Total federal spending is up +7% in 2025 over 2024 year-to-date to Oct 20. The story that the fed govt is tightening its belt is contradicted by its own real-time expenditure data. Admin spectacularly hammering some things but raising spending elsewhere. Was -7% just after Inauguration Day.

The more-or-less consensus view (among researchers looking at the impact of AI on labor demand) is that AI is unlikely impacting economic aggregates. Demand for young workers is very cyclical so we would expect given the no-hire, no-fire economy that youth unemployment would be rising.

Important evidence 👇 in the debate over how best to address homelessness. Study by Mark Duggan, SIEPR senior fellow, and Derek Christopher, SIEPR research scholar, finds that investments in homeless shelters pay off, not just for unhoused individuals but adjacent and regional communities.

DISTURBING: I went out in Palo Alto to perform a tactical threat analysis on behalf of the Supreme Intergalactic Commander of Warfare Hegseth, and found the median antifa member is 67 and drives a luxury German car.

Is #AI the century's third speculative bubble? Yes, say SIEPR's @jaredb-econ.bsky.social and @weakinstrument.bsky.social in a @nytimes.com op-ed. They lay out the reasons and examine whether the fallout could be better or worse than the internet, housing bursts. Free link 👇 tinyurl.com/nhjcm62v

1/ Me and @nealemahoney.bsky.social are back to analyzing the vibecession. This time, We dug into the #s on how men vs. women experience the economy and found a striking result: women tend to be 10 points less optimistic about the economy than men nealemahoney.substack.com/p/the-gender...

There's a lot of bad happening in the world today. So take some time to read something good--dare I say, great!--from @jaredb-econ.bsky.social and @nealemahoney.bsky.social who boil down the econ of "affordability" to a simple, three-legged framework. Good economics, good policy!

It’s actually quite unstrategic to abandon vulnerable people in your coalition. It doesn’t make you look tough, it makes you look like a coward.

In 2021, I warned that “family offices”—investment firms that manage the $ of tech titans & other billionaires—have more assets combined ($6TN) than all of private equity ($4TN). Unlike PE, the public has NO insight into where they put that money. Zero. www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/o...

Lol Miran also projecting GDP growth to stay at 2.6% a year through 2028 (ht @weakinstrument.bsky.social)

If this is true, this is the largest public corruption scandal in the history of the United States and it's not even close. It would amount to a **$2B** bribe to the President; the next closest scandal in terms of $ would be Teapot Dome, a measly ~$10M in today's $s www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics to replace her with a loyalist widely criticized by conservatives and liberal economists alike Read how these 2,000+ civil servants are pushing back to protect the integrity of the agency @weakinstrument.bsky.social

(2/5) The story cites Mahoney's research with SIEPR's Ryan Cummings @weakinstrument.bsky.social and Ben Harris of @brookings.edu on how Americans’ views on the #economy versus what the data show have diverged since the #Covid19 pandemic: tinyurl.com/333f777d

Update contrarian.substack.com/p/crypto-wan... @weakinstrument.bsky.social puts in essay form the key mechanisms described in the 🧵: the crypto/stablecoin & Treasury markets feed on each other in a doom-loop; faced with economic damage the government bails out the miscreants, socialising the costs.

Today, I'm in @contrariannews.org about the non-stop effort to shoehorn crytpo into the real economy so that when crypto prices decline, the gov is forced to bailout the industry or face a financial crisis. contrarian.substack.com/p/crypto-wan...

I'm in the NYT today (with @jaredb-econ.bsky.social ) arguing that the last time we had stagflation, we had oil shocks and a bad Fed. Now, we have no oil shocks and a good Fed. If we have stagflation this time, it will very much be by the President's own choosing. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/o...

How can workers feel secure when the economic landscape is always shifting beneath their feet?

Regardless of politics, economists should make clear: we do not condone reckless attacks on our statistical agencies, including by our fellow economists. The staff at these agencies work painstakingly to collect the data our democracy and economy depend on.

Yes, traffic cameras work, but it's a myth that people hate them! Survey after survey shows that most people support automatic enforcement (and often want more of it). This is a false controversy, fed by a minority of disgruntled drivers & journalists seeking narratives with conflict.

Rig counts have become a less reliable signal of production over time because the efficiency of an individual rig has improved quite a bit, but OPEC+ production and tariffs on inputs like steel are going to give pause to both majors and independents trying to win market share with new production.

Trump canceled the research grant for America’s — perhaps the world’s? — top mathematician (via @weakinstrument.bsky.social)

The WSJ after seeing Trump threaten Jerome Powell:

Excited to announce a new funding opportunity for research on "what works" in climate adaptation. We are specifically looking for strong causal designs that tell us what interventions work (or don't) to reduce impacts of a changing climate. Plz share + apply! seedfunding.stanford.edu/apply/U5N4

Are you a natural resource or agricultural economics PhD or postdoc interested in real world policy work? Come work with CEPP's growing food team on quantifying subsidies in the dairy and beef industry! If not, pass the word! careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/food-sy...

5. The decision comes exactly one week after Trump signed the OBBBA. The CBO estimates that bill will strip 16 million people of their health insurance. By allowing reporting of medical debt, the decision removes a financial safety net when it's more important than ever

4. Debt collectors use medical debt reporting for leverage If you don't pay up, they'll report your debt and tank your credit Credit scores should be used to provide credit, not for this nealemahoney.substack.com/p/credit-sco...

