January 2008
Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps? Matthew Yglesias watches Sam Tanenhaus’s book review on Jonah Goldberg:
Matthew Yglesias: If You’ve Got Nothing Nice to Say: 31 Dec 2007 09:04 a: I just hope The New York Times Book Review is as kind to my book when the time comes as they were to Jonah Goldberg (of course, realistically we’re all just desperately hoping to be reviewed at all): “Yet the title of his book aside, what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael…
Calculated Risk has insightful comments on my Project Syndicate article. Here is one:
Calculated Risk: Delong: Three cures for three crises: I don’t think it’s quite that bad. Even if the losses for investors and lenders reach $1 trillion (a possibility), I think the financial system can absorb those losses. Sure, some players might disappear, and others might have to sell significant assets (or dilute their shareholders), but I don’t think the choice is between serious inflation and…
From the Taipei Times — Project Syndicate:
A full-scale financial crisis is triggered by a sharp fall in the prices of a large set of assets that banks and other financial institutions own, or that make up their borrowers’ financial reserves. The cure depends on which of three modes define the fall in asset prices.
The first — and easiest to handle — mode is when investors refuse to buy at…
(December 31, 2007) - Quitting Time (Miscellaneous)
December 2007
The death spiral of the New York Times begins:
Kristol Clear: Times’ editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal defended the [hiring of William Kristol]. Rosenthal told Politico.com…. “The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual — and somehow that’s a bad thing,” Rosenthal added. “How intolerant is that?”…
Many people would be interested in reading a newspaper that publishes the writings of a serious, respected…
Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use - washingtonpost.com “the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings…. …At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG’s chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Copying a song you bought is “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy,’ ” she said…”
Meanwhile, in Canada, the music industry proposes to put a rather substantial tax on memory cards — with an iPod tariff to come.
Fools. Until now a substantial number of elder geeks (i.e. people with money) have been on the sidelines of the copyright wars. For us the iPod has meant a renewed interest in music, and a steady stream of CD purchases (since we distrust DRM intensely, we don’t buy online). We’ve been on the establishment-friendly side of Pogue’s demographic copyright gulf. But now … Now the music industry is trying to change the rules of the game. That’s not fair. The Geek Code of Honor requires us to respond by the ancient rule of sheeps and lambs. Some will say the Code obliges us to support the theft of music and video alike, for the criminals have now become the honest outlaw. The RIAA really shouldn’t have crossed this line.
” —Gordon’s Notes: Music industry sows the wind
Henry Farrell on Brad DeLong, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, James Scott, High Modernism, Jane Jacobs, the collectivization of agriculture, Karl Polanyi, rubber tomatos, the despised medieval Jewish Maghribi traders, and the cheap restaurants of Florence, Italy:
Crooked Timber » » DeLong, Scott and Hayek: I think that [DeLong] is fair up to a point – [James] Scott should develop his critique of bureaucratic capitalism in [Seeing Like a State] much more explicitly than he does. But…
David Brooks writes:
The Sidney Awards II - New York Times: Three other essays are worth your time…. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, J. Bradford DeLong wrote “Creative Destruction’s Reconstruction” on why Joseph Schumpeter matters to the 21st century…
Don’t get me wrong—I like the essay I wrote a lot, and Tom McGraw’s Schumpeter biography is excellent. But even I don’t think it’s in the world’s top 20 essays for 2007…
And what credit there is should be…
J. Bradford DeLong (2005), “Sisyphus as Social Democrat,” _ From Foreign Affairs, _ (May/June): Review of Richard Parker (2005), John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005, 820 pp. $35.00.
Summary: John Kenneth Galbraith’s…
From Paul Krugman:
Why we havent had a recession (so far) - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog: Why we haven’t had a recession (so far) The housing bust has lived up fully to my expectations. So far, however, the economy has held up surprisingly well (ask me again in a few months). How come?
It’s the exports, stupid.
I haven’t seen this chart published elsewhere, but it seems to me that it tells the story. The blue line shows residential investment as a share of GDP…
Rainy grey afternoons are so rare around here, they must be savored appropriately:
Rilo Kiley, “Silver Lining”:
Bonnie Raitt, “Angel from Montgomery”
Alison Brown, “Angel”
Liz Phair, “Divorce Song”:
Many of us have asked over the years: “Was David Ignatius always the clueless ignorant dweeeb he is today?”
The answer is now clear: the answer is “yes”:
The Legacy of Benazir Bhutto: by David Ignatius Friday, December 28, 2007; A21: Try to imagine a young Pakistani woman bounding into the newsroom of the Harvard Crimson in the early 1970s and banging out stories about college sports teams with the passion of a cub reporter. That was the first glimpse some of us had of Benazir Bhutto. We…
Surely there must be more things worthy of being immortalized in the DeLong Smackdown Watch, mustn’t there? Anybody have any favorites? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
DeLong Smackdown Watch archives:
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal: DeLong Smackdown Watch: From D-Squared Digest: The unique Daniel Davies writes:
D-squared Digest — FOR bigger pies and shorter hours and AGAINST more or less everything else: This is such a big heap of partisan…
Calculated Risk writes:
Calculated Risk: More on New Home Sales: Let’s start with revisions. This month (November) is one of the few months were the initial report wasn’t higher than the previous month. Usually the small reported gain in sales is then revised away in subsequent releases…. [T]he Census Bureau revised down sales for August, September and October. This has been the pattern for most of the housing bust; almost all the revisions have been down. I believe the Census Bureau is…
David Wescott writes:
It’s Not a Lecture: If I were a congressional staffer…
…the bits of data I’d give the Senator tomorrow would probably include the following:
Home forclosures rose 68 percent in November from the previous November.… Because the US savings rate is so low, people have been relying on their houses as a source of wealth and equity. When adjustable rate mortgages reset, wages remained relatively stagnant, and other costs (like healthcare) continued to rise,…
