Month: March 2022

Here's an exceptionally nice photo of our local squirrel. He spends all his time chittering madly at both people and cats even though I keep telling him that nobody is even interested in his stupid pine cones. But he doesn't believe us. He probably never will.

Eurostat has issued a flash estimate of the euro area inflation rate for February: it will reach 5.8%, up from 5.1% in January. Here's how that compares to the US:

There are a couple of takeaways from this. First, US and European inflation rates follow each other, so don't be surprised if the February number for the US jumps as well. The BLS will release February CPI figures next week.

Second, we now have a year's worth of data showing that the US inflation rate has been a fairly steady two percentage points above the European rate during the pandemic recovery. This suggests that global issues are responsible for most of our high inflation rate, but that economic policy (i.e., the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill) is probably responsible for adding two percentage points to that.

Oh, and a third takeaway: damn, Eurostat is a pain in the ass. You can do better, folks.

The New York Times is getting dragged all over lefty Twitter for this fact check:

We fact-checked President Biden's claim during the #SOTU about strong U.S. job growth.

Follow our live analysis: https://t.co/wmEgwIYSOi pic.twitter.com/HwXEcia7IL

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 2, 2022

The Times deserves whatever they get for this. Given the lower US population in 1939 and before, there's zero chance that more jobs were ever created in a single year. This is just dumb.

What's more, if they really wanted to "add context" to Biden's number they could have pointed out that his record jobs numbers depend entirely on the fact that he happened to take office near a recessionary low point. That can make anybody look good.

But there's more! Biden could then truthfully say that his $1.9 trillion stimulus bill played a key role in keeping job growth high. I wish he'd say that more often and more loudly.

For the first time in a long while I watched the State of the Union Address like a normal person: only barely paying attention.

Overall, I thought it was fine. President Joe was very much on his bipartisan schtick, starting off with lots of crowd-pleasing Ukraine stuff and then emphasizing things he thought everyone could support. He took a few partisan shots—one at the Republican tax cut, another at "infrastructure week"—but those were kept to a minimum. Otherwise he talked about funding the police, protecting the border (though without a lot of detail), and his cancer moonshot, which are hardly the ingredients of partisan strife.

I imagine this didn't go down too well with Democrats in the TV audience, most of whom probably wanted a little more red meat. At the same time, I don't imagine he pulled many Republicans over to his side regardless of his demeanor. After all, he didn't promise to end the scourge of CRT in our classrooms or call on Democrats to stop stealing elections.

I thought the worst part of the speech was when Biden talked about inflation. He rattled off a bunch of stuff that was way too complicated for most people to understand. Even at the risk of incurring the wrath of the fact checkers, he should have simplified this to about a third grade level.

The best part of the speech was pretty clearly the opening few minutes about Ukraine, which set a great tone for the rest of the address. Biden's "four things we can all agree on" was also good, but it needed a summary: "Opioids, mental health, veterans, and cancer." I'm surprised none of the writers thought to include that.

Transcript here.

Sen. Rick Scott got himself into the soup a few days ago by releasing a plan for the Republican Party that included, among other things, a tax proposal:

All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.

Mitch McConnell dressed down Scott today and his plan was DOA from the start. Still, it's worth understanding exactly what Scott was proposing. He says he wants everyone to pay at least a "small amount," but it's nowhere near as small as he thinks. Take a look at this chart showing the amount of federal income tax paid by families at different income levels:

The working poor, thanks to things like the EITC and the Child Tax Credit, often have a negative income tax bill. So a "small" amount—say a hundred dollars or so—is actually a tax increase of $2,000 or more. For some families it would be an increase of $5,000.

That's a very, very big increase for a family with an income of $20-30,000. Rick Scott probably doesn't understand what his own proposal would do, but Mitch McConnell does and he wants no part of it. This is the risk in filling a plan with red meat talking points without bothering to figure out what they mean in real life.

This is the Cathedra Petri in St. Peter's Basilica, directly behind Bernini's baldachin. It was built to house St. Peter's wooden throne, which Bernini enclosed in a typically massive bronze sculpture. The photo is (surprise!) a panorama stitched together to provide a good view of both the floor and ceiling.

