it’s like the argument that it’s “institutionalist” for the Supreme Court to assent to whatever blatantly illegal thing the Trump administration wants to do, in order to forestall open defiance of adverse rulings, which would openly lay bare the powerlessness of the Court.
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sometimes i think i am alarmist about the united states but then i look at how things have evolved, mostly in increments, over the last three years in israel/gaza and i recall conversations about what seemed like worst-case scenarios at the time and consider how rosy they now seem in retrospect.
(or worse. they wouldn’t have catoified their opinion section without the billionaire, for example.)
America is on meth.
“We and our 316 partners”
NPR website, EU cookie disclosure indicating 316 “partners” that spy on NPR site visitors.
the one i know, yeah, definitely.
Okay let’s do this. One like, one eye roll silently calling into question your good taste.
but tradables are absolutely essential. they seem less important only for countries that enjoy extraordinarily favorable terms of trade, that can issue currency and debt in exchange for tradable goods apparently without bound. it’s reasonable to predict that won’t last forever, though.
that said, i agree with you that the political anger is not about foresight into a less favorable trade regime, but derives from nontradables like housing, and we’d behave more capably and rationally if we defused that anger with eg good housing policy.
📌
They are beyond the point where they can afford to lose power. A Democratic trifecta would reform this Supreme Court and begin to insist on accountability, what Biden failed to do. MAGA elites’ livelihoods + liberty are on the line. Roberts’ legacy requires that history will be written by fascists.
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capitalism without single-price markets is market feudalism.
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the only thing that could possibly displace the Epstein Files as a public obsession would be complete, unredacted release of the X Files.
🧵
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Port of Constanța.
Panorama of the port of Constanța, many buildings and cranes, the Black Sea blue.
the ultimate manosphere videos. ht @bmceuen.bsky.social
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“It’s not exactly precise to say that Estonians love absurd humor. In Estonia, the key of life is absurd, and even a foreigner will learn to read life in this key in a day or two.” riowang.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...
the X links aren’t working for me now. (dunno why?) 1/
i think you’ll find much of the country, however mistakenly, hasn’t gotten your caution, and perceives high home prices as not reflecting their consumption choices (they are not homeowners) but simply as a barrier to consumption and more importantly insurance they’d like but cannot have. 2/
i’m not saying you are wrong from a kind of macro perspective. among the population that is homeowners, there are choices the go bigger and nicer embedded in those prices for sure. but that reflects their consumption choices divergence of economic outcomes that homeownership noisily demarcates. 3/
people who’ve done well are disproportionately homeowners. and their consumption choices absolutely create barriers for more downscale people who would love a newish, smaller place of their own in a great neighborhood. 4/
those don’t pencil, because the consumption choices of the better off are where the money is, because land in nice places would price out more downscale buyers, because it’s only a small fraction of nonhomeowners who could afford to buy even reversing those consumption choices. 5/
to a first approximation, consumption choices have nothing at all to do with the post 2020 boom. as you say, there were special circumstances that can explain it. but however it came to be, it’s a fact and a huge, yawning, insurmountable barrier. 6/
you can definitely argue, from a macro and financial stability perspective, that the best way to address the overshoot is let nominal prices grow henceforth more slowly than inflation. from a macro perspective that makes sense. 7/
from a micro perspective, it means it will be a generation before half the country can think about buying a home rather than rent. 8/
a reversal of home prices would be a catastrophe for the financial system and the more upscale half of the country. the absence of such a reversal is a catastrophe for the rest of the country. 9/
of course, a financial crisis could disemploy everyone. we must always protect wall street (here interpreted broadly as assetholders) in order to protect main street. /fin
as a native Baltimorean, i'm all for this! though by the time i was old enough to enjoy basketball, it was the Washington Bullets that i followed.
is he going to bring back the Washington Bullets?
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prejudice very often masquerades as savvy.