Paul Krugman, May 7: “[Treasury secretary] Janet Yellen and I believe that the Fed can contain any inflationary risks.”
Paul Krugman, June 21: “For those paying closer attention to the flow of new information, inflation panic is, you know, so last week.”
Paul Krugman, July 23: “Overheating is still possible, and the Fed should keep its eye on that possibility. But the big numbers aren’t as scary as they seem.”
Paul Krugman, August 12: “Anxiety about the inflationary impact of public investment just doesn’t make sense if you work through the numbers.”
Paul Krugman, September 10: “Companies aren’t acting as if they expect lots of future inflation, where they can hike wages without losing competitive advantage. They’re acting, instead, as if they see current inflation as a blip.”
Paul Krugman, November 11: “So yes, that was an ugly inflation report, and we hope that future reports will look better. But people making knee-jerk comparisons with the 1970s and screaming about stagflation are looking at the wrong history. When you look at the right history, it tells you not to panic.”
The New York Times, this morning:
Inflation jumped to the highest level in nearly 40 years, fresh data released on Friday showed, as supply chain disruptions, rapid consumer demand and rising housing costs combined to fuel the strongest inflationary burst in a generation (emphasis added).
The rising costs spell trouble for officials at the Federal Reserve and the White House, who are trying to calibrate policy at a moment when the labor market has yet to completely heal from the pandemic, but the risk that price increases could become more lasting is increasing.
The Consumer Price Index climbed by 6.8 percent in the year through November, the data showed, the fastest pace since 1982.
One of the reasons inflation is such a serious problem right now is that we have an administration, a Fed, and a lot of ideologically or politically aligned economic elites who are wedded to the belief that inflation is not a serious problem.
Proving that some of the most basic facts of economic life for ordinary people elude some Nobel-prize winning economists, Krugman dismisses the idea that inflation hurts the poor worse than the rich.
Inflation redistributes from creditors to debtors — not exactly a burden on the bottom half of the income distribution 2/
Hey, Mr. Super-Genius: A family of four just getting by on $1,500 is hurt a lot more when the price of milk rises by 80 cents a gallon and gasoline rises a dollar a gallon.
Here Louis Rossmann (who does something like two videos a day) expounds upon that theme:
Some of his complaints are more acute for New York City than the rest of the country, but he’s far more in touch with reality than Krugman seems to be.
So what does the Biden Administration plan to do about inflation? Easy. They’re going to redefine it away by removing commodity prices from the CPI.
Just before a holiday, Trump does something that amuses the rest of us but shocks the media into doing nothing but talk about it over and over again while he enjoys his time off.
Hmm.
When had he done that before?
Oh yes, just before Christmas 2015, Trump said Obama schlonged Hillary.
There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale — that most of what you read, watch and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close.
Snip.
The behavior of much of the media, but especially the New York Times, was a disgrace. I don’t believe it ever will recover the public trust it squandered.
Snip.
Here is a true story about how Abe Rosenthal resolved a conflict of interest. A young woman was hired by the Times from one of the Philadelphia newspapers. But soon after she arrived in New York, a story broke in Philly that she had had a romantic affair with a political figure she had covered, and that she had accepted a fur coat and other expensive gifts from him. When he saw the story, Abe called the woman into his office and asked her if it was true. When she said yes, he told her to clean out her desk — that she was finished at the Times and would never work there again. As word spread through the newsroom, some reporters took the woman’s side and rushed in to tell Abe that firing her was too harsh. He listened for about 30 seconds and said, in so many words, “I don’t care if you f–k an elephant on your personal time, but then you can’t cover the circus for the paper.”
A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing “ghost employees” on the congressional payroll.
Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?
Snip.
Official documents, court records and multiple interviews suggest the crew may have engaged in tax fraud, extortion, bankruptcy fraud and insurance fraud and the money could have been funneled overseas. Abid has hired high-profile attorney James Bacon who specializes in anti-money laundering litigation.
The Awans share modest homes, drive unremarkable cars and report little in the way of assets on congressional disclosures. The family owns significant amounts of Virginia rental properties, which are heavily financed, with second mortgages sometimes taken out. It’s unclear where the rental income goes because the Awans insist tenants pay in odd ways.
The Daily Caller News foundation interviewed multiple current and former tenants who said Imran insisted rent be paid in untraceable ways. Many of those TheDCNF interviewed about the Awans asked not to be identified for fear of suffering retaliation by the family, particularly renters to whose homes Imran has keys.
“He only wants cash — for the security deposit, everything. The mortgage is probably $600, we pay $1,800 a month,” one said.
“I would write the rent to all sorts of different people,” another claimed. While still another tenant said the family insisted on blank money orders.
Those interviewed also were puzzled that Congress kept the Awans on the payroll full-time when the family spent months of the year in Pakistan.