Even though our sanctions regime against Russia specifically excludes oil and gas, energy traders are worried that Russia's crude oil shipments might suffer anyway. This has caused the price of Brent crude futures to soar, but not Russian oil futures:

In a sign that demand for Russian oil has evaporated, prices for the country’s flagship Urals crude moved in the opposite direction. Traders are offering Urals at massive discounts of around $15 a barrel below the price of Brent—and even then not finding buyers.

But wait:

As prices for Russian crude tanked last week, companies in India vacuumed up around seven million barrels of Urals oil, according to people familiar with the matter. Even there, however, companies are taking steps to limit sanctions risk. On Monday, Indian Oil Corp. sent a letter to crude traders stating it would buy Russian oil only if delivery was included....This was because some shipping companies are hesitant to load Russian crude, the person said.

India is not undermining the sanctions regime here, since there are no sanctions against crude oil. However, it's interesting that even though the Ukraine war has caused the price of global oil to go up, it's caused the price of Russian oil to go down. That's gonna hurt.

I don't know a lot about sanctions, but I've learned two things over the past couple of decades:

• In general, unilateral sanctions don't work. They only work if they're backed by lots of countries.
• They take a while to work. Sanctions are sort of like a grinding medieval siege, something that's effective only if you have the willpower to keep them going for a long time.

President Biden has done a good job of rallying broad support for sanctions against Russia, but they're unlikely to have an immediate effect. It's entirely possible that they'll never have an effect and Russia simply learns to live with some of them while evading others.

On a more detailed level, it's worth keeping in mind that:

• Economic sanctions inherently have a limited effect when they include a gigantic energy-related loophole.
• Targeting oligarchs is fine, but they've long since ceased to have much impact on Russian policy. Putin made it clear years ago that his alliance with the oligarchs had been temporary, and he now expected them to be happy with their money and to follow his lead unquestioningly in policy matters.
• As Israel has taught us all, facts on the ground are critical. If and when Russia fully takes over Ukraine, they aren't going to leave. This is more like Chechnya than Afghanistan.

In a nutshell, the sanctions regime against Russia is genuinely tough. I can't think of an equivalent in recent history. But it's still not likely to change Russia's behavior unless someone gets a burr up his ass and manages to lead some kind of palace coup against Putin. That would hardly be unprecedented in Russian history, but it's still pretty unlikely.

What have Republicans done recently?

• They tried to extort Ukraine in return for military aid.
• They precipitated anti-mask/vaccine fervor, resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
• They defend the 1/6 insurrection as just an ordinary protest¹ and continue to support Trump's big lie about Democrats stealing the vote.
• They support efforts to allow red state legislatures to overturn the popular presidential vote.
• They actively appeal to white fear of teaching about Black history in schools.
• They have cut taxes on millionaires while quietly raising them on the middle class via tariffs.

I'm sure I'm missing a few important items. Maybe even some where Republicans arguably did some good! But honestly, just take a look at this list and ask yourself what good the Republican Party is these days. They stopped President Biden from passing a bunch of social spending, which is good from their point of view, but they could easily have done that even if they had stayed sane and constructive.

Unfortunately, they obviously consider insanity imperative to their electoral fortunes, so I imagine we can look forward to more of the same. What is the point of even having them around anymore?

¹They didn't at first, but they nearly unanimously do now.

Nikki Haley has some advice for us:

We need to become energy independent and we need to do it now.

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 28, 2022

As it happens, we're already energy independent:

We continue to import about a fifth of our energy for reasons of convenience and geopolitics, but we don't have to. We produce all the energy we need right here at home.

But put that aside for a moment. Does this newfound desire among Republicans mean that they'll start supporting solar and wind? Or merely more nuclear and more drilling in national parks? I've long thought that the only way to get Republicans to go along with subsidizing renewable energy was to somehow make it into a jingoistic national security issue, and this is the first chance we've had to do this.

I don't suppose it will work, but this is the time for a big campaign that emphasizes (a) anti-Russian themes and (b) battery storage to get around the idiotic "solar doesn't work at night/wind doesn't always blow" nonsense. Perhaps the message is that it's not enough for us to be energy independent. We need to help Europe become energy independent too as a way of punishing Putin.

My guess is that this won't work and we'll just be hearing a lot more "Drill Baby Drill" from Haley and her fellow Republicans. But it's worth a try, even if jingoistic appeals aren't your cup of tea.