1. Tyler linked to an interesting article on Portugal. This caught my eye: Then, in 2023, the Immigration Control Agency was dissolved, ostensibly in response to an extremely uncharacteristic dis...
Eventually, I’ll get to price indices. But first, a long boring digression on why I don’t want to be “rich” (but do want to have a billion dollars.) I recently read a WSJ story about how ...
Americans remind me of the old song “Yes, we have no bananas”. They really, really like to agree with the assertions in poll questions. Should pot be legalized? Yes!! Should people selling po...
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yes-we-have-no-core-values/
The future course of the economy always involves a bit of guesswork. But it seems to me that the following two claims are pretty likely to be true: 1. Over the past three years, monetary policy h...
The Financial Times has a story that points to some disturbing features of South African politics: It is the kind of fervent devotion that has driven a wave of support for the former president a...
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/is-african-politics-inferior-to-american-politics/
In a recent post, I listed 6 ways that Trump intends to reduce inflation: Trump has a 6-part plan to bring down inflation: 1. Favors NIMBY policies to prevent housing construction in the suburb...
During the golden age of macroeconomics (roughly 1984-2007), many economists understood that interest rates were not monetary policy. After 2008, economists have been drifting back to old-school ...
Janan Ganesh has an piece in the FT entitled “The Rise of Bleak Chic”. I don’t demand show trials or the ritual egging in public squares of people who were bearish on cities. There is no ne...
How are leftists working to re-elect Trump? There are almost too many ways to count: 1. Trump was reeling after his candidates did horrible in the 2022 midterms, and people like Ron DeSantis were...
I don’t know. But the possibility is greater than I would have wished to see. Inflation data is often noisy and unreliable, for a wide variety of reasons. Wage inflation is the most meaningful ...
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/is-inflation-re-accelerating/