White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made a show Wednesday of providing “receipts” to bolster the Trump administration’s claim that an Elon Musk-led advisory commission known as DOGE has already uncovered massive fraud at federal agencies. “There’s a lot of...
Yves here. The choice of the expression “coalition of the willing” as a recommendation for how Europe can bolster its international position generally and advance international initiatives important to EU is both unfortunate and telling. As most of you remember,...
veryone’s freaking out about soaring homeowner’s insurance costs in the wake of devastating California fires. Right now popular anger focuses mostly on greedy insurance companies, but is that the whole story? Are they truly the main reason behind these rising...
Over the past year Milei’s government has managed to slash inflation as well as post Argentina’s largest ever annual trade surplus. But can it turn round the industrial downturn it itself unleashed? It is hard not to be struck, or...
About Lambert Strether Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the...
Going to be some outrageously crazy arguments about the merits of tariffs coming. Just to remind people, higher measured productivity is not one of the plausible outcomes. Figure 1: Output per hour in the manufacturing sector, blue. Source: BLS via...
Not apparently going down: Figure 1: CPI-food at home (blue), PPI-food (tan), both in logs 2021M01=0. Source: BLS, and author’s calculations. Since the Mexican tariffs are still on the table (I guess – not sure if the reciprocal tariff concept...
For CPI and PPI vis a vis Bloomberg consensus: Figure 1: Month-on-Month (non-annualized) inflation for headline CPI (blue), core CPI (tan), headline PPI (green), and core PPI (red), all in percent decimal format. Bloomberg consensus as symbols, same respective colors....
By Lambert Strether. Patient readers, I got a very late start today, so this Water Cooler will be quite light. Sorry! –lambert Bird Song of the Day Brown Thrasher, Bindloss Campground, Hanna, Alberta, Canada. * * * Politics “So many...
PPI figure on seasonally adjusted by author data. NSA m/m change is 36.5% (log differences). i Figure 1: Top panel – Consumer Price of Dozen Eggs (blue, left scale), ERS forecast of January 2025 for end 2024 (blue square, left scale),...
