1) Paul Krugman: The insincere center:
[L]et’s also not fail to take note of those who had a chance to join in this historic moment, and punted. I’m not talking about the progressives who... don’t think it’s good enough; I disagree, but I respect the[m].... I’m talking instead [...]
Dear Senator Reid:
We write to thank you again for your leadership in the Senate health reform deliberations. We greatly appreciate the important elements of fiscal sustainability that are included in the Manager’s Amendment.
Among the features that we believe to be critical to a fiscally responsible approach to health reform is [...]
Scott Payne interviews Patrick Appel:
It Takes A Village: An Interview with Patrick Appel:
Scott: How did you first get involved in assisting with the production of the Daily Dish?
Patrick: I interned for the Atlantic in the Fall of 2007. Andrew’s former assistant, Jessie Roberts, [...]
1) Mark Thoma: "President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits":
What is the cause of large and continuing budget deficits? The Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the economic downturn explain "explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years." Notice the tiny [...]
He has some very smart things to say:
The Politics of Ressentimentt: The word he wants is ressentiment:
Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, an assignation of blame for one’s frustration. The sense [...]
Shall we just say that I am so much in awe of Avram Gruner, and leave it at that?
Avram Gruner: Paarfi of Roundwood, author of the Quixote: Ever since high school, when I read Steven Boyett’s Ariel, I’ve been meaning to read Don Quixote, but I still haven’t [...]
1) Matthew Yglesias: All Hail Bernanke!:
Time giving Ben Bernanke its Person of the Year honors seems to me to say a lot about where we are as a society. Bernanke... follows basically conventional thinking and doesn’t make any unusual errors. Unfortunately, conventional thinking and normal errors lead [...]
As you know, I agree:
The Monkey Cage: What We Have Learned from the Health Care Debate: [R[]eporters start in with “news analysis” like this silliness from John Broder in Sunday’s New York Times. Here, climate change is framed around what Obama can or cannot accomplish, complete with portentous [...]
Yes, Tom Friedman is that big an amoral idiot.
Daniel Larison:
Eunomia » Friedman’s Jihad: Thomas Friedman’s new column reminded me of the line from Casino Royale: “Arrogance and self-awareness rarely go hand in hand.” In the same column in which he complains that Westerners treat Muslims as nothing more [...]
Carlo Cottarelli:
Climate Change—Some Simple (and Quite Convenient) Truths: As world leaders gather in Copenhagen, climate change is again in the headlines. The science of the issue can get pretty incomprehensible pretty quickly. And the politics are clearly very ugly. Let’s not forget, however, that much of the economics [...]
Wow! Just wow!
Greg Sargent FTW, who writes:
VIDEO: Watch Lieberman Endorse Medicare Buy-In Three Months Ago: Here’s some video of Joe Lieberman only three months ago.... Lieberman discussed the Medicare buy-in a meeting with the Connecticut Post in September, according to an article in the paper at the time, [...]
Lindsey Wilson writes:
Please look over your comment and make revisions (or let me know if everything is okay). The transcript wasn’t in good shape this time so we had to guess on some of the comments; therefore, please review your remarks carefully.
Bradford DeLong argued that the [...]
Paul Krugman brings us P.A. Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009):
He died yesterday. But there is a sense in which he is still very much alive.
Paul Krugman quotes:
Samuelson, Friedman, and monetary policy: [H]re’s Paul Samuelson, from pages 353-4 of his 1948 textbook:
[...]Worth reading:
Jonathan Leake on the Younger Dryas: Climate change catastrophe took just month: Six months is all it took to flip Europe’s climate from warm and sunny into the last ice age, researchers have found. They have discovered that the northern hemisphere was plunged into a big freeze 12,800 [...]
As in my recent link to here: William Easterly (2009), "Why there’s no “GrowthGate:” Frustration vs. Chicanery in Explaining Growth".
I think the answer is that "Easterly" is just a little too close to "Easterlin," and my brain is now full: there is one and only one pattern of neurons [...]
Paul Krugan:
Things free trade doesn’t do: There are a lot of good things you can say about international trade. But it does not, repeat not, do anything to alleviate a shortage of overall demand. Yes, if you liberalize trade countries will export more. But they will also import [...]
AMERICA’S national debt has been keeping me up nights. I don’t worry so much about the deficit we are running [...]
Mark Z. talks to Stateline.org about Obama's latest don't-call-it-stimulus plan to help state and local governments:
Q. How crucial is it for states to get additional stimulus?
A. I think it’s vital states get additional stimulus. If no more aid is forthcoming, then they’ll be cutting jobs, programs and raising' [...]
Testifying before the Senate at his confirmation hearing yesterday, Fed Chairman Bernanke apologized that he did not anticipate a crisis of this magnitude.” I am cautiously in favor of Bernanke’s reappointment—though not necessarily of Bernanke himself.
It is a practical thing: given the president’s displayed and stated fiscal preferences, I [...]
Fortunately, Paul Krugman does:
Unhelpful Hansen: [T]oday’s op-ed article suggests that he really hasn’t made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control. And that’s not a small matter, because he’s now engaged in a misguided crusade against cap and trade, which is — let’s face it — [...]
But sometimes it tells me things that man was really not meant to know.
Henry Farrell:
Crooked Timber: I’m a bit hesitant to link to this (as I’m not an elderly right wing economist, I’m worried I might be accused of “belittling the other”), but it’s super-duper awesome! Charles Rowley, [...]
Will Wilkinson writes::
Anything at All?: Brad DeLong writes:
At this point, anything that boosts the government’s deficit over the next two years passes the benefit-cost test–anything at all.
30,000 more troops to Afghanistan? Anything?
He says it with special emphasis, as though he’s [...]
Today is the greatly anticipated White House Jobs Summit. Today is the day when unemployment will be fixed. Today is the day when we will get real solutions. You’d wonder why “today” didn’t come any sooner.
In reality, today’s gathering of business leaders, journalists, economists, and other demographics represents the next [...]
The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve have pushed back the deadline for banking industry compliance with regulations pursuant to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). UIGEA, the controversial tack-on to the Bush administration’s SAFE Port Act aimed at curtailing on-line gambling by making it illegal for [...]
Paul Krugman is judicious and sober:
Rashomon in the desert: Dubai or not Dubai — that is the question. Dubai’s sorta-kinda default (a state-owned enterprise seeking a rescheduling of its debts) is, by itself, not that big of a deal. But who else looks like Dubai? [...]
This should have opened by now--if they ever found anybody who was happy to have their collateral start underwater:
Hydropolis, The Underwater Hotel in Dubai Due To Be Completed Soon: The financial crisis is not over yet, but those guys from Dubai never knew what’s up with this crisis. [...]
Interesting time. In Europe, the Creditanstalt's bankruptcy and what followed was what turned the recession into the European Great Depression...
Roula Khalaf: The emirate has a lot of explaining to do: It came in a short statement about the restructuring of Dubai World, one of the emirate’s biggest and [...]
YOU can be sure that there were occasional bouts of mania and panic:
Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher based at India’s Institute of [...]
Early Thursday morning a computer glitch disrupted the nation’s system which handles flight plan processing for air traffic controllers. For nearly four hours, flight plans filed by many pilots had to be entered into the National Airspace Data Interchange Network by hand. The problem occurred at the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure [...]
Paul Krugman reads the tea leaves in what looks like the best piece of economic analysis I have read this month. When we do the things we do well, this is the kind of thing we do:
Interest rates: the phantom menace: From various bat squeaks I’ve put together [...]
