Ben Keys

Good news: Happy Kevin walks back his call for NY Fed economists to be disciplined.

Bad news: It's bullshit. He says the Fed should stay out of issues like... whether tariffs cause inflation.

But inflation is central to monetary policy!

He's still saying: The regime shall not be contradicted.

It is absolutely a choice.

The commander in chief telling troops who they have to vote for is itself a presidency ending impeachable scandal.

At least half a dozen top Trump administration officials appear in the Jeffrey Epstein files The degree to which each individual was connected to Epstein varies significantly, from a single email to years of communications.

The President, two of his current Cabinet secretaries, his former strategist, his biggest donor, and his pending Fed Chair nominee are all in the files of a pedophile who ran a sex trafficking ring, while the attorney general and a former Cabinet secretary let him get away with it.

Seems kinda bad?

Utterly unacceptable in a democracy. In a sane world, House Republicans would be drafting impeachment articles today and Senate Republicans would be preparing for a trial to convict and remove him from office

Summer 2026, Research Internship - The Hamilton Project Thinking about a career in public policy? Committed to improving the world we live in? Think Brookings – one of the most influential, most quoted and most trusted think tanks!   Interns spend approxim...

Come intern with me and the @hamiltonproject.org team @brookings.edu this summer! We are looking for an rising senior in economics or econ-adjacent interested in doing timely policy-relevant research.

Learn more about the position and apply here:

www.hamiltonproject.org/job/summer-2...

#EconSky

Shot, and one-hell-of-a-chaser.

FDA won’t review Moderna application for first mRNA-based flu vaccine The decision, which shocked company officials, comes as the FDA says it will take a stricter approach to federal vaccine approvals.

So the feds ARE NOT considering an mRNA vaccine for the flu, which could save countless lives, but ARE backing research into whether horse dewormer can cure cancer, because the right views vaccines as elite and ivermectin as populist.

Cool.
kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Good morning. The President of the United States was in the middle of the most serious child sex trafficking ring of the last quarter century.

He is referenced not a dozen times in the case files. Not 100 times. Not 1,000 times. He’s referenced 38,000 times.

HOME ESPN FOX NBC MORE E Pat McAfee blown away to learn San Francisco is not what conservative media makes it out to be "This place has been gorgeous. It has been incredible." F 2.6.26 #PMSLIV PAT MCAFEE SHOW ** UNE FROM SAN FRANCISCO ** SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS TIGHT END GEORGE KITTLE Credit: The Pat McAfee Show By Sean Keeley on 02/06/2026

tfw you leave Plato’s cave

awfulannouncing.com/nfl/pat-mcaf...

This chart seems to suggest a striking pattern: Kevin Warsh's speeches are consistently hawkish, except when Trump is President and about to appoint a new Fed Chair.
www.economist.com/finance-and-...

Jeffrey Epstein allegedly sexually abused girls in the US Virgin Islands through 2018 | CNN Jeffrey Epstein allegedly transported underage girls to his secluded homes in the US Virgin Islands and forced them into sex work from 2001 through 2018, according to a lawsuit filed by the Attorney G...

Jeffrey Epstein did not stop raping children after his 2008 conviction. Jeffrey Epstein did not stop facilitating the rape of children after his 2008 conviction. He kept doing it.

That is the context of people treating him as a normal person after his conviction.

/1

www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/u...

One by one, Europeans mentioned in the Epstein files who still hold political office are beginning to resign or are being forced out of office.

Meanwhile, ruled by an administration almost entirely made up of Epstein associates, the US carries on as if nothing really happened.

The last time he started talking like this, his allies minimized the risks and we ended up with January 6. This time we must take him literally and seriously. These comments are a five-alarm fire for democracy. In a functioning republic, he would be impeached and removed from office today.

If you want a guess as to what Kevin Warsh -- who throughout the Obama years was a devout hawk -- told the President to win the job of Fed Chair, I think this clip might give you a sense of it. (This is from late October.)

Texas Halts Hiring of H-1B Workers at State Colleges, Agencies Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state agencies and public universities to immediately freeze new H-1B visa petitions, curtailing a program that has also been overhauled by President Donald Trump.

one of the least-appreciated own-goals happening right now is the deliberate sabotage of our knowledge/research sector www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.

Signs about the history of slavery in the U.S. and the 9 people George Washington enslaved are being removed right now at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, across from Independence Hall, months after the Trump administration threatend to do so.

How far we have not come in 250 years.

Vance on the economy:

"You don't turn the Titanic around overnight"

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

The Founders (rightly) thought financial corruption was so concerning they banned it in the Constitution three separate times: the two emoluments clauses, and the only named impeachable offense besides treason.

Starting in 2017, America decided it just kinda didn't matter anymore, whatcha gonna do.

The president
-Is occupying a major city with armed paramilitiaries
-Is blackmailing treaty allies to hand over their sovereign territory
-Is trying to set himself up as chairman for life of a UN rival with $1B fees for permanent membership
-Is talking about canceling elections

Fake advertisement for Draft Kings in a print copy of The Onion. In the front of a photo of a house with a foreclosure sign, it reads: "Draft Kings Earn a free $10 toward buying back your house."

excellent work by @theonion.com this month

Since the $200 billion GSE announcement 10-year yields are up 6bps -- ultimately without some game-changing announcement that would cost real money, we're just not going to move the needle much on housing affordability in the short-run.

View of Boston College's Gasson Hall and Lower Campus facing toward Boston's skyline

Hey #econsky: are you a researcher who secretly prefers your side teaching gig? Or is tenure looking like a reach because you “teach too much”? Or a liberal arts prof who’d prefer a big city with a larger pool of impressive, thoughtful students? Come be a Boston College PoP! 1/x

Policy chaos is an economic variable. When leaders threaten the Fed, fire the BLS head, impose tariffs then reverse them, and rattle sabers, no one knows tomorrow’s news. Uncertainty makes firms delay hiring/investing—and households delay big buys.

💯

I am calling for a complete and total boycott of the Mercator projection in all news stories about Greenland until every member of the American public has seen this