the essense of Colby's ideology was supposed to be "what if we abandoned our democratic allies in Europe to concentrate on China", in practice it is "what if we abandoned all our democratic allies to become even more invested in stupid wars in the Middle East"

Professional forecasters' inflation expectations took a major jump up in data released today by the Philly Fed The Median forecaster now expects Q2 CPI to run at a 6% annualized pace, double the previous forecast. Expectations for Q3 are also up, though less dramatically

Genuinely the stupidest possible move, all this will do is further embolden Trump to run the same election denial playbook in 2026 and 2028 www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/u...

US battery production inched up to a record high in data released this morning, up 36% from this time last year. Total output has more than doubled since 2022

British monthly GDP rose 0.3% over the last month and 1.2% over the last year in data released this morning. Output rose 0.6% total in the first quarter, the fastest pace of growth in a year. UK GDP is now up roughly 6.3% total since January 2020

Still a brutal time for caffeine addicts like me—coffee prices are up 18% over the last year and 56% since 2020

NEW: US CPI inflation rose to 3.8% year-on-year in data released this morning, hitting the highest level since 2023 while increasing 0.6% month-on-month Core CPI inflation rose to 2.8% year-on-year, increasing 0.4% month-on-month

I'm crying that they cancelled a women's hockey playoff game due to illness today and had to clarify it wasn't hantavirus

Congratulations to LA Metro for opening a 4-mile, 3-station expansion today! With 2 more phases coming, the D line extension is one of LA Metro's most important projects, adding heavy rail to some of the city's densest areas and boosting a system struggling to grow ridership

NEW CANADIAN JOBS DATA: Employment Growth: -18k Unemployment Rate: 6.9% (+0.2%) Prime Age (25-54) Employment Rate: 83.2% (0.0%) Employment Level: 21.0M

two awful tastes that taste awful together

Federal government employment is down 345k since the start of 2025 amidst DOGE cuts—that's more than 11% of the Federal workforce The large drop last October was caused by many workers who had been on deferred resignation becoming officially unemployed

The US continues to lose manufacturing jobs—payrolls are down 73k over the last year, & another 2k jobs were lost in April Chemicals, Wood, and Machinery manufacturing are the biggest losers, but few subsectors are doing well

The US tech sector continues losing jobs—overall, employment decreased by 10k last month and is down 53k over the last year That's not as bad as the worst of the 2024 tech-cession, but extremely bad compared to the 2022 boom or even pre-2020 norms

NEW US JOBS DATA: Non-farm Payrolls: +115k Unemployment Rate: 4.3% (+0%) Prime Age (25-54) Employment-Population Ratio: 80.7% (+0%) Average Hourly Earnings: +0.2%

every day Trump wakes up and tries to find another “make prices higher” button

every day I am forced to watch markets think we've solved world peace by 9am only to think World War Three is about to start at 12:30

Adjust for inflation, and US office construction is basically down to worst-of-the-great-recession levels, falling nearly 60% since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and hitting another recent low in data released today

US data center construction rose to a new record high in official data released today, hitting a pace of nearly $50B/yr (and this only includes data center facilities, not the expensive computers within) Spending is up 34% over the last year and 260% since the launch of ChatGPT

State jobs data was released today—30 states, PR, DC, & VI have lost jobs since 2025 as the labor market slows Fastest Growth: Nevada (1.9%), Idaho (1.4%), NC (1%), California (0.8%), Texas (0.7%) Slowest: DC (-5.4%), VI (-3.8%), Maryland (-1.9%), Oregon (-1.3%), NH (-1.2%)

Q1 2026 transit data is in today, & all major US rail networks are growing! SF is seeing a real boom, with ridership up 19% on Muni and 15% on BART SEPTA (Philly, 11%) and PATH (NY/NJ, +6.8%) are also seeing strong growth, while MTS (San Diego, +0.5%) is the slowest🧵

Finally, we created the "make gas prices more expensive" button from the hit political cartoon "What Americans Think the President Does." Turns out people don't like it

The XAI/Anthropic deal is big in many ways, one of which is that it feels like an admission of defeat from Elon. Can't create a model good enough to compete with Claude so suddenly you've become a service provider for the company you accused of Destroying Western Civilization last month

Permit me one sports post for the day but in TRIPLE-OVERTIME Marie-Phillip Poulin scored a game-winner for the Montreal Victoire, with assists from HER WIFE LAURA STACEY whose BIRTHDAY IT IS TODAY, and ABBEY ROQUE, who got a BLACK EYE in the last game How can you not love hockey?

