I’m not a macro person, I can’t even play one on TV.  That said, from 20,000 feet, with my admittedly blurry glasses on, I really don’t understand why the Fed and other central banks are pushing so hard on the brakes.  What follows are questions, skeptical about rate hikes, but genuinely questions. What exactly would […]

Mark Hertling is one of the people I follow on Ukraine.  He is a staunch advocate for arming Ukraine, but he recently had a tweet thread defending what some see as the overly cautious and slow approach taken by the United States.  Here are some tweets from his thread: Now, maybe we should be sending […]

DeSantis’ decision to send migrants to Martha’s Vineyard on false pretenses was clearly repugnant.  In fact, it seems to have been even worse than it appears:  the organizers apparently tried to trick the migrants into reporting their whereabouts to the wrong authorities, which would have jeopardized their status. But over on twitter, Ross Douthat tries […]

I was planning to make this argument, but Fukuyama says it better than I would have: Thirdly, a Russian military failure—meaning at minimum the liberation of territories conquered after 24 February 2022—will have enormous political reverberations around the world. Russia and China prior to the war argued that liberal democracies, particularly the United States, were […]

I have a piece up at Science Based Medicine responding to criticism of New Zealand’s zero COVID policy by Jay Bhattacharya, an author of the Great Barrington Declaration and an uncompromising critic of COVID restrictions.  Here’s the intro: Bhattacharya’s most compelling argument is that the zero COVID policy led to an increase in non-COVID mortality […]

I’m not talking about the current military situation or the ongoing destruction of the Russian armed forces; to be clear I hope Russia suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of the Ukrainians.  I’m referring to the damage that the Ukraine war is doing to Russian society.  This damage is immeasurable:  extreme levels of political […]

We need to make a long-term commitment to Ukrainian victory.  Jack Watling: Given that offensive operations to liberate occupied territories are likely to run through 2023 and are dependent upon Western aid, it is important that Ukraine’s international partners stop periodic announcements about specific lists of equipment and instead articulate a longer-term commitment to structural […]

There has been a lot of criticism of Biden’s student loan forgiveness among economists and policy journalists.  And the criticism is not limited to libertarian types, but extends to many economists who clearly care about debt relief, progressivity, and improving the quality and accessibility of higher education but who are nonetheless very critical of the […]

Data for Progress has new polling showing that Social Security is very popular, and that Social Security messaging helps Democrats in a generic ballot poll.     The DFP polling comes on the heels of recent comments from Republican politicians about cutting, sunsetting, or privatizing Social Security. So in theory Social Security looks like a good […]

I haven’t heard much recently about the horrors of cancel culture or efforts to teach critical race theory to 5 year olds, or about the latest trans panic or “don’t say gay” law, or about defund the police or abolish ICE. Maybe it’s just me.  But there are reasons to suspect it’s real, and that […]