SCRATCHPAD: 2024-07-02 Mo: Biden Needs to Quit the Candidacy & the Presidency; & Immunity for "Official Acts" Is the Most Unoriginalist Opinion Ever; & MOAR...
SCRATCHPAD: 2024-07-02 Mo: Biden Needs to Quit the Candidacy & the Presidency; & Immunity for "Official Acts" Is the Most Unoriginalist Opinion Ever; & MOAR...
Here's a scratchpad thought: it is really, really not a good look for a bunch of 30-something to 40-ish white male pundits who claim to be reality-based spinning alternate Democratic candidate scenarios in which every suggested candidate is not the sitting Vice-President of the United States.
Even putting aside all other considerations, Harris is the only person who can access the funds Biden has raised (north of $200 million). It would be criminal to waste that.
The whole incident reveals the stark difference between Ds and Rs. Where the Rs coalesce around Trump despite far more concerns than Biden has, the Ds freak at any problem. This is no way to win elections -- the Rs are terrible on policy, but they manage politics very well and the Ds need to learn some lessons there.
Last night Noah wrote that inflation is running at 3.5 to 4.0% (I assume core PCE). That was true for Q1 and April, but the previous 2 quarters were 2.0%, and May was even less. We can pick our time period to make our point. Noah argued that a big reason stubborn high inflation was the large fiscal deficit, therefore we need to slash the deficit.
That sounds sensible, but what if Q1's 3.7% inflation was a blip, and longer term it is 2%, and then we cut deficit spending severely - do we end up back at zero inflation ... and possibly zero interest rates?
And across the pond, Italy's annual inflation rate has been sub-1%. The rest of the countries approaching 2% rapidly (which ought not to be a threshold for monetary policy action). And, we received a hawkish policy rate cut from the ECB. Enough with this school marm type of policy behavior. But I may not understand why that is the proper way to behave.
Here's a scratchpad thought: it is really, really not a good look for a bunch of 30-something to 40-ish white male pundits who claim to be reality-based spinning alternate Democratic candidate scenarios in which every suggested candidate is not the sitting Vice-President of the United States.
Even putting aside all other considerations, Harris is the only person who can access the funds Biden has raised (north of $200 million). It would be criminal to waste that.
The whole incident reveals the stark difference between Ds and Rs. Where the Rs coalesce around Trump despite far more concerns than Biden has, the Ds freak at any problem. This is no way to win elections -- the Rs are terrible on policy, but they manage politics very well and the Ds need to learn some lessons there.
Last night Noah wrote that inflation is running at 3.5 to 4.0% (I assume core PCE). That was true for Q1 and April, but the previous 2 quarters were 2.0%, and May was even less. We can pick our time period to make our point. Noah argued that a big reason stubborn high inflation was the large fiscal deficit, therefore we need to slash the deficit.
That sounds sensible, but what if Q1's 3.7% inflation was a blip, and longer term it is 2%, and then we cut deficit spending severely - do we end up back at zero inflation ... and possibly zero interest rates?
And across the pond, Italy's annual inflation rate has been sub-1%. The rest of the countries approaching 2% rapidly (which ought not to be a threshold for monetary policy action). And, we received a hawkish policy rate cut from the ECB. Enough with this school marm type of policy behavior. But I may not understand why that is the proper way to behave.