The four Awans were each making approximately $160,000 a year on Capitol Hill. Other House IT workers told TheDCNF that the Awans appeared to hold no-show jobs, with bare-bones services provided, and it appeared one person was doing the work for the rest of them.
Cristal Perpignan, a former Awan renter, said Imran instructed her to pay the rent to Imran’s friend, Rao Abbas, who lived in the basement of the home she occupied and was also on the House payroll as an IT worker. But Perpignan said Abbas spent his days at home.
Imran’s wife purchased the home in 2008 for $470,000. A second mortgage was taken out in 2012, and — at least on paper — it was sold to Imran’s 22-year old brother Jamal in November 2016 for $620,000 — $43,000 more than its assessed value.
“Phoenix dropped their sanctuary city status and started enforcing the law…and crime rates went down.”
“Migrant smugglers in Honduras say their business has dried up since [President] Trump took office.” Also this: “Give Trump critics credit: They predicted he would destroy jobs, and they were right; he appears to have destroyed a considerable number of positions in the previously vibrant and lucrative illicit people-smuggling industry.”
In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, “Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone.” In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that “immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants” and that “the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear.” His conclusion: “We’ll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.” That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, “When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.”
The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.
Prominent liberals didn’t oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to America’s economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained America’s welfare state.
Snip.
Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the country’s growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didn’t need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. “The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November,” Salon declared after Obama’s 2008 win. “If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.”
As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism. While Obama was running for reelection, immigrants’-rights advocates launched protests against the administration’s deportation practices; these protests culminated, in June 2012, in a sit-in at an Obama campaign office in Denver. Ten days later, the administration announced that it would defer the deportation of undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and met various other criteria.
South African is contemplating seizing the land of white farmers without compensation. Because Zimbabwe is such a sterling model of economic success to emulate…
Through four decades of communist rule, Poland and the other captive nations of Europe endured a brutal campaign to demolish freedom, your faith, your laws, your history, your identity — indeed the very essence of your culture and your humanity. Yet, through it all, you never lost that spirit. (Applause.) Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken. (Applause.)
And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down. (Applause.) They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer. A million Polish people did not ask for wealth. They did not ask for privilege. Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words: “We Want God.” (Applause.)
In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future. They found new courage to face down their oppressors, and they found the words to declare that Poland would be Poland once again.
Czech Republic to enshrine right to bear arms in their constitution. Gee, why on earth would a nation situated between Germany and Russia need its citizens to own guns?
“Yeah, Abdul, we’re going to need to tweak your resume for this position. Instead of ‘Beheading Infidels,’ let’s put ‘Contractor.'”
Vladimir Putin and President Trump meet at the G20 summit.
Speaking of the G20 Summit, mostly peaceful protestors there commit the mostly peaceful arson for which they’ve become so well-known. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
The conclusive findings of this research are that the three GAST data sets are not a valid representation of reality. In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments,that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data. Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming.
“Democratic lawmakers voted 71-42 to override Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a $5 billion tax hike on Thursday.” Can’t possibly imagine how Illinois’ Democrats plan to tax and spend their way out of a financial hole could possibly backfire… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“From its founding in 1919 in the wake of the Russian Revolution until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Communist Party of the United States of America was an instrument of Soviet foreign policy.” Not that anyone should be unclear on the topic after all these years, but I’m sure the piece was a shock to at least some of the New York Times dwindling readership…
Long, long, long article about video game maker Konami, where they actually get their money (fitness clubs and gambling machines), and how they came to treat their employees so poorly.
The Obama Administration has lost 53 of 60 rulings on the abortion drugs mandate. To put that in perspective, they’ve won a smaller percentage of victories than the 2013 Houston Texans…
Obama enjoys what the New York Times describes as a “rare” vacation, in much the same way Charles Bukowski used to enjoy a “rare” drink. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
Republicans tried to fix the rule that’s causing so many insurance companies to cancel policies due to ObamaCare. Democrats said no. Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich all voted against grandfathering in insurance policies that didn’t have ObamaCare’s precious taxpayer-funded abortions.
Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.
My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.Countless hours searching for non-exchange plans have uncovered nothing that compares well with my existing coverage. But the greatest source of frustration is Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health-insurance exchange and, by some reports, one of the best such exchanges in the country. After four weeks of researching plans on the website, talking directly to government exchange counselors, insurance companies and medical providers, my insurance broker and I are as confused as ever. Time is running out and we still don’t have a clue how to best proceed.
Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University’s Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.
Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.
But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market.
ObamaCare is estimated to increase premiums about 41% across 49 states. State with largest hike? Nevada, at 179%. How’s that decision to reelect Harry Reid working out? (Also via Ace.)
That map shows Texas rates rising 26%, but for some Texans that hike will be as much as 158%.
