall apart. Even if it passes, the "framework" ...continue reading "Gun regulation is still going nowhere"

A couple of months ago the chatterati could talk about nothing but supply chain problems causing shortages of consumer goods. Now, with whip snapping speed, everything has changed. Suddenly the conversation is all about gluts: The big-box retailer Target said Tuesday that it’s having inventory troubles. Target has a lot of stuff, including furniture and ...continue reading "Wait. Supply shortages are suddenly yesterday’s news?"

I didn't check the COVID-19 stats at all while I was on vacation, so I figured I should take a look now that I'm back. This time around, I was interested in death rates by vaccination status. Here it is: The CDC provides death rates by vax status through the start of April. The more ...continue reading "COVID-19 Update: Hardly anyone is dying anymore"

The price of gasoline continues to skyrocket. This got me curious about how closely it's following the price of oil these days, so I went back and did a more careful job with the regression chart I've posted a few times already. Here it is: Gasoline is now selling for 61¢ more than the current ...continue reading "What’s going on with the price of gasoline?"

Over at New York, Sam Adler-Bell says that he doesn't care about the word "woke." If you don't like it, fine. But if you believe in the principles behind the word, you need to quit using its pseudo-academic language with anyone other than your own circle of true believers: This idiom — or perhaps communicative ...continue reading "Politics is just another word for persuasion"

Did you watch the 1/6 hearings last night? I did, but thanks to lingering jet lag I dozed through bits and pieces of it. I think I mostly got the gist, but there were some things I probably missed. Anyway, it seemed pretty effective, though as usual it's all but impossible for me to judge ...continue reading "How many people still have uncertain opinions about Trump and 1/6?"

We return you now to our regular Friday programming featuring fully American cats. In today's photo, Charlie is showing off his hunting skills by leaping onto a painted ping pong ball. He mainly likes it because it rolls around nicely and makes a great sound when it bounces off walls. He never quite brings it ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 10 June 2022"

Jim Geraghty tells us what's on his mind: How Can a Tired, Old, Overwhelmed President Respond to Terrible Inflation Numbers? Earlier this week I wrote, “we don’t know precisely what the national inflation numbers for May will be, but we can all sense they’re not going to be good.” It turns out that May’s inflation ...continue reading "Is inflation high because Joe Biden is sleepy?"