J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 12

Phipps: View of Hitler as of 1935���Noted

British Ambassador to Germany Eric Phipps looking back after two years at the extraordinary successes inside Germany and in the opinion of Germans of Hitler���s first two years���saving Germany from Versailles, from domination by the Allies, from the Great Depression, and from his own ���gangsters��� in the form of the SA:

Eric Phipps: Diary https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-phipps-diary.pdf 1935-04-01: ���Over two years have now elapsed since the electorate of this country, stampeded by the Reichstag fire, voted for the abolition of the Parliamentary r��gime and the establishment of a National Socialist dictatorship...

During these two years, Adolf Hitler, without losing the loyalty of his old followers to any alarming extent, has won over the great mass of the Opposition to himself and his policy both internal and external. He has achieved this by accomplishing in the opinion of the masses not one but several miracles. In the first place, he has obtained work (or what amounts to work so far as the individual is concerned) for 3 million people. Secondly, he has torn up Part V of the Treaty of Versailles under the very noses of Germany���s former enemies. And thirdly, he has, as it were, liberated Germany from the clutches of his own National Socialist gangsters who threatened at one time to make life a purgatory for all but a privileged caste. The return to more normal conditions during the last six months has indeed been so rapid and so marked that the great bulk of Hitler���s one-time opponents are now, to say the least of it, reconciled to his rule if not to National Socialism.

Furthermore, it is now dawning upon friends and enemies alike that a benevolent despotism has immeasurable advantages over the Parliamentary system in the case of a defeated country. Not only has it an advantage over the travesty of a parliamentary system known as the Weimar Republic but many intelligent Germans are now of opinion that it is preferable to the French and British systems of representative government. It would certainly seem to an unprejudiced observer that a country which is anxious to free itself from the shackles of an oppressive treaty has better prospects if it is prepared to accept a restriction of individual liberty and a concentration of all powers in one hand, provided of course the hand be firm and wise. In the case of Hitler no doubt exists in the German mind that the country���s choice has been fully justified by the history of the last two years���.

For years before he came into power Hitler doggedly refused to give any explanation of his mysterious programme for coping with unemployment. Why, he asked should he betray his panacea to his rivals? The mystery is now cleared up and it is evident that Hitler was well-advised to keep his secret to himself. As we now realise, his programme consists not merely of public works of the normal kind but of the very important work of rearming Germany. Today military contracts and contracts for public works are almost indistinguishable. The provision for motor roads which serve equally as military roads is a case in point. In addition the expansion of the army and air force has absorbed large masses of men from the labour market. The simplicity of many of Hitler���s basic ideas savours of genius to the public mind.

In regard to the rearmament of Germany and her return to the field of international politics on an equal footing, neither the Army, the intelligentsia nor the Ministry for Foreign Affairs conceived that the time was ripe for ���calling the allied bluff���. Any attempt on Germany���s part to challenge the Versailles Treaty would lead, they firmly believed, to intervention and possibly to the occupation of the Rhineland. Any parliamentary government in this country would have courted disaster in the Reichstag had it embarked on Hitler���s policy of flouting the Treaty.

Even in Hitler���s case the adventure was not devoid of grave personal risk. There was always the chance during the early stages that the signatories of Versailles would pull themselves together and veto German rearmament by the threat of a preventive war. In that case the Hitler r��gime would have come to an end and Hitler and his chief supporters would have had to choose between suicide and exile. Now that Hitler has put his bold plan into execution his influence is highest in those very quarters where it was at first regarded with most suspicion, namely the Reichswehr Higher Command, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, permanent officialdom and responsible circles generally.

The Germans are not disposed to minimise their difficulties. But they regard Herr Hitler as a prophet and the majority expect with calm obedience that he will find the way to the promised land. He, on his side, is more convinced than ever that fate has chosen him as its instrument just as it chose Frederick the Great65 for the regeneration of the German people. In truth, can we wonder at his conviction? His foreign policy since my arrival at Berlin has been the reverse of that of a ���good European���; it has been a crescendo of violence and has hitherto failed to evoke any stronger reaction on the part of the ex-allies than some notes of platonic protest.