Of course, today's record AI-related computer imports wouldn't be possible without Trump exempting the entire sector from tariffs Computers & parts made up 18% of all US imports in March, larger than the tariff exemptions for all USMCA-compliant goods from Mexico & Canada

Amidst the AI boom, US imports of large computers surged to a new record high in March data released today, hitting a pace of $340B/year plus another $150B/year for parts That's up 130% over the last year and 380% since the release of ChatGPT

Insane for so many reasons, but it's always astounding how much the left-wing pitch for rural conservative areas is "we need to invest in the communities left behind by the modern economy," and the right-wing pitch for liberal urban areas is "I WILL PUNCH YOU" www.bbc.com/news/article...

NEW from me: The US is building a record amount of power infrastructure, especially solar & batteries, and has broken out of a 15-year period of grid stagnation Yet this hasn’t been enough, and America has a widening electricity shortage that’s driving up prices 🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/americas-e...

NEW from me: The US is building a record amount of power infrastructure, especially solar & batteries, and has broken out of a 15-year period of grid stagnation Yet this hasn’t been enough, and America has a widening electricity shortage that’s driving up prices 🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/americas-e...

ignore the gamestop stuff but just insanely blackpilling headlines back-to-back-to-back here

tariff grandpa has awoken again

US spending on data centers & computers has grown so much that it's larger than basically all other physical investment categories—more than all single-family housing construction, factories, power plants, industrial equipment, apartments I'm running out of points of comparison

US spending on computers continues to skyrocket to record highs amidst the AI boom—real fixed investment in computers hit roughly $354B annualized in data released this morning, up 64% over the last year and 133% since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022

NEW: US Real GDP came in at a 2% annualized growth rate in Q1 2026 data released this morning. Consumption & investment increased, government output rose, and the trade deficit increased Nominal GDP growth (unadjusted for inflation) came in at 5.6% annualized

EU GDP early flash estimates are in today—the EU grew 1% over last year, the Eurozone 0.8% Fastest: Spain (2.7%), Lithuania (2.5%), Portugal (2.3%), Czechia (2.1%), Sweden (1.9%) Slowest: Ireland (-6.3%, mostly pharma exports), Germany (.3%), Austria (.6%), Italy (.7%), Belgium (.8%)

Eurozone unemployment rates fell to 6.2%, tying the lowest on record, in data released this morning, while the EU held steady at 6% Czechia (3.1%), Bulgaria (3.2%), & Poland (3.3%) had the lowest unemployment, while Finland (10.5%), Spain (10.3%) & Sweden (9.2%) had the highest

Metro job data is in today, & 29 of the 50 largest metros have lost jobs since 2025 as growth slows Fastest Growth: Fresno (2%), Vegas (2%), Raleigh (1.8%), San Jose (1.5%), Austin (1%) Slowest: DC (-3.5%), Portland (-2.4%), Baltimore (-1.6%), Louisville (-1.1%), Boston (-1%)

I hate my stupid chud country what do you mean I have to pay tariffs on my heated rivalry merch

genuinely astounding the number of times the Trump administration has been presented with a “make prices higher” button and slammed it with their full fist

The BEA produces a regional price parity index to compare costs across states, and it's remarkable that Texas has handled all of its post-2019 growth while becoming *cheaper* relative to the US overall Meanwhile, Florida's growth has given it the highest relative cost increase

New USDA data released today: H.R. 1 enacted the deepest SNAP cuts in history last July. By January, more than 3 million fewer people were receiving food assistance. Nationwide, SNAP caseloads fell by more than 8% in just 6 months — despite no improvement in economic conditions.

double-checked it, and this is the first time California has had faster job growth than both Texas and Florida since early 2022 state-level job data can be pretty volatile, but there's an obvious long-run slowdown in TX/FL

Official data is in today, and US solar power generation continues to grow rapidly, up 25% compared to this time last year!

Data from today shows 28 states, DC, & VI have lost jobs since 2025 as the labor market slows Fastest Growth: Nevada (2.3%), Idaho (0.8%), Puerto Rico (0.8%), North Carolina (0.7%), Utah (0.7%) Slowest: DC (-5.7%), VI (-4.7%), Maryland (-2%), Oregon (-1.2%), Virginia (-1.2%)

Several executive orders this evening invoking the Defense Production Act so Trump can directly financially support US oil/gas/petroleum/coal production, which is a great signal about how poorly this war is going economically and how little they planned for this www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

stupid Trump tweet for many reasons but one of which is that Spain had higher GDP growth than the US over the last year (3% vs 2%)

signs summer has truly began in DC—just got approached by Mormon missionaries for the first time this year

fundamentally if the right-wing fantasy was true and there was a massive cabal of American elites working to get women to take over male-dominated industries they'd be doing a terrible job at it