Alan

This is out of hand. These agents are there to cause trouble and violence, not to keep people safe. These are the scenes that play out in war torn, destitute countries - not America.

#EconSky

The short version:

She is so wrong. Anonymous transactions have intrinsic value to organized crime.

But aside from that, she is right.
Eventually people will lose their retirement saving on this foolish bet.

You are not supposed to like them.

It's a great book. Hang in there.

Poe's Law

Book with two spines

The Dawit Isaak Library in Malmö is releasing a special edition of Orwell’s 1984. The book cannot be read, on account of having two spines. The “double bind” is a protest against censorship across the world: malmo.se/boundbookspr...

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

The more time Thiel sinks into such nutty diversions, the safer the rest of us become. May he need much time to ponder.

Market Minute: As dollar dominates FX, investors hedge exposure The dollar was on one side of 89% of all international transactions, which is an increase from its 88% share in 2022.

Good morning. A look at dollar dominance even as global investors hedge their exposure to the greenback. #Econ #EconSky

Source: The Real Economy Blog

realeconomy.rsmus.com/market-minut...

She appears to work for the GOP.

Mostly good but everybody knows "free of cost" actually means "hidden costs". So stop that.

Cohort fertility rates for the United States, by age 40, 45 and 50.

Most graphs of the fertility rate depict the 'period fertility rate', which is based on a single year's data and doesn't necessarily reflect how many children women actually have across their lifetimes.

I've used data from the Human Fertility Database to show the cumulative number instead:

Getting vaccinated is unpleasant. Dying of measles is worse. In the decade before the 1963 vaccine for measles emerged, an average of 475 Americans died from measles every year, most of them children. This (absolute) number had dropped to a low of 1 in 1981, despite a steadily increasing population that might have hypothetically contributed additional cases. Sadly, the number of measles cases in the United States has been steadily climbing upward again because we seem not to remember the ravages of the disease so much as the inconvenience of the shot—even without taking into account the absurd rejection of the solid scientific evidence in favor of vaccinations. Many people still have an elderly relative who survived a bout of severe childhood illness; not one of us has an elderly relative who did not. The blurring of the historical evidence for and against vaccination that arises from strangely incongruous historical narratives allows a seemingly inconsequential but nonetheless deadly nostalgia to run rampant.

Another example of dangerous reverence for the past concerns the flurry of popular enthusiasm lately (at least if the pundits of the 2016 American election are to be believed) for the “good old days” of the 1950s when a family could live securely on just one income (in these nostalgic accounts, that one income is usually a man’s). Lest we forget, these are the same good old days of poor air quality and measles. Maybe trivial in comparison but certainly indicative of the scope of the cognitive problem that nostalgia presents, the average size of a new home built in America in 1950 was 983 sq. ft.; by 2010, the average size had risen to 2,392 sq. ft. Given that families were larger on average in the 1950s than they were in 2010, per capita space allocation had risen even faster than total area. Although we might not need that much personal space, many of us have become used to it. Older furniture now looks tiny compared to what is now on offer in showrooms, whereas older television sets were behemoths with miniscule screens showing programs in glorious black and white.

Good history helps us avoid nostalgia. The great article “Economic History and the Historians” (2020) by Anne McCants reminds me why nostalgia can get us in trouble. Two of her examples are very relevant to today: vaccinations and the popular narrative of some economic “good old days.”

White House Withdraws Nominee to Lead Bureau of Labor Statistics The agency has been without a leader since August, when Trump fired its chief and nominated E.J. Antoni.

Oh happy happy joy joy🎉🎉🎉😍😍😍

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Free access

Zero cultural impact is an improvement over X.

A painting of a bird beside the text "i read some shit on the internet, i'm an expert now"

The webinar overview of the coming #EconJobMarket is now posted to the AEA website. It contains info about trends in the # of jobs, recent # of applications/interviews/flyouts/offers, and placement outcomes, as well as advice. #EconSky
www.aeaweb.org/joe/communic...

Reversal of fortune.
(The effects of inflation expectations.)

That does not constitute an argument that they are wrong about what it will take for Dems to perform better nationwide in elections.

After giving the GOP a trifecta, it is time for Dems to engage in some reflection. All help with this should be welcome.

Try forgetting your laptop after not uploading your slides. (Thank goodness for white boards.)

A New Democratic Think Tank Wants to Curb the Influence of Liberal Groups

Here is the link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/u...

The headline is bad, but the underlying idea is not: the unpopular ways Dems currently sell themselves repel voters. This has created opportunities for the right. Rely on data. Most people care most about inflation and job prospects. Period.

Monthly Treasury Statement

Your occasional reminder.
#EconSky

I know these “interviews” with Justice Barrett are carefully scripted. But if she’s going to keeping urging Americans to “read the opinions,” and not just commentary, it sure would be nice if someone would ask her what we should do when—as is so often the case these days—there’s no opinion to read…

US.Activity.GDPNow.png

At the end of this week, the GDPNow forecast from the Altanta Fed for Q3 2025 stands at at 3.09%. GDPNow is a nowcasting model for GDP growth projecting 13 GDP subcomponents with monthly source data, a factor model and a BVAR. #econsky

Permission to repost?

Another view of the U.S. population On Thursday, I looked at the way in which Sept. 11 was fading from public memory — not because Americans are forgetting it happened but because a larger percentage of Americans weren't yet born when i...

I posted a chart yesterday comparing the population distribution in 2001 with the distribution last year. Someone suggested that the chart would look very different without immigrants. So I made that chart, too. www.pbump.net/o/another-vi...