Having helped himself, in defiance of the Treaty, on land and in the air, Herr Hitler now suggests, with grim humour, that the British Empire may some day be grateful for the protection of the fleet that he intends to build.66 The size of that fleet at present seems uncertain, but if Herr Hitler adheres to his intention of attaining naval parity with France he will eventually possess a fleet half the size of our own concentrated in an infinitesimal fraction of the waters over which ours is called upon to sail.

So far as I can see, only economics and finance can be expected to counter these proud plans, but economics and finance have in the past proved so elastic as to defy all expert prophecy. Stalin, on the other hand, when he pointed at ���that little island��� to Mr. Eden on the map, seemed to think that we alone could finally prevent the hegemony of Germany by withholding from her certain raw materials without which she would be unable to continue her present orgy of expenditure on armaments. I do not know whether this course be feasible or not. In any case let us hope that our pacifists at home may at length realise that the rapidly growing monster of German militarism will not be placated by mere cooings, but will only be restrained from recourse to its idolised ���ultima ratio��� by the knowledge that the Powers who desire peace are also strong enough to enforce it���

.#noted #2020-12-21

Phipps: View of Hitler as of 1933���Noted

Here we have Britain's ambassador to Germany writing in 1933 that Britain needs to take Hitler seriously but not literally���for if it took him literally it would have no logical choice but ���to adopt the policy of a ���preventive��� war���. Food for thought for modern times: Trump, Bolsonaro, Modhi, and Johnson need definitely to be taken literally, and it is only acceptable to not take them seriously if you are dead certain not only of their incompetence but of their inability to pass the baton to anyone both competent and ruthless:

Eric Phipps: Diary https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-phipps-diary.pdf 1933-11-21: ���In contemplating the present situation arising out of an electoral campaign waged against a practically non-existent adversary and conducted with propaganda methods of unexampled violence and mendacity, one is tempted to put certain far-reaching questions regarding the future of the Hitler movement and the future policy of Hitler. It has been asked, for instance, whether the movement is not a convenient screen behind which the old Prussian Nationalism is weaving its dark web. This may well be, but if so the screen itself is singularly inefficacious and fails to conceal the fact that the youth of Germany is being reared in a purely militarist spirit...

...When I told the Chancellor that militarism seemed to me to be the Leitmotiv of this country, whereas elsewhere it was merely an incident, that a spark might suffice to kindle the militarist spirit into a war-like flame, I might have added that the above-mentioned campaign of lies, depicting Germany as the one innocent lamb among a pack of wolves, was not calculated to inculcate in German youth that spirit of peace and understanding advocated so inappropriately and so loudly after Germany���s banging of the Geneva door.

As regards Hitler, I doubt whether he himself realises how far he is at pre- sent the author of Mein Kampf, the full-blown blood-and-thunder book as originally published in Germany, that is to say, and not the recent pale abridged and bowdlerised edition which has been published by his direction and translated into English.

Who can tell how far that Hitler resembles the present German Chancellor who has been making the welkin ring with shouts of peace? In some respects it is certain that he remains true to type for he has not varied over the Jewish question or Austria since writing the book; but it would be too simple and even perhaps dangerous to assume that he maintains intact all the views held and expressed with such incredible violence in a work written in a Bavarian prison 10 years ago, though, of course, those views cannot be left out of consideration in any endeavour to gauge the Chancellor���s intentions on any given subject. His hatred of France, Germany���s deadliest enemy, for instance, is written in flaming letters, and certainly seems difficult to reconcile with his recent attempts to wheedle her into a t��te-��-t��te conversation.

