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 Sorry about the long hiatus. I had log-in problems and just stopped trying until today.

I'll resume regular posting here.

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The ruble is collapsing

In 1998, I traveled to Moscow for the first time to teach in a summer course at the Russian Academy. The week before, we were on vacation and I heard on the radio “Today, the ruble lost 100% of its value.” This news was arresting—it meant that the ruble was worthless. That seemed unlikely. Indeed, the next day, the announcer apologized and said she meant to say that the ruble lost 50% of its value.  In the event, by the time I arrived at the Hotel Sputnik in Moscow, all the cash machines in the city were shut down. Restaurant prices changed hourly during my five-day stay, and there were sidewalk signs posting exchange rates that were written in chalk so they could easily be edited. Certainly puts our recent experience with inflation in perspective.   Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum notes that the ruble is down 30% since the war started and 20% just since September.   From the comment thread: “The problem with the Russian economy at this point is that it is basically...
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The price of Trump’s war on universities

  For decades, the United States has been the world leader in scientific research. Even as China has been catching up, the US has managed to remain a magnet for scientists world-wide, and its universities are the most desirable destinations for undergrads and graduate students. Until now. “ There are significant economic consequences to spiking medical research in the universities: this subsidizes the training of people who will work in the industry, and it drives the types of blue sky research that industry doesn’t want to do, but that it benefits greatly from. It creates a vacuum that other countries will rush to fill. If it persists, the comparative advantage that the US has gained by attracting top global talent will collapse.     “At the same time, what Trump and his cronies are doing to the education system with their anti-science agenda will pretty much guarantee that home grown talent is likely to be non-competitive globally. As the split with Musk over visas indi...
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I agree with RFK Jr.

Though it feels weird to say it, RFK Jr and I agree on something: curtailing direct-to-consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals. “ The Trump administration is discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients, in a move that could disrupt more than $10 billion in annual ad spending.   Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.   “The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to d...
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