November 2010
No, Obama's Problem Is Not that He "Focused... →
Duncan Black on the Obama Administration: Eschaton: If Things Were Better They’d Be Better: There is a weird unwillingness to admit that maybe they got the policy wrong too. It’s one thing…
Why Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican,... →
Ezra Klein watches newly-elected Republican House member Andrew Harris (R-MD) demonstrate why he should immediately resign his post and let himself be replaced by somebody who is more…
We Don't Have a Medium-Run Deficit and Debt... →
Ezra Klein reproduces a three-year old graph from the CBPP. It was from before the financial crisis—so that the level from which the debt-to-GDP ratio starts is some 25% higher than in the…
Have I Somehow Missed All the Non-Crazy... →
Overheard Leaving Moffitt Library... →
“They did the mutagenesis. They created the mutant mice. But then they forgot to label the cage…” That is all.
Economists (and Non-Economists) Behaving Very... →
The problem with our economy is not that something bad happened to our productive capacity while the flow of nominal spending continued to blip along, it is that something bad happened to…
Duncan Black Tells Us That the Forecast... →
Atrios: Eschaton: Grim: Philly Fed Survey of Professional Forecasters:
Seminar: Matt Ridley: How Prosperity Evolves →
We are very happy to have Matt Ridley here, to talk about what I think is the foundational issue in economics. The very first paragraph of the second chapter of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations says…
Uncertainty and Aggregate Demand →
The future is always uncertain—and how uncertain it is fluctuates. When the future is more than unusually certain, economic players want the security of financial asset holdings before they are…
Department of "Huh?!" (Clive Crook Edition) →
Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps? Clive Crook: Clive Crook - How Obama should curb the deficit: As for the [Simpson-Bowles] plan, it is good…. One can quarrel with many…
Hoisted from Comments: How Much Did Bush Talk to... →
Hoisted from comments: ogmb: Let No One Else’s Work Evade Your Eyes!: Speaking of… Already having been branded a liar by former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, ex-US President George W….
Intellectual Garbage Cleanup: Walter Williams... →
Ta-Nehisi Coates does the honors: Confederate Hair Tonic: In this instance, it must be said that Williams is practicing history in the manner of a phrenologist practicing brain surgery—with…
Econ 1: Fall 2010: Files for November 15 "Public... →
November 15 “Public Goods and Asymmetric Information”: Slides
Let No One Else's Work Evade Your Eyes! →
The scary thing is that apparently George W. Bush doesn’t remember enough about his presidency for his ghostwriter to write Decision Points simply from listening to him talk. Chris McGreal of…
Dahlia Lithwick: We Are All the Bag Man →
William the Bastard asserted the right to kill and torture—but he admitted that he had to justify what he had done to his tenants-in-chief afterwards. George W. Bush and Barack Obama say that…
Elizabeth Warren Mario Savio Lecture →
YouTube - Mario Savio Memorial Lecture - Elizabeth Warren:
Liveblogging World War II: November 15, 1940 →
The 400,000 Jews in Warsaw are sealed off in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Henry Aaron Really Does not Like SImpson-Bowles →
From the Fiscal Times: All responsible budget analysts agree that the United States faces a daunting deficit problem. It should be addressed soon. But how soon is not clear. After the…
Vampire-Americans Come Out of the Coffin... →
A correspondent claims: I got this message this morning from the place where I usually donate blood, and it gave me a giggle. Your generous blood donations through Memorial Blood Centers…
Liveblogging World War II: November 14, 1940 →
Coventry, from Wikipedia: Coventry Blitz : The raid that began on the evening of 14 November 1940 was the most severe to hit Coventry during the war. It was carried out by 515 German…
Hoisted from the Archives: Greg Clark: The Secret... →
Greg Clark: The modest productivity growth rates of the Industrial Revolution owed mostly to productivity gains in one sector, textile manufacture. It was accidents of demand, demography, and…
Ryan Avent vs. Kevin Drum →
Ryan Avent attempts to Kevin Drum smackdown: Budget deficits: Austerity and reform: KEVIN DRUM critiques the recommendations of the chairmen of the deficit commission…. I don’t think this…
Why Do I Feel So Much Better After a... →
I mean, the free mimosas, the extra space, and the extra degrees of recline in the seat shouldn’t do really be enough to do it, right? Am I really such a dominance junkie that getting picked out…
Practical Politics for Dummies →
Matthew Yglesias: Results, Not Words: “[B]lame Republicans for failing to pass plan to fix the economy” is [not] a close substitute for “fix the economy.”… [T]he evidence that fixing the…
The Very Disappointing Derek Thompson Reaction to... →
It was disappointing. The worst and most unfair part, I thought, was this slam against Kevin Drum: The Disappointing Liberal Reaction to the Deficit Commission: The third most frustrating…
Winston Churchill Blogs About November 13, 1940 →
Winston Churchill: After supper at the Soviet Embassy there was a British air raid on Berlin. We had heard of the conference [and of Molotov’s visit to Berlin] beforehand, and though not…
Neoliberal Economists Agonistes →
Felix Salmon shifts ground from Charles Ferguson’s Larry-Summers-Is-Corrupt to the alternative Larry-Summers-Has-Been-Intellectually-Captured-by-Wall-Street interpretation: Summers’s…
Keynes and the FT →
Robert Skidelsky says that when Keynes lectured at Cambridge about monetary theory, he would begin by reading an article from the FT (or occasionally tje Economist), and then ask: “What is the…
What Should Macroeconomics Do? →
What is wrong with American macroeconomics? In a nutshell, when 2007-9 came along every single macro textbook (including mine) and every single macro course (save possibly Perry Mehrling’s) was of…
DeLong Smackdown Watch: Walras' Law and Say's Law... →
Nick Rowe asks: What Does Cutting-Edge Macroeconomics Tell Us About Economic Policy for the Recovery?: You see, Say(1803) (lovely way to express this, by the way) was very nearly right….