Again, the recent no-force agreement with Poland is undoubtedly regarded by my French colleague as an attempt to drive a wedge between that country and France. Yet, though this may have entered into Hitler���s calculations, the fact of German-Polish apaisement should nevertheless facilitate France and Germany. In this connection General von Blomberg���s remarks to me are of interest.

To revert to Hitler: we cannot regard him solely as the author of Mein Kampf for in such case we should logically be bound to adopt the policy of a ���preventive��� war, nor can we afford to ignore him. Would it not therefore be advisable soon to try to bind that damnably dynamic man? To bind him, that is, by an agreement bearing his signature freely and proudly given? By some odd kink in his mental make-up he might even feel impelled to honour it. His signature under even a not altogether satisfactory agreement, only partially agreeable to Great Britain and France and not too distasteful to Italy might prevent for a time any further German shots among the International ducks.

His signature, moreover, would bind all Germany like no other Germans in all her past. Years might then pass and even Hitler might grow old, and reason might come to this side and fear leave it. New problems would present them- selves and old problems, including disarmament, might perhaps have solved themselves through the mere passage of time, and without those Hurculean and hitherto vain efforts to satisfy German ���honour��� and allay French fear���

.#noted #2020-12-21

Briefly Noted for 2020-12-18

Josiah Ober: Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. https://www.amazon.com/Political-Dissent-Democratic-Athens-Intellectual-ebook/dp/B00EM2W92E/���

Josiah Ober: Mass & Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, & the Power of the People https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691028648���

Daily Beast: Pence Plans to Confirm Trump���s Defeat Then Flee the Country, Says Report https://www.thedailybeast.com/pence-p...���

James Politi & Colby Smith: Powell Preserves His Dovish Credentials at Tricky Moment for Fed_ https://www.ft.com/content/2a32037d-612d-43bc-b472-ba124bddf47d���

Tyler Cowen: The Ideological Shift of the Libertarian Movement on Pandemics https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/the-ideological-shift-of-the-libertarian-movement-on-pandemics.html���

Minxin Pei: Totalitarianism���s Long Dark Shadow Over China https://www.ned.org/events/lipset-lecture-minxin-pei-totalitarianism-china/���

Richard Setterston & al.: Living on the Edge: An American Generation���s Journey through the Twentieth Century https://uchicago.app.box.com/s/82xshvgproh5xf9sf0np8qby41wszehq/file/722218825412���

Amazon.com: Elgato Green Screen https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0743Z892W/: ���Collapsible chroma key panel for background removal with auto-locking frame, wrinkle-resistant chroma-green fabric, aluminum hard case, ultra-quick setup and breakdown: Computers & Accessories���

Amazon.com: Elaro Pop-Up Retractable Green Screen (Self-Contained Case) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QWXVN9J/���

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Plus:

Charles Sykes: Can We Quit Trump? https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/can-we-quit-trump: ���For the last four years, Vichy Republicans have rationalized their support by insisting that we ignore the tweets and focus on the policies and ���accomplishments���. But in his post-presidency there will no wins, just the rage, narcissism, and tweets.... And that���s all there will be, except for the possible indictments, trials, and bankruptcies. That���s why stoking outrage is so crucial for his post presidency. The stab-in-the-back stolen election lie is the wind beneath his wings; grievance is his only real asset. That may be enough to keep his base riled up. But there is also the possibility that rather than consolidate his control of the GOP, he will marginalize himself by continuing to embrace the most deranged elements of his own MAGAverse. His base of operations may drift from Fox News to OAN and his appeal from populism to raw crackpottery���

