Larry Summers has now become the first prominent American to be publicly disgraced for his association with Jeffrey Epstein, but he certainly won't be the last. Since the release of emails between Summers and Epstein, Summers has swiftly been disappearing from public life. He has either resigned or been kicked off many lucrative positions he held with various companies and other institutions, and he has now had to step back from his teaching position at Harvard University (after an attempt to cling to the job by admitting his shame to his students didn't go over very well). My guess is he won't be appearing on many news programs as an expert economist anymore either. But again, the fall of Summers is just the first in what will likely be a series of people who will be ostracized and shunned in public life. Because he certainly wasn't the only friend of Epstein who is in a prominent public position (and therefore has a lot to lose). [I should add, for the record, that former-Prince Andrew has also paid a steep price for what was recently revealed, but the woes of British royalty don't really interest me that much, so I consider him more of a footnote to the story here in America.]

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Donald Trump has done an about-face on two big (but completely unrelated) issues, which took place within a few days of each other. While it's impossible to know what he was thinking, the reasons behind these two major reversals can probably be summed up as: (1) he was about to lose, and: (2) he was already losing. Trump has a pathological fear of being on the losing side of anything, so both of these U-turns was pretty obviously intended to put him on the side of winning, at the last possible minute.

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So the longest federal government shutdown in American history ended last weekend, not with a bang but a whimper. Seven Democrat senators and one Independent voted with the Republicans to reopen the government without securing the goal that Democrats had been fighting for. This has outraged many other Democrats, since it was seen as "pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory," once again.

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The federal government is about to reopen once again. But as everyone gets back to work again, I have to wonder how much data has been lost and how much will be reconstructed. Specifically, how big a gap will there be in the official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? One month? Two months? Three months? Hopefully the gap will be as small as possible, but it seems like we're going to miss at least one month of data on the jobs market and unemployment, with the possibility of a gap in the official inflation numbers as well.

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Donald Trump has apparently woken up and realized he is getting beaten badly on a big political issue -- and one that he leaned on heavily during his last presidential campaign. So he's been complaining about Democrats hitting him on affordability since last week's election (where Republicans got spanked in pretty much every race they ran in). Trump insists that all prices are way, way down and Democrats are just lying about affordability being a big issue.

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Eight Senate Democrats are leading America on a spelunking tour. They desperately point out all the wonderful natural features of the cavern to everyone, as they lead us all lower and lower beneath the ground. However, to the rest of their Democratic colleagues (and millions of Democratic voters), no natural formation or mineral oddity can distract from seeing the truth of the situation as just a handful of weak "moderates" completely caving.

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This week, a major vibe shift took place in American politics. For the first time in an entire year, Democrats got up off the mat. Or maybe: they now have the wind at their backs. There are plenty of other metaphors to choose from, but the reality is that Democrats emerged stronger from the first major election since Donald Trump started his second term, and both Trump and his Republicans emerged weaker.

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As the Fed chair recently put it, the American economy is now "driving in a fog." Because the federal government remains shut down, no new official monthly economic statistics are being calculated and released to the public. This lack of data will continue until roughly a month after the government gets reopened, since the people who compile the statistics have to collect the data each month before they can calculate what it all means. The gap in collecting data could continue through November, which would mean there would be no official figures released at the start of next month. The most important of these statistics are the unemployment figures and the inflation rate.

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Democrats had a very good night last night. That's even an understatement -- in actual fact, Democrats had a blowout night last night, as they romped home in just about every election everywhere. One year from Donald Trump's electoral victory, the Democratic Party came back strong. What it all means for the future is anyone's guess, but for the first time in an entire year, it's better to be a Democrat than a Republican, looking towards that future.

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I must begin with an apology, because once again I find that I cannot bring myself to write a new Hallowe'en column this year.

Usually, at this time of year, I try to come up with frightful tales of horror for both the left and right sides of the political divide -- which I attempt to make both humorous and also so far-fetched that they're ridiculously unbelievable. The "scare factor" is tempered by the "Oh, that could never actually happen" factor, to put it another way.

These are indeed scary times we live in. And it would be impossible for me to try to construct a nightmarish scenario for those on the left that is any more frightful than what we are living through now.

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