@Jason
What's weird is that this isn't a recession. The economy is growing at a jaw-dropping rate, unemployment is non-existent, and asset prices are rising.
Wearing masks.
When I asked why the student protesters were wearing masks, I was told it was to protect their identity. But these are professors and that’s not going to work.
They are wearing them as political totems.
@JamesSurowiecki
A Democratic convention in Chicago in the middle of a leftwing youth uprising against a Democrat president’s foreign policy.
What could go wrong?
This is correct and it is seriously dangerous. It will make all future attempts to stave off economic disaster much more difficult.
And it is being done for stupid, partisan reasons. Completely unnecessary and not even well thought out. They're ruining policy to troll.
Precedent set: if you accept cash transfers from the federal government, the White House will name and shame you during policy disputes. Can only assume the silence from the “norms” crew means they understand — and endorse — this new reality.
@Chris_arnade
A lot more people have migrated from crowded European cities to the US than vice versa, so it’s historically true. And, in fact, it’s still true that net migration is into the U.S. from Europe.
Eliminating snow days in favor of required remote learning days is a scam. It’s an untested educational innovation that allows school systems to claim they had a day of school when they really didn’t. And it deprives kids of the joy of a day off to play in the snow.
Don’t do it.
Trump supporters cite his economic record as a reason to vote for him, but that's a bit puzzling. Because his economic record is only good if you leave off what happened from March 2020 to the end of his administration.
A good test: ask which Democrat constituencies are opposed to the deal. If it is not being adopted over special interest opposition, that suggests the Dem SIs got what they wanted.
Certainly seems GOP lawmakers are being asked to go against their constituencies, though
Biden’s last year is going to be more fun than I thought.
Here he combines one of his dumbest claims, that inflation is caused by corporate greed, with one of the biggest jokes in Washington—a task force will solve it!
Greedflation task force!
With all due respect, I don’t think the Sahm Rule works like this. It’s an indicator of a national recession that works off national unemployment. I don’t know if anyone has researched if a local 50 basis point rise indicates a local contraction or foretells a national slump.
Good chunk of states (20) starting to trigger Sahm Rule (when 3m moving average of unemployment rate rises by 0.5 percentage points or more relative to its low during previous 12 months)
@Bloomberg
@BLS_gov
@UBS
@Chris_arnade
I can spot some issues right away.
1) Too much house. $1.5M house for a family of four with a monthly vig of $6800 (mortgage, ins, taxes) is too much. 26% of their income after taxes.
2) Net salary should not net out 401k.
3) Expensive cars.
4) A lot of student debt.
A few thoughts.
1. Student loan payments do not really restart today. The “on ramp” to required repayments starts today.
2. Nothing about repayments forces borrowers to take on more debt.
3. Plenty of borrowers took on more debt while payments were paused.
Axios decides to scold the American people for wrongthink on immigration instead of just reporting what the opinion poll showed.
The problem is that Axios is wrong and the public is right. Illegal immigrants are a net fiscal drain and illegal immigrant crime adds to total crime…
This is really a weird thing to say. Does Biden really not remember that the PPP loans were designed as an employment support scheme and not primarily “relief” for businesses? Does he not remember that we ordered businesses to shut down for the public good?
Some of the same Republicans in Congress who strongly opposed giving relief to students got hundreds of thousands of dollars of relief for themselves to keep their businesses open.
I find this hypocrisy stunning.
Wow. David Stevens, a longtime opponent of "recap and release" for GSEs, has flipped because of the risk of political manipulation of GSEs if they remain under government control.
He makes a powerful argument. Worth considering.
People keep saying that it is crazy to expect depositors to monitor bank risk.
But we’re not talking about 99% of depositors. Up to $250k is money good and very few people have that kind of cash in a bank account. (And married couples can really have up to $1 million.)
The moral hazard here is we’ve greatly reduced the incentive for depositors of any size now (250K my ***) to actually give a moments thought to the riskiness of where they’re putting their money.
It’s not as bad as if we also let SBF off the hook.
But it ain’t ok.
As I and others have shown, it was a terrible bill that enshrined an entirely new and pervasive catch-and-release program that would have made the chaos at the border even worse.
Schumer is smart enough to know this.
Donald Trump deliberately sabotaged the strong, bipartisan border bill.
Trump sabotaged a bill with new border personnel.
Trump sabotaged a bill with improvements to asylum.
Trump sabotaged a bill with the tools needed to bring order to the border.
Whatever your feelings about Elon might be, this kind of responsiveness is impressive. It’s impossible to imagine one of the legacy automakers responding like this to a customer inquiry.
@TeslaDiva99
Tesla car temp is automatically kept within a safe range, even when the car appears “off”, in order to protect infants & pets.
That said, it would be more convenient to keep the car “on” for entertainment & comfort if the camera detects occupants. We will make that change.
This is nonsense. False equivalency that is either rooted in ignorance or deceptiveness. Maybe both.
The PPP loans were forgivable on their terms if you met the criteria. Student loan forgiveness is not at all similar.
@jessesingal
Completely bizarre. It's not just accepted by mainstream researchers, it is the most well-established finding in intelligence science. We know intelligence is heritable with more certainty than we know anything else about intelligence.
There has been a growing sentiment on the right for sometime that perhaps cancel culture is here to stay, that the era of free speech is (regrettably) over.
And if that’s so, then we need to fight to control the “community standards” not whine about being censored.
Can’t say it’s *surprising* exactly to see so many people on the “cancel culture is bad” to “let’s do cancel culture on behalf of Israel” pipeline but it’s something.
There's also a deeper point here. Accepting one form of government aid should not, logically, mean that you have to support all forms.
But this is what the Biden administration is claiming: if you received a PPP loan, you are ethically bound to support student loan forgiveness.
We’re so back.
Important thread. I often hear from my brothers and sisters on the right that “it’s all part time” or “everyone needs three jobs.”
Guys, you are misreading the data.
Comment:
"Why don’t economists ever talk about the fact that more and more workers at the lower end of the payscale have to work at more than one job to make a living? ... It seems to me that is a big reason why many don’t feel the economy is good right now."
Facts:
@mucha_carlos
This idea that everything is "all the same fight" is pretty destructive. All or nothing. No allies with dissenting views on anything. And it isn't just about "conservatives" either. It excludes liberal dissenters on abortion, transgenderism, "wealth equality," etc.
@Indian_Bronson
@LeaMaric
You don't need to refrigerate tomatoes or apples, especially if you are not trying to preserve their freshness longer than a week.
I’m not a politics guy but in M&A you worry when the other side is too eager to do a deal. Makes you wonder what you might be missing.
Democrat anger over GOP rejecting the border deal makes me think the Dems thought they had gotten the best of the GOP in the negotiations.
What is the most mismanaged large cap company today?
I’ll go first: Disney.
Incredible suite of products and intellectual property that its management has serially failed to execute on for years.
@karol
I'd like to see them produce one movie or show for kids that doesn't include woke virtue signaling. I'm told that right now writers and producers believe that there is no point in even pitching shows that don't advance the woke perspective on things like gender and race.
My 10-year-old daughter found $40 on the sidewalk outside of her school today. I explained to her that economics teaches us that is impossible but she kept showing me the money, as if that proved anything. I told her that was just anecdotal and repeating it doesn't make it data.
The wages of young people would be much higher if we had fewer immigrants, which would lead to higher rates of marriage and a higher birth rate.
We’re depressing the cycle of native population growth by substituting—don’t say we’re “replacing” it with—growth through immigration.