3. Removing medical debt does little to harm credit score accuracy A 2014 CFPB report found medical debt was less predictive than non-medical debt of adverse outcomes My understanding is that FICO subsequently down-weighted medical debt files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201405_cfp...

2. Removing medical debt from credit reports improves credit access. Our study (w/ @raykluender.bsky.social @francisawong.bsky.social & @wesyin.bsky.social) shows modest but meaningful improvements in credit access when medical debt is experimentally removed

1. More than any other debt, medical debt is the result of bad luck, not bad financial management. Dobkin et al. (2018) show large increases in medical debt following hospital admissions

On Friday a judge struck down a CFPB rule that would've wiped medical debt from credit reports The decision will reduce credit access while giving debt collectors more leverage It comes a week after Trump signed a law that will kick 16 million off health insurance Compounding cruelty with cruelty

Was great chatting with @emmettlindner.bsky.social about how if Trump follows through on his tariffs against Brazil, coffee drinkers in the US should expect to see the price of a cup increase by about $0.25 within a couple months. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/b...

The U.S. has a $7.4B trade surplus with Brazil, a country that also provides the U.S. with 35% of all coffee beans. The reason why this is happening, not so subtly alluded to by Trump, is because Brazil actually held its right-wing coup leader accountable instead of making him President again.

case in point - today @davidzipper.bsky.social published a well-researched column on the downsides of free buses do i agree with his piece? no! i advocate for free public transit but it was a smart story that made me think about my priors dude had to turn off comments bc they became a monster

Scratching my head at the CEA estimate that their economic plan will lower debt/GDP by at least 3pp in FY 2025. There are only 3 months left in FY 2025. And tariff revenue < 0.5% of GDP. So would need about 12% annualized GDP growth in Q3 to hit this target.

This Op-Ed on a U.S. carbon tariff gets lots of basic stuff wrong. Unlike authors' claims, a U.S. carbon tariff 1. Won't address PRC competition 2. Either raises lots of revenue or lowers GHGs (not both) 3. Weakens incentives to adopt domestic U.S. climate policy. 🧵 1/ #econsky #climatesky

A must read substack for anyone interested in CA gas prices. Many have seen this "CA gas prices will hit $8/gal" study floating around. Ryan Cummings, my Biden CEA colleague and one of the sharpest thinkers on oil markets, takes this study to task. And it doesn't stand up well... #energysky

1/6 Two refineries in CA will close by 2026. And you might have heard about a “study” which says CA could have $8/gal gas prices when that happens. I looked at the underlying analysis and found it riddled with conceptual and factual errors. #EnergySky ryanmgcummings.substack.com/p/the-post-w...

The broad unpopularity of the Iran strikes among the general public vs. bipartisan endorsements from elected officials (even if Ds don't like the process, many seem to approve the result) is interesting because the public learned its lesson with Iraq, while elites seemed to have learned nothing.

The news today has got me thinking about all the ways Iran away from my feelings and didn’t want to be vulnerable so I hid my emotional enrichment materials deep inside a mountain of loneliness and not even the largest love bombs you were capable of dropping got through. You don’t have to respond.

What an unnecessary and ill-informed forecast. The concern is much, much less with global *supply* of oil than it is with the *transportation* of it. During Russia/Ukraine, ~0 supply went offline. But it took a while to rescramble the 3mbpd that Russia was providing to the market!

We used to have a thing called the separation of banking and commerce. But the stablecoin bill currently being considered in Congress could seriously weaken this important firewall if big retailers and Big Tech companies start issuing their own coins. www.wsj.com/finance/bank...

We’re announcing new legislation — the No Secret Police Act (SB 627) — to ban local/state/federal law enforcement, w/ some exceptions, from covering their faces when interacting w/ the public & require them to wear identifying info. The secret police behavior we’re seeing destroys trust & must end🧵

Im at the No Kings protest in SF and there’s more American flags here than a NASCAR rally

Work requirements cost more money than they save, but you can tell in OBBB that the real Republican goal is to just kick people off their health insurance because they're closing every single Job Corps facility in the country, which helps people get training for entry-level jobs.

Californians net taxes to to the Federal Government was greater than every other state in the country except for NY. So the Trump Administration wants to still collect money from California, but not give anything back.

Asset tests should not be reinstated. They are a predictably ineffective and cruel administrative burden that make it impossible for the very poor to have basic dignity. From @pamherd.bsky.social and I in the @aeajournals.bsky.social‬ Journal of Economic Perspectives www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

@nealemahoney.bsky.social I wrote a piece looking at the consequences of Trump's tariffs getting struck down. If the ruling holds, they'll have to pay $20B back to importers, which would be a ~$110 transfer from every American household to firm profits. nealemahoney.substack.com/p/if-it-stic...

“[S]tablecoins and crypto are just fundamentally useless-at-best and harmful at worst. … Unless you’re a criminal, there are no use cases for these currencies.” @jaredb-econ.bsky.social + @weakinstrument.bsky.social ▶️ why “the so-called #GENIUSAct is a dangerous piece of legislation.”

To add to Neale's analysis on Medicaid, the degree to which House Rs are willing to stick it to their own constituents to give rich people a tax cut is stunning. Here's what clean-energy investment+jobs (that the House bill is trying to kill!) looks like across CDs. Rs benefit 4X as much as Ds!

We devote musicals, miniseries, and documentaries to the founders of our first republic and not to those of our second, who saw this country with clear eyes. We need fewer encomiums for Jefferson, Madison, and Lafayette. More respect for Sumner, Stevens, Bingham and Douglass (Frederick).