J. Bradford DeLong: "I am surprised how few people know what a bad person and bad economist Kevin Hassett is." #econsky #finsky braddelong.substack.com/p/re-the-tru...

$100 billion. That’s our estimate of the cost of the Iran War to American households. That’s nearly $750 per household. This includes the additional U.S. military costs and the higher energy and other prices resulting from the war.

US data center construction rose to a new record high in official data released today, hitting a pace of nearly $51B/yr (and this only includes data center facilities, not the expensive computers within) Spending is up 28% over the last year and 268% since the launch of ChatGPT

Added to #$OHI #$SBRA #$BANX #$PEO .

BREAKING: “The Five Neat Guys” have withdrawn from the Freedom 250 Celebration. youtu.be/NMjtvSABQ3Q?...

Trump has won this war 7 times. He’s negotiated the peace settlement 12 times. And he’s opened the Strait of Hormuz at least 4 times. What more do you want from him?

DOD sent me a response to a story yesterday, but it made literally no sense. And this morning wrote: "I apologize for confusing your email with the Dell contract announcement." And it took me several minutes before I got what happened.

Added to #$OHI #$SBRA #$BANX #$PEO #$USA

No one is paying attention, but Ukraine has already taken out 25% of Russia's diesel and 30% of its gasoline output.

Look at the world through your Polaroid glasses . . . bonddad.blogspot.com/2026/05/why-...

Kevin Hassett never ceases to amaze (in a bad way). Does the fact that Democratic and Independent indices track invalidate the UMich survey (& validate the Conference Board measure)? #EconSky econbrowser.com/archives/202...

"The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. Users preferred and trusted sycophantic AI responses, incentivizing AI developers to preserve sycophancy despite the risks." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

It’s been 20 odd years since these guys popped onto the scene and their only consistent message is “everyone is too stupid to understand our profound genius” and in that time we’ve managed to backslide into fascism and we’re testing the absolute lower bound of consumer sentiment

“Ok sure you wanted to be a graphic designer or a writer or have any type of agency about your future or whatever, but what you’re not evolved enough to understand is that I, a guy who disdains all human life, think you should be generationally impoverished by my thing instead”

Golly, who wouldn't jump at the chance to link their accounts to ChatGPT? www.barrons.com/advisor/arti...

Trimmed some #$UTG , put the proceeds into #$UTF to even those CEFs up. My other pick of this ilk is #$ASGI .

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/o...

😏

1. Number of stories about Trump buying and selling hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks in the first three months of 2026: CBS: 0 CNN: 0 Fox News: 0 NPR: 0 PBS: 0 Politico: 0 Semafor: 0 Business Insider: 0

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com

Cleveland Fed Inflation Nowcast: CPI 6.88% YOY. www.clevelandfed.org/indicators-a... #econsky #finsky

Internal AutoZone memo: “.. We’re facing the largest supply shortage of lubricating fluids in the modern history of America. Realistic, middle-of-the-road estimates are for our average available supply in this product category to drop by 40%.” (via Costa Oil) #$AZO

Added to #$OHI , #$SBRA , #$RITM

“.. CHART OF THE DAY: Yes, ⛽️ gasoline; but also 🥩 beef. .. The cost of a pound of ground chuck has risen to near $7 .. up ~91% since Trump's 1st inauguration).” @javierblas.bsky.social

M: I made bilions selling software that lets people go on the internet. E: Great. Thanks. Good on you. M: Now I have some ideas to share about the future of civilization. E: Huh. Cool, I guess. Have you run them by anybody? M: You're not listening! I sold software so people can go on the internet!

Cleveland Fed Inflation Nowcast: www.clevelandfed.org/... Toplines: CPI - 5.78%, PCE - 5.18% Core: CPI - 2.56%, PCE - 3.46% #econsky #finsky

Let's do the fucking news.

So Claude Mythos was, indeed, not marketing hype. Remember this is a general purpose model that just happens to be good at finding exploits because good models are good at lots of things. Expect similar from OpenAI & Google. And from open models in 8 months. hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/behi...

Sent to me from outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. These prices are insane and they’re still LOWER than the national average. Crazy.

uh huh. the Trumpists (and their allies in both the tech-finance world and hard-right political movements internationally) would rather be on the tippy-top of a mountain of garbage, shit and skulls than accountable to other people in a healthy, prosperous multiracial democracy

Cleveland Fed Inflation Nowcast showing CPI 5.78%, PCE 5.18% www.clevelandfed.org/indicators-a... #econsky #finsky

Vaping it is

There it is We are on our way to 24/7/365 trading while also reducing company reporting to twice a year What could go wrong?

If one is invested in the stonks, bonks, etc., one might do well not to fall in love with one's portfolio market value of the moment.

> @javierblas.bsky.social

Elon discovers cross-examination

Told ya to vote for Carter Mondale Dukakis Clinton Clinton Gore Kerry Obama Obama Clinton Biden Harris ya fuckin' dumbass.

...When prompted on false claims about the war in Iran advanced by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-aligned networks or outlets, Mistral AI’s chatbot Le Chat repeated falsehoods 50 percent of the time in English and 56.6 percent of the time in French... www.newsguardtech.com/special-repo...

"If you take at face value what the AI executives themselves have been saying for the last decade, that an AI powerful enough to make humans go extinct is nascent, then acting with force to stop it would be a rational action." www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-the-ai...

Didn't bend, didn't cower, didn't even feel the need to stand next to Trump grinning awkwardly like it was normal. And now he's emerged unscathed with his job and his dignity intact and his reputation even stronger than before. Huh. Seems like this could be a model for others in power.

“The AI economy runs on tokens, tokens run on GPUs and GPUs depend on Qatari helium, Israeli bromine, and [liquefied natural gas] tankers with a single, 21-mile-wide exit from the Persian Gulf.” www.axios.com/2026/04/23/a...

this IPO is the new battleground for bullshit

The meta story of the (imminent) Yes win in VA is the total inability of Trump to ever look down the game tree. He was apparently unable to comprehend that Democrats would respond to his push to redistrict in GOP-run states This same pehenenon is also why we are losing a war to Iran.

I'd pick "Democracy" by Leonard Cohen.

Well, huh. trendlabs.com/stocks-at-al...

“Part of me is glad he’s wasting his time on bullshit, because it’s less dangerous for rule of law, for the American public,” one official told me, “but it also means we don’t have a real functioning FBI director.”

JD Vance is completely unlikeable and he's a moron.

oh good, I have one of these expensive televisions and was secretly hoping for it to become less useful for no reason

Crazy chart. Almost as if they wanted to keep inflation from getting too LOW. @semafor.com

I find it genuinely amazing that there are full-grown adults who work in/around tourism/hospitality who thought other full-grown adults were going to fly to US in 2026 to soak in the World Cup atmosphere in cities that (1) won't exist (2) would be overshadowed armed paramilitary terrorizing visitors