Jonathan V. Last: 'McMaster believed that power in the Trump administration derived from his job https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/the-nature-of-power. Sarah Huckabee Sanders realized that power in the Trump administration derived from having the president watch you defend him on TV. And further, SHS seems to have figured out that she could parlay that power into power in another context. Watch and see if she becomes governor of Arkansas purely on the basis of being seen as one of the most loyal Trumpists in the country.... Mitch McConnell is entering into a power struggle with Donald Trump.... Mitch declared Joe Biden president-elect yesterday. And good for him, I guess. Though I���m not sure people should get a ton of credit for admitting that the sky is blue after spending five weeks insisting that it was red. McConnell���s calculation is that power derives from holding elected office because that confers the ability to pass legislation.... Trump believes that the real source of power lies further upstream and derives from the ability to command���totally���a large bloc of voters within a single party. Because... it grants him ownership of the Republican party.... McConnell���s view looks like the safer bet right now, because the next time that large bloc of voters gets to exercise their power is two years from now. But my money���s on Trump here.... And then there���s the January 6 vote. McConnell has pushed a lot of chips into the pot by saying that no Republican Senator should force a vote on the Electoral College.... But the dynamics of this are all in the other direction. There will be at least one member of the House who objects and demands a vote, which means that the Senate Republicans will effectively be facing a yes-no vote on supporting Trump, since it will only require one senator to also object. Do you believe that every single Republican senator will be willing to be seen as effectively saying ���no��� to Trump on what will be basically function as a roll-call vote for a roll-call vote?���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-18

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2020-12-18.html

DeLongTODAY: Fear of Rising Interest Rates No Reason to Shy Away from Fiscal Expansion

Watch the video: http://delongtoday.com

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/09UnmdoZ83dkzmVQ1qgDJTx5w

DeLongTODAY: Fear of Rising Interest Rates No Reason to Shy Away from Fiscal Expansion

I am Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a sometime Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. This is the weekly DeLongToday briefing. Here I hold forth here on the Leigh Bureau���s vimeo platform on my guesses as to what I think you most need to know about what our economy is doing to us right now.

I promised Wes Neff when he agreed to provide the infrastructure for this that I and my briefings would be: lively, interesting, curious, thoughtful, and relatively brief. Relatively.**

I promised I would provide briefings on a mix of: forecasting, politics, macroeconomic analysis, history, and political economy.

Today is a macroeconomic analysis briefing, trying to parry an erroneous current of thought that I see as gaining strength���the belief that we should be cautious about spending government money to get us back to full employment quickly because interest rates might rise suddenly and substantially at some time in the future. I am convinced that this argument is, well, completely wrong.

But first:

Over at Business Insider, the very sharp Dan Alpert has a column: ���Trump's postelection flailing was a ridiculous farce, but it did expose the real threats to America���. He quotes Cornell Professor Robert Hockett, who says: ���My worry, however, is now less about Trump than about what Trump has laid bare. One short-term exigency and three long-term transformations, I fear, that mix as stably as nitrate and glycerin where the durability of republican self-government is concerned���. The loss of productive opportunity to all but a few strata of American society over the past 50 years���. Second��� a��� media complex��� making a psychic reality of unreality for��� enraged millions���. Third is the degradation��� [of] (small 'r') republican self-government������

Search for it on Google. Daniel Alpert. Robert Hockett. A-l-p-e-r-t. H-o-c-k-e-t-t. Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Now for the main course:

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In the first three Trump years, as the economy closed in on full employment, typical American incomes grew extremely strongly. In 2019 median household income was closing in on $69,000, more than 20% above the Obama-era nadir and 10% above the previous Clinton-era peak. This was in striking contrast to anything else we had seen since 2000.

The decade of the 2000s, you see, was a disaster for American incomes. Median real household income in 2011 was some $57,000, well below the year-2000���s $62,500. It did not recover, going nowheresville until 2015. Only in Obama���s last year, 2016, did median real household income clear its year-2000 peak.

Why? Labor economists talk about skill-biased technological change and the China shock and divide work into occupations and occupations into tasks and discuss how changing technology alters tasks and labor demand. But you have to hold very very strongly to the prior that the business cycle evens out in a time frame of less than a generation for that discourse to make any sense. And I do not see on what evidence that prior might be based on. I look at the data, and I think different. I think: large wage increases for typical workers require a high-pressure economy. And government from 2001 to 2016 did not prioritize attempting to deliver a high-pressure economy.