Liveblogging World War II: November 12, 1940 →
Winston Churchill: The Prime Minister (Mr. Churchill) : Since we last met, the House has suffered a very grievous loss in the death of one of its most distinguished Members and of a…
It Is Not Just for the Sake of Journalism That We... →
It looks as though the Post has become a deeply corrupt and disfunctional educational company. Matthew Yglesias: Yglesias » Kaplan, Inc: The Washington Post company[’s] biggest source of…
Harold Pollack on Barack Obama →
Harold: President Obama: I love you, but you need to raise your game: Judging by recent press reports, the White House is apparently folding on the Bush tax cuts for people with incomes…
Macro Advisers: Okun's Law Is Working Well.... →
There has long been some question of whether there is something to explain in divergence between production and employment in this downturn. Macro Advisors says not: Macroadvisers: Swings in…
The Depressing Thing Is That Neither Conrad Nor... →
George Stephanopoulos writes: Sen. Conrad: Extend All Tax Cuts; Time to Get ‘Serious’ About Deficit. Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps? Why oh why can’t we have better senators?
Worst Things About Simpson-Bowles →
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 6:04 AM, Sydelle Moore XXXXX@thehill.com wrote: The Big Question: What is the best and the worst recommendation from the president’s debt commission? Well, two…
The Last Word on Simpson-Bowles: What Kevin Drum... →
Simpson and Bowes are simply not serious. Oursourced to Kevin Drum: Is the Deficit Commission Serious? | Mother Jones: I’ve been trying to figure out whether I have anything to say…
Keeping the Fourth Online-Learning Revolution from... →
Most people do not know that our current online-learning revolution is actually the fourth. The first was made by Aristocles son of Ariston and Aristoteles son of Nicomachus when they created the…
Liveblogging World War II: November 11, 1940 →
Carrier vs. battleships: the “battle” of Taranto: World War II Day-By-Day: Day 438 November 11, 1940: At 11 PM, 21 Fairey Swordfish (11 with torpedoes and 10 carrying bombs) attack the…
The Fourth Online-Learning Revolution →
We can only provide quality online and distance-learning experiences today if we understand that what we are living through is not the first but rather the fourth online-learning revolution. Let…
Felix Salmon Has the Number of Bowles-Simpson →
What did Obama expect when he took a serial budget arsonist and put a fire chief’s hat on his head? It’s not even that a single Republican legislator has signed on to this thing. Felix Salmon:
Obama vs. Pelosi →
Nancy Pelosi: On the Proposal Released by Co-Chairs of the Fiscal Commission: Our nation is facing two challenges: the need to create jobs and address our budget deficit. Any viable proposal…
Obama's Next NEC Director →
At the moment the lead candidates to replace Larry Summers as NEC Director—big shoes to fill—appear to be Roger Altman and Gene Sperling. I think both of them would probably do very well. But…
Yes, the Entitlement Commission Was an Unforced... →
At the time I asked why you would take a budget arsonist like Alan Simpson and give him a Fire Chief hat. I never got a good answer. Now they are throwing people out of their press conference:
Masters of Negative Five Dimensional Chess →
About the Obama Entitlement Commission, starring budget arsonists wearing Fire Chief hats. In my inbox right now: I don’t know if my favorite part is adding co-pays to the VA or cutting the…
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson Are the Only Two... →
Can this be true? Two out of eighteen is a remarkably low score… This commission seems to have been yet another unforced error by the Obama administration. And what is this about Erskine…
Morality Plays... →
Interfluidity appears to accuse me of being immoral because I am amoral, or something like that… To the contrary, I say that our duties to be intelligent, reality-based, wise stewards of our…
Republicans Lying All the Time About Everything →
Sudeep Reddy of the Wall Street Journal finds that he is a target: Palin Responds to Real Time Economics and We Respond: Real Time Economics yesterday looked at Sarah Palin’s remarks about…
Delong Smackdown Watch: ProGrowth Liberal →
Over at Econonospeak, PGL writes: EconoSpeak: One Quibble with Brad DeLong’s Platform for the Bipartisan Technocrats: Let me endorse almost all of Brad’s platform for the bipartisan…
More Republicans Lying All the Time, About... →
Ladonna Pavetti does the intellectual garbage cleanup: Killing Expired Program Won’t Save Money: Yesterday, the Republican Study Committee issued a press release announcing one of its first…
