“Fifty years from now, you will want to be able to look in the mirror and know that you did what you thought was right, in every part of your life. At the end of the day, your integrity is all you have.” Jay Powell www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Might one reason be that the US mainly exports that light Texas crude? (I've been told that the US mainly refines heavy oil and exports the higher-priced light stuff. If that's the case, then tariffs could have a big impact. Customers can't buy if they can't sell.)

"To believe that we live in a fallen world is to disgrace every one of our forebears who worked to give us a better future." Noah Smith puts paid to the oldest cultural criticism trope in the universe. @noahpinion.blogsky.venki.dev www.noahpinion.blog/p/you-are-th...

This from @shadihamid.bsky.social www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Short and to the point by @shadihamid.bsky.social BTW, a quick search will get you to the defense fund sites for Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Georgia O’Keefe says good morning.

Go fast and break things.

Sure, Oren Cass is a noted (old-style) Republican policy guy. But an "economist"? www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/o...

Nils Gilman nails it. @nilsgilman.bsky.social www.persuasion.community/p/how-univer...

“It looks as if Lenin thinks nationalism has more affective/unifying pull, that is, revolutionary potential, than class. This despite the fact that class conflict may well be one of the grounds that is one of the sparks that leads to revolt.” digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/nation-cla...?

Note that this isn't economics, or even "political economy". Only in a pure great power conflict "game" could you possibly justify the assertion that the least-loser "wins" via an implicit claim that less is more.

It can be both, stupid.

Lenin as the architect of DOGE. Beautiful. @nescio13.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Today's WaPo "Fact Checker" surveys the economists cited in the USTR post on "Reciprocal Tariff Calculations". Congrats to glennkessler.bsky.social for laying bare this fraudulent analysis. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

In the "It's an ill wind..." dept., @delong.social reminds us that if a bot has replaced Navarro, Hassett, Bessent & Co, Liberation Day might be a net win. FWIW, I ran the "Reciprocal Tariff" formula past DeepSeek, which quickly replied that it was nonsense. braddelong.substack.com/p/tariffs-by...

Per Dominick Preston, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude all recommend or endorse the laughable "reciprocal tariffs" formula. FWIW, when I gave the formula to DeepSeek, it quickly replied that it was nonsense. www.theverge.com/news/642620/...

What I find disappointingly incomprehensible is that every word in this piece doesn't go without saying. But since apparently they don't, thank you, Keker, Van Nest & Peters. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/o...

Peter Navarro goes full Orwell on Fox News Sunday: "The message is that tariffs are tax cuts."

Nice

I've never seen anyone windmill on a violin before, but I'm certainly looking forward to it. Happy Friday -Scott

One grim fact is that there is no essential connection between the modern research university and the values of liberal democracy other than, as (recall) Michael Polanyi noted, that they can have the same enemies. digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/on-the-pre...

Substance, substance, substance. @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social @davidshor.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/o...

It's on.

Harmful.

1/🧵 Judges across ideological lines are ruling against Trump at strikingly similar rates (84% liberal, 86% centrist, 82% conservative). This isn't partisan opposition to Trump—it's the judiciary functioning as intended by cutting across partisan lines to uphold the Constitution.

Judges are doing their jobs

From deep state to deep dollars.

Few are aware but liberal arts college economists do not fully utilize our semiconductor manufacturing equipment

It was our last watercolour class tonight and it was great to focus on trying to paint blueberries instead of, well, anything else.

Meanwhile, in Germany, leadership breaks out. It will pay closer-to-normal interest rates but will be followed instead of resented. Pretty good deal. (Thanks to @arpitrage.bsky.social for the image.)

Peter Navarro: “Canada has been taken over by Mexican cartels” Big if true

Almost too good to be true: a wide-ranging review in JEL (by its former editor @durlauf.bsky.social) of the two great recent books in econ history: @delong.social 's "Slouching" and @markkoyama.bsky.social and @jaredcrubin.com 's "How the World Became Rich". Dig in! pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

This is the Bernstein we need.

Underwhelming @jaredb-econ.bsky.social post, but read on (and read it). [Apologies in advance for over-generalization, but the p-word ("populism") is hard to finesse.] 1/9 econjared.substack.com/p/what-are-w...

Well, it reduced between-country average-income inequality -- as Asia industrialized. This doesn't tell us anything about within-country distributions, much less real income changes within deciles.

Why do the classics all have our number, but we don't? digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/machiavell...

Yascha Mounk asks why many Democrats (including the new party leadership) continue to insist that they have the "right message"? 1/5 yaschamounk.substack.com/p/humpty-dum...?

That "someone's" creed: to be is to be perceived. But to be fair, many people who used large X followings to promote non-X activities (e.g., a substack) faced large switching costs. If their followers are leaving X, those costs are falling.

It turns out that the aggregate indirect cost allowance on NIH grants has been 25-26%, not the quoted 70%.

Professional wrestling at the Kennedy Center. Can't wait.

A libertarian (more or less) takes on DOGE. Amsterdam's Eric Schliesser on the consequences of interfering with the state's data gathering (and guarding) function: open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote from 1942-3: "The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy." 1/2

It shouldn't surprise us. But the trend is an average of so many uneven outcomes that it can. We had what seemed like the coldest January in several years in mid-Michigan. No such luck overall.

Well worth reading. It turns out the US (to a significant degree - I don't know the number) can't refine the oil it produces and must import. So we also export a lot of oil. many implications.

To @aaronsojourner.org Let me reply to your deletion. Yes, Sand Hill Road will view the "No one" answer to "Who needs Nvidia?" as an assassination attempt. This realization was brewing over the last week. But was it just an attempt? In the tech world you can be dead and not grasp it fully..

All learning of statistics and econometrics is learning that we live in a house of sticks

And so productivity increases as the birthrate continues to fall to zero. Wonderful trade.

Noah Smith wonders why Canada continues to lag the US in GDPpc, business investment, productivity growth, etc. But what causes Canada's problems here? I mention some usual (and unusual) suspects below. (Would love to hear reactions/other ideas.) 1/8

New WSJ, more later but the tl;dr is deficit is on course for 6% of GDP, foolish to count on higher growth, if anything interest rates are a bigger (downside) risk. A framework to deal. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/economic-growth-wont-reduce-the-deficit-enough-492a16c8?mod=commentary_article_pos3