The Humanitarian Tragedy of ObamaCare: “Before passage of the ACA, we had no free market in insurance or medical care. Both industries had long been cartelized in the states through licensing and other regulatory barriers to free competition. When people say that the medical market failed, they really should say that a government-business partnership failed. In light of that failure, it makes no sense to expand the partnership further under the central authority of the federal government, as the ACA does.”
Hey, lets put some liberal policy wonks in charge of a complex technical project. What could possibly go wrong? It’s like putting the guy who writes shipping regulations in charge of designing and building an aircraft carrier.
Good evening. I’m not Chevy Chase, and you’re not either. (Unless the real Chevy Chase is reading this, in which case: 1. Loved you on the original SNL, and 2. Stop being such a total dick.)
Take a look at this update: “German Chancellor Angela Merkel has mooted the idea that Greece should hold a referendum on the euro alongside its second round of elections next month.” Well, no use even pretending that the Greeks have a say in their own future, is there?
How bad will the Euro-collapse be? “This type of shock could produce instability at least as extensive as the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.”
Der Spiegel goes all Amityville Horror on Greece: GET OUT.
Speaking of prominent German media outlets slamming Greece (insert your own Cartman’s Mother joke here), can anyone tell me why the Greek finance ministry offices look like an episode of Hoarders? My German is a bit rusty to watch a 45 minute documentary, but what are in the garbage bags? Tax returns?
Spain’s housing bubble gets compared to Ireland’s housing bubble, including how it’s getting ready to drag down the banking sector. Actually, it also sounds an awful lot like Japan’s housing bubble. But Spain’s economy isn’t nearly as strong as Japan’s…
No matter what Greece does, “the country faces years of austerity after years of mismanagement, whatever the election result. Even at the height of the global financial crisis, it was obvious the museum-piece economies of Europe, weighed down by bulging public payrolls, entrenched welfare state systems and archaic work practices, faced greater upheavals and decades of poorer living standards than the US.”
Monty, the guy who does the Daily Doom over at Ace of Spades, is taking a break, which means that I have to do my own damn research step into the breach, so here a roundup of European Debt Crises news:
And the Greeks, in turn, pass “tough spending cuts”. Presumably those “tough cuts” would be the ones reducing the annual budget deficit from 9% to 7.5% of GDP. They’re don’t even require Greece to stop digging, they just want them to dig slower. And even that assumes that such cuts will actually be implemented.
Among the austerity measures were a reduction in the minimum wage, including a 22% cut on the standard minimum monthly wage of 751 euros, and a 32% for those under 25. A good idea and necessary, but once again the sons are paying for the sins of the fathers.
Unions, realizing their role in helping bankrupt Greece, have meekly accepted the cuts. Ha, just kidding. They’re going on strike.
Following the downgrade, the European Central Bank announced that they would stop taking Greek debt as collateral, at least until the new Greek bailout package goes into effect.
Germany is thinking of sending German tax collectors to Athens. I’m sure it’s impossible that Greeks would take this in the wrong way.
Speaking of Germany, their high court has ruled yet again that a parliamentary panel set up to approve action by the euro zone bailout fund is unconstitutional.
Portugal is also digging more slowly, having cut its budget deficit from 5.9% of GDP last year to 4.5% this year. Meanwhile, it’s economy also contracted by 3.3%.
The Finns are in, supporting the Greek bailout to the tune of 2.3 billion Euros.
Ireland is actually allowing its citizens to vote on the European stability treaty. Of course, if they vote no, expect them to have to keep voting until they ratify the result the Eurocrats have already chosen for them.
Seeking Alpha makes the obvious point that you don’t want to hold any of the PIIGS sovereign debt. I would go further and suggest that you don’t want to hold any sovereign debt denominated in Euros…
So who, above all, wants to avoid a Euro default among the PIIGS? Would you believe Goldman Sachs? “At the end of 2011, Goldman Sachs had sold $142.4 billion of single-name swaps, contracts that pay out in the event of a default, on the five countries.” That’s an awful of of incentive to keep the game running until all the rubes taxpayers can be fleeced…
Even big-spending, welfare state cheerleader and all-around leftwing mouthpiece Paul Krugman thinks Greece will have to leave the Euro. So it only took two years for Krugman to come part of the way toward realizing what what Mark Steyn did two years ago. Of course, Krugman’s analysis is short term and technical, whereas Steyn saw the unsustainable nature of the welfare state a long time ago. Do you think Kurgman might want become a bit less of a cheerleader for big government? I wouldn’t hold your breath…
Spain balks at letting their government reduce spending by 4%of GDP. Problem: Their annual budget deficit is 8% of GDP. That’s the problem when you get that far down the hole to serfdom: Even slowing the digging becomes unacceptable, much less stopping…
“Decades of cradle-to-grave socialism, a short work week and long vacation periods for European Union workers have taken a toll on the treasuries of the nation states. The good life lived in Europe without a thought of tomorrow has brought on these days of reckoning. Greece is an example of the limits of a European welfare state.”
