Kevin Drum

Paul Krugman posted this chart today from the Fed's annual survey of economic well-being:

There are two interesting things here. First, if you look at the top line it's nearly flat. This is people reporting on their own finances, and COVID-19 had almost no effect at all. None. There's even a slight uptick in 2021, probably thanks to federal assistance. Overall, though, the pandemic simply had no impact on people's assessment of their own finances.

Second, the pandemic had a huge impact on views of the economy in general. Thanks to news coverage, most of the country concluded that the economy was in free fall even though they themselves were doing OK.

I'm still not sure what to make of this general phenomenon. We see it all the the time, from crime to schools to politics. People report that things are OK personally (my schools are good, my congressman is fine, etc.) but that the country generally is going to hell. Does this have some kind of rational basis? Is it mostly due to doomsaying news coverage? Or what? It really deserves some rigorous research.

Today is the first day of the French Open. It's just qualies this week, but it's still technically the opening. In honor of this, here's a picture of the sculpture of Roland Garros at the front gate of the stadium. Garros was a World War I aviation pioneer after whom the stadium is named.

Matt Yglesias on Twitter:

What I do think is true, though, is that:

— Under any tactics, Biden would have ended up agreeing to meaningful cuts in discretionary spending.

— The case *on the merits* for austerity budgeting is a much stronger today than it was in 2011

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 22, 2023

Generally speaking, Matt's point is that today's economy is stronger than it was in 2011 and we're already spending more money, so there's more scope for cutbacks.

This is fair enough but for a few things. First, we're barrelling headlong into the Fed's huge rate increases from last year, which are going to strangle the economy starting sometime very soon. I know a lot of people don't want to believe this because it all seems sort of invisible and theoretical, but it's neither. Rate increases slowing an economy with a lag time of about a year are about as close to a universal consequence of standard macroeconomics as we have. The tsunami is coming.

Second, high interest rates are already strangling the housing market and will continue to do so. This has obvious ripple effects.

Third, accumulated savings from the pandemic rescue bills is gone outside of the upper middle class—where it does little good anyway. With real income flat/down, this means real spending will drop too. This is already starting to happen.

Finally, there's China as a wild card. Their economy is stumbling, and this will certainly have no good effect on the rest of the world.

Set against all this is the fact that the labor market remains strong. This is indeed a bit mysterious, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it. It can turn around on a dime when other factors suddenly surprise people. It's a thin reed to lean on.

Bottom line: the macroeconomy is stronger right now than it was during the first debt crisis, but it's in a very tenuous state. It's on the edge of recession, and the last thing we need is some stupid default brinkmanship to give it a final nudge over the edge.

I'm flummoxed by Joe Biden's latest on the debt ceiling:

Mr. Biden said on Sunday that he believed he had the power to challenge the constitutionality of the nation’s borrowing limit, but that he did not believe such a challenge could succeed in time to avoid a default on federal debt if lawmakers did not raise the limit soon.

“I think we have the authority,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Hiroshima. “The question is could it be done and invoked in time.”

This makes it sound like Biden thinks he could go to court and get an advisory opinion or something related to the constitutionality of the debt ceiling. But courts don't do that. They rule only on live questions where the litigants can show actual real-world consequences.

Biden can certainly announce ahead of time that he plans to keep paying bills even after breaching the debt ceiling, but he has to actually do it before anyone can take him to court over it. At that point, he can keep paying bills until a court issues an injunction saying otherwise.

So what's all this business about whether his authority could be "invoked in time"? He's not doing anything to get the ball rolling anyway, nor can he for now. Does Biden think that once the ceiling is breached he has to wait for a court to affirmatively allow him to keep paying bills? That's crazy. As with any other executive action, you do it until a court affirmatively tells you to stop. What on earth am I missing here?

In its simplest terms, the ongoing debt ceiling fiasco just continues to perplex me.

At first, Joe Biden says explicitly that there will be no negotiations over the debt ceiling. The United States pays its bills and that's that.

Fine. But the only way to do that is to instruct Treasury to keep paying bills regardless of the ceiling. Maybe you do this by minting the trillion-dollar platinum coin or, more likely, invoking the 14th Amendment. These aren't perfect solutions since eventually the Supreme Court will rule on them, and they might rule against you. My own guess is that the court would punt by declaring the whole thing a political question beyond their scope, but that's just a guess.

In any case, Biden's team has inexplicably deep-sixed all this as if they never knew in the first place that it was the only solution. The result is the only option left: negotiate over the debt ceiling, the one thing they insisted they'd never do. But there's no way they didn't know this going in.

So what's up? These things have a habit of winding down to the last minute before a deal is announced, so it's still possible things will turn out relatively OK. But what was Biden thinking in the first place? I just can't make any sense of it.

Really, everything was very positive today. My counts are going steadily up; WBC and RBC are getting close to normal, ditto for platelets, which were all but zero a few days ago.

It's hard to stay positive, but that's solely because of the extreme fatigue, which I was warned about and is totally expected. The numbers themselves are almost all good. Even the Bell's palsy is getting slightly better, and hopefully will resolve on its own within a couple more weeks.

So that's the story for now. I'm even a little hungry at the moment, and it's been a while since I had much of an appetite. Things are going well.

This picture amuses me. It's Charlie with our lizard, but for some reason he's pretending to ignore it. He only did this for a few seconds before springing back into action, but I wonder what he was thinking? Trying to trick the lizard or something?

I was discharged from the hospital yesterday and we're now back in the hotel. It's nice to finally be untethered from the infusion machine and able to walk about freely.

On the downside, discharge involved the prescription of an absolute mountain of meds. It's insane. Thank God Marian is here to help me keep track of them, because I'm not sure I could do it on my own.

I remain very tired, but things are getting better and my appetite is slowly returning. We'll be here for at least another week, which will take us to Day 28, twice as long as we originally expected. On the bright side, Day 28 is also the first time we'll get a preliminary read on whether the CAR-T treatment is killing off the multiple myeloma. Here's hoping.

According to the signage, this is a specimen of hedychium at the Huntington Library. I don't know what kind, and it doesn't seem to match other pictures of hedychium, but there you have it.

A genuine lunchtime photo today! These two folks are having a mini picnic at the edge of the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris.