Month: November 2024

CNN says inflation is skyrocketing in Russia:

Butter, some meats, and onions are about 25% more expensive than a year ago, according to official data.... Inflation is being driven by the rapid rise in wages as the Kremlin pours billions into military industries and sends millions of men to fight in Ukraine.

Hmmm. "Some" meats. And onions. OK. But what's the actual overall inflation rate?

Inflation is good and high in Russia. But it always is. The current spike is only the 7th biggest since 2002. Ditto for the food spike. And it seems like they both might have peaked three months ago. I have a feeling the Russian people aren't going to stage a revolt over this.

Maybe I'm guilty of not paying attention, but lately I've noticed there's (apparently) considerable pushback to the notion that human sex is binary. But it is: Women have the capacity to produce eggs and men to produce sperm. At a biological level, that's pretty much all there is to it despite the existence of a few very rare chromosomal disorders.

Gender is a whole different thing. In modern use, gender refers to a person's preferred expression of gender stereotypes, which can vary wildly and don't always align with biological sex. That's where we get the panoply of trans, questioning, genderfluid, agender, etc. etc.

With apologies for my possible obtuseness, what's the point of fighting against the reality of binary biological sex? It doesn't have any impact one way or the other on society's acceptance of gender existing on a spectrum. Does it? Help me out here.

I had a hamburger for lunch today! It was good!

Well, it was OK. My taste buds aren't 100% back yet. I'd say maybe 80%. By next week I should be fully recovered from this horror show.

SILVER LINING DEPARTMENT: I've dropped 20 pounds over the past six weeks. I'm now merely overweight, not obese, in the unlikely event I can keep the weight off.

You've seen the exterior of Stephansdom in Vienna, now it's time to see the interior.

Here's the current overall valuation of the stock market:

This is the value of all stocks compared to expected earnings over the coming year. I've grayed out the post-pandemic surge, which was mainly a statistical artifact, in order to give you a better idea of how today compares to historical levels.

As you can see, the market is valued way over its average and is now at its second-highest level in decades. The only higher level was at the height of the dotcom frenzy, which lasted only a couple of years before plummeting.

Note that this is effectively adjusted for inflation since it's relative to growing corporate profits. There's no special reason it should change very much at any time aside from good old animal spirits. It's vanishingly unlikely this bull market will continue much longer, and when it falls it will probably lose upwards of a third of its value.

This should go over well with the Pentagon:

Now, a 4 am post of "TRUE!!!" is not exactly a reliable policy pronouncement. But it's certainly suggestive.

But can Trump do it? Both law and culture bar the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act, but that would trigger instant court action since there's plainly no insurrection happening at the moment. And even if Trump prevailed in court, the military traditionally insists that its involvement be limited to a specific jurisdiction.

Trump might get away with it. Maybe the Supreme Court would cave in to some sophistry or another and maybe Trump could bulldoze the military into reluctantly going along. But it would be a helluva mess. He'd be better off just asking Congress for $30 or $40 billion to authorize a truckload of new ICE officers. Maybe they could hire all the January 6 protesters Trump plans to pardon.

POSTSCRIPT: It's worth recalling that Trump already tried this in his first term. It was a smallish deployment to the border in 2018, and even at that troops were forbidden by law from detaining migrants. All they could do was provide limited logistical support (air, medical, etc.) to border patrol officers.

Just a quick reminder! Last year the US imported $3.1 trillion in goods from the rest of the world. If we imposed a 10% tariff on every last penny of that amount it would raise $310 billion per year. That's it. That's the cap even in theory. It's a tiny fraction of the annual federal deficit, which clocked in at $1.8 trillion last year.

In practice, of course, even if Trump goes through with this (a) treaties will restrict what he can do, (b) he will grant exceptions, (c) imports will fall due to their higher prices, and (d) other countries will retaliate. The actual amount of revenue tariffs can raise is certainly no more than $150 billion and might very well net out to zero. It's a flyspeck.

If Republicans are looking for spending cuts to offset their huge tax cuts, the only big pot of money plausibly open to them is Medicaid. Guess what?

President-elect Donald Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans have begun preliminary discussions about making significant changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other federal safety net programs to offset the enormous cost of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts next year.

....House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters Wednesday that a “responsible and reasonable work requirement” for Medicaid benefits resembling the one that already exists for food stamps could yield about $100 billion in savings. He also said another $160 billion in reduced costs could come from checking Medicaid eligibility more than once per year.

....Republicans have long denied that they are trying to reduce benefits for low-income Americans on either Medicaid or food stamps.

"Republicans have long denied." Ha ha. That's hilarious. Of course they want to reduce Medicaid and food stamps. Poor people are not a constituency they give a shit about.

The only good news here is that Arrington is presumably talking about 10-year savings, which means his Medicaid proposals come to about $26 billion a year. That's not huge even if they go through with it. Medicaid may be the only big pot of money around, but even it's nowhere near big enough to pay for their stupendous, budget-busting tax cuts for the rich.

Oh come on:

Do we really have to play this game? Trump's appeal to the working class isn't based on the economy. It's based on cultural hot buttons and resentment of elites. Is this even controversial? I doubt that even blue-collar workers themselves would disagree.

As president, Trump will:

• Raise tariffs, which hurt the working and middle classes.
• Appoint union busters to every possible position.
• Cut taxes on corporations and the rich.
• Try to repeal Obamacare, which primarily helps the poor and working classes.
• Try to repeal the IRA and CHIPS Acts, which provide lots of blue-collar jobs.
• Fail to follow through on his promise to eliminate income tax on tips, overtime, Social Security, etc.
• Do his best to roll back regulations on workplace safety, consumer protection, and financial ripoffs.
• Appoint conservative judges who routinely favor corporations over consumers.

I'm sure I'm missing some things, but it doesn't matter. The notion that Trump is on the side of workers is laughable. What's the point of pretending?

The Wall Street Journal has a long piece tonight that goes on and on and on about how Joe Biden blew it by passing the $1.9 trillion ARP bill and firing up inflation. About halfway through the story, Nick Timiraos buries this single sentence:

A separate analysis by the [San Francisco Fed's] economists estimated the ARP boosted inflation, excluding food and energy items, by 0.3 percentage point a year in 2021 and 2022.

This saves me the trouble of writing yet another post about the fact that ARP barely had any effect on inflation. The Journal's own story does it for me. Hell, it more than does it. Even I'd be willing to acknowledge that ARP might have contributed one percentage point to inflation, but they've already underbid me at 0.6 points. Great! I'll take it.

But if that's the case, why bother writing the story?