What would a real solution to Greece’s problems look like? “They must roll back bureaucracy, free up entrepreneurs and reduce the burden of the welfare state, so that the private sector can begin to grow….Regrettably, this is not the approach that has prevailed so far. Indeed, as things stand a whole host of European Union and European Central Bank policies are pushing things in precisely the opposite direction.”
American liberals love to talk about Northern Europe’s welfare states, but don’t like mentioning Southern Europe. “For all their fascination with Europe, southern Europe doesn’t loom large for the American Left. But France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal and Greece are more representative of European outcomes than Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and have equally sized welfare states. Their failure should not be ignored in the American debate.”
Wait, did I say “evaluate?” I meant “demolish like a bulldozer ripping through a condemned shantytown” (or an “Obamaville,” if you prefer). Kruggers and the EcoMen (which, I have to point out, would be a good name for a rock band) have been as thoroughly pwned as a hungover frat boy waking up after a late-night kegstand to find male genitalia Magic Markered across his face. It’s an epic take-down.
Let’s start with assertions that started the whole thing, and which exemplify a specific type of liberal desire to wish away Texas’ deeply inconvenient economic success. From Krugman:
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
Next comes the bit from The Economist:
Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:
South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th
If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.
With that background, you’re now ready for Iowahawk to demolish the subject like Charlie Sheen demolishes an ounce of cocaine. First, the necessary context:
A state’s “average ACT/SAT” is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there.
Actually this is not strictly true; it’s more accurate to say its a proxy for the percent of white and Asian people who live there. But close enough for government work.
Iowahawk goes on:
In fact, the lion’s share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students – regardless of state residence – tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.
But don’t take his word for it. Take his facts for it, as he provides grade-by-grade comparisons of each of the two sates students broken down demographically (by white, black and Hispanic students). Go over and take a look at the data if you haven’t already. His conclusion:
To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.
Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools – especially minority students.
He does the same job for Krugman’s dropout rates:
White and Hispanic Texas students indeed seem to dropout at a higher rate than their counterparts in Wisconsin, although in both cases (a) the difference is not statistically significant; and (b) in both cases, both states are significantly below the national average. Among black high school students, Texans have significantly lower dropout rates than their national cohort and Wisconsinites. Black high school students in Wisconsin have significantly higher dropout rates than national.
Your first question is probably, “why do the union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?” Sorry, can’t help you there, I’m stumped too.
Let me be blunt, liberal America: no one, outside your own fever swamps, trusts you to decide what discourse is “fair”, or where the “Climate of Hate” begins and ends. You don’t get to drop buckets of blood on Palin for days, then call her a hatemonger for responding. Your behavior over the last few days is a crime against discourse, and you did not get away with it.
Paul Krugman managed to bring up one example of conservative “eliminationist rhetoric”…and it was a lie.
In truth, I don’t cover Krugman a lot, because: A.) Plenty of others are covering that beat, and B.) Like much of the rest of The New York Times, I view Krugman’s blinkered liberalism as a major strategic advantage for conservatives. But John Steele Gordon is right: “He is the Joe McCarthy of our times.”
The evidence is now in, and what little seems to be known about accused Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner from people that knew him was that “he was leftwing” and “liberal in wanting to change the way the world was run, we both wanted to. He took it to an extreme I never would’ve.”
Does that mean that Arizona Democratic Congressman Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a “left wing extremist?” No. When you read his manifesto, you see that his political leanings, such as they are, were not “left” or “right” so much as “completely farking loony toons batshit insane.” His manifestos jump from subject to subject more quickly than a jittering tweaker flips channels on a TV remote. To paraphrase an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton contest, ideas seem to tumble around randomly in his head, making and breaking connections like a load of laundry in a dryer without Cling Free. They have some of the same quality of argument as Time Cube Guy: It’s less that his manifesto is wrong than that you can’t actually understand what he’s trying to say.
(Boing Boing has even more of his manifestos up, and the Time Cube Guy vibe only gets stronger. Except for the fact that Gene Ray never killed anyone…)
Loughner’s liberalism didn’t make him crazy, his crazy made him crazy.
I mean, how crazy do you have to be to expelled from a pre-algebra class? “Solve for X.” “Admit it! X is a total lie!!!! There is no X, only Zuul!”
Every time anyone even remotely connected to conservative causes commits a violent act, the nutroots and their media enablers are quick to label them a “right wing extremist,” but anyone with demonstrable left wing sympathies is a “lone nut.” (Indeed, they’re pretty blatant about it.) Indeed, one of the most famous assassins in American history was a known communist sympathizer who defected to the Soviet Union, but you never hear Lee Harvey Oswald described by the media as a “left-wing extremist.”
