Kevin Drum 🕸

I was puttering around this morning looking for non-Trump-search-warrant news, and noticed that the Census Bureau had just released its latest data on new business formation. Business formation was up a bit in July, but basically it's been fairly flat for the past year. But it's been flat at a rate about a third higher ...continue reading "Raw data: New business formation"

This is a burning bush. It looks like one, anyway. But it's really just a desert tree with the rising sun behind it. As far as I know, anyway.

Check this out: The Producer Price Index clocked in at -6% from June to July on an annualized basis. Core PPI remained positive, but declined to 2.3%. As with other inflation indexes, they both peaked in March and have been easing off ever since. The biggest price increases were in eggs, beef, and construction. The ...continue reading "PPI, a leading indicator for consumer inflation, plummeted in July"

Here are all the episodes of high inflation that we've had over the past 70 years: The time frame for each episode is from trough to peak. I used core PCE as the measure of inflation since that's (allegedly) what the Fed uses. So is our current inflationary episode big or small compared to those ...continue reading "Raw data: Inflationary episodes over the past 70 years"

As you may recall, I got cataract surgery several months ago even though I don't have cataracts. I just wanted to replace my natural lenses with artificial lenses that promised sharp eyesight both near and far. Here's how it went. My original intent was to get multifocal lenses that are designed with two separate focus ...continue reading "My bionic eyes: A final report and assessment"

The big climate change bill includes a provision allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. However, you'll be excused for being less than impressed when you learn that this applies to only ten drugs starting in 2026, increasing to 20 drugs by 2029. But there's more! The other Medicare provisions in the bill haven't gotten as ...continue reading "Forget price negotiation. There’s more than that for Medicare in the climate change bill."

Rather than spread them out, here are three views of the Roman Colosseum at dawn. The top photo was taken from the northeast corner with the Vittorio Emanuele monument in the distance. The middle photo was taken from the south side looking east toward the rising sun. The bottom photo is a forced-perspective shot taken ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

If we take CPI as our measure and assume that June was the peak for headline inflation, here's how long our current round of inflation lasted: Headline: 15 months (April 2021 to June 2022) Core: 12 months (April 2021 to March 2022) Does 12 months count as transitory? Certainly it's longer than Team Transitory initially ...continue reading "Team transitory vs. Team inflation"

We have broken the back of inflation! OK, not really, but the news is good this month. The headline rate of inflation dropped from 9% to 8.5% while the core rate of inflation stayed steady at 5.9%. Given the underlying state of the economy, which is pretty strong, this probably finally represents that we've passed ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Inflation in July"

Not much to report this month: My M-protein level dropped from 0.75 to 0.74. A bigger decline would be nice, but holding things steady is fine. This won't matter for much longer anyway if I get the call for CAR-T treatment soon, since that will then be responsible for my cancer load and I'll be ...continue reading "Health update"

Your average lazy travel blogger/photographer wouldn't bother to visit La Defense on a trip to Paris. "It's just a puffed-up office park. What's the point?" Or maybe they'd take a telephoto image from around the Arc de Triomphe and call it a day. But not me. Admittedly, I didn't go until our very last day, ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Republicans have gone all in on their gigantic hissy fit over the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. In one sense, of course, this isn't surprising: the hissy fit has been the defining characteristic of the Republican Party ever since Newt Gingrich invented it in the '90s and and Fox News perfected it in the aughts. At ...continue reading "Republican hissy fit over FBI search is based on . . . absolutely nothing"

The BLS released productivity numbers for Q2 this morning, and the headline number is bad: a 4.6% decline from the previous quarter (at an annualized rate). This is bad, but in a slightly different way than it seems. Here's a chart that shows the absolute level of productivity, not the change from quarter to quarter: ...continue reading "A not-so-brief look at productivity and the labor force"

As you know by now, the FBI conducted a search of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's Florida home, on Monday morning. For some reason, everyone assumes that they were looking for boxes of documents that Trump should have turned over to the National Archives but instead took with him when he left office. That makes no sense. ...continue reading "The FBI search of Trump’s home probably wasn’t about the 15 boxes"

I'm bored. It's dex night and I can't sleep but I have nothing to do. I'd like to play with my telescope but it's too cloudy even for testing. So how about if we update our gasoline price chart? It annoys conservatives, so it's worth doing: The price of gasoline just keeps going down, down, ...continue reading "Gasoline prices were down yet again last week"

This is a long-tailed Pea-blue butterfly captured in our front yard a few days ago. It is a member of the gossamer winged family, and according to Wikipedia it is common in Europe, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Australia. Notably missing from this list is our entire hemisphere, let alone Southern California. So maybe ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

One of the ways that the new climate change bill¹ raises money to pay for itself is by hiring more IRS agents to audit rich people. This will make up for the massive drop in audits of the rich that's been engineered by Republicans over the past decade. This has conservatives in a panic. Over ...continue reading "The new enforcement budget for the IRS is aimed solely at the rich"

A recently published research paper has been making the rounds that purports to measure the ideological slant of the Big Three cable news channels. The methodology is to (a) identify all guests who have at least ten hours of screen time over the past decade, (b) add up the amount of time they appear each ...continue reading "Was MSNBC a center-right news channel during the Trump years?"

I was puttering around in my local Target yesterday and I noticed something in the clothing department. In the name of diversity and body positivity, both the mannequins and the pictures of smiling models covered the full gamut of body types: thin, fat, big, tall, short, you name it. But that was only in the ...continue reading "Why no body positivity for men?"

And that's a good thing! My doctor tells me that I've been upgraded from non-urgent to urgent on the waiting list for my eagerly anticipated CAR-T treatment. I still don't have a date, but presumably this means I'm inching my way to the top of the list. (This change has nothing to do with the ...continue reading "I am officially urgent"