Now 73 million people voted for Donald Trump for president.

Few of those who voted for Trump are the plutocrats who benefitted handsomely from the Trump-McConnell-Ryan tax cut. Few of them, even, are plutocrat wannabees who anticipate benefitting from it. Few of them regard the installation of large numbers of reactionary judges on the federal courts as a major concern. The 73 million voted for Trump for many reasons. But one not-negligible reason is that, until the coming of COVID-19, when Trump was president the U.S. economy delivered handsome wage increases���wage increases for typical Americans that neither the Bush nor the Obama economy delivered, wage increases at a pace not seen since the economy back when Clinton was president.

If you fear Trump, reflect that if the U.S. economy fails to deliver similar healthy wage increases over the next four years, those 73 million and more will take note of the differential. And they may vote for a Trump���or for some Trump-like figure like Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley���for president in 2024. If you like Trump, reflect that the best way to honor his legacy and extend the positive part of his accomplishments���to make America great again���is to restore and then continue the high-pressure economy that he presided over.

So why did the high-pressure economy take so long to generate? Why did Americans have to wait until the end of 2019 before they could look back on five years in a row of more than trivial wage increases? Why did the typical American household spend 2001-2015 poorer than it had been at the end of the Clinton presidency?

Because, until the Trump years, workers looking for jobs and willing to accept a little less than they felt they deserved if that was what it took to get them were plentiful, and jobs looking for workers with employers willing to offer a little more than they felt was customary if that was what it took to get them filled were scarce.

In 2010���when the Obama administration began its pivot to austerity, and greatly downweighted the task of boosting employment back to normal levels and focused on attempting spending cuts and deficit reduction���the prime-age employment-to-population ratio was 75%, 5%-points below what 2007 had attained as full employment without any wage-pressure inflation, and 7%-points below what 2000 had attained as full employment. Yet Obama did not prioritize a return to full employment and a high-pressure economy, and pivoted to austerity nonetheless.

In 2013, when Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke announced that the time for extraordinary monetary stimulus was over, and so administered the depressive shock to long-term interest rates called the ���taper tantrum���, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio was less than 76%. Yet Ben Bernanke did not prioritize a return to full employment and pivoted back to ���normal��� monetary policy nonetheless.

And in 2015, when Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen began the most recent interest rate-raising cycle, plausibly knocking a percentage point or two off of mid-2010s economic growth in an economy that had looked as though it might be gaining recovery speed, the prime-age employment-to-population ratio was only 77%. Not until late in 2019���fully ten years after the nadir of the Great Recession business-cycle trough���would the U.S. economy once again reattain anything we could call ���full employment���.

But now we hear, once again, that it is time for austerity. We hear, once again, that rock-bottom interest rates slam against the zero lower bound are unnatural. We hear, once again, that the deficit needs to be cut substantially and immediately. Fiscal hawks admit that right now financing the deficit and debt is not an issue. But, they say, it could become a crucial issue at any moment. Interest rates could turn on a dime and rise sharply if investor psychology undergoes one of its sudden psychological shifts. And then where would we be, unless we take steps now to cut the deficit savagely now?

Back in 2012 Larry Summers and I tried to teach the world that this line of thought was erroneous. We taught two lessons: First, we taught that when interest rates were very low the debt was not a drag but rather a source of resources for public purposes���that the national debt was then, as Alexander Hamilton said, a national blessing both because it satisfied savers��� very strong desire to hold safe assets and because it increased the government���s choice set.

Second, we taught that no matter what the level of interest rates, you are better confronting your debt-financing problems by rapidly returning the economy to a high-pressure state after a deep recession. Yes, you will have to incur additional debt to give the economy the fiscal spending boost for a rapid return to full employment, and if interest rates are high financing that extra debt can be painful. But if you do not rapidly return to full employment, then you will be stuck attempting to finance your debt on the basis of the lessened fiscal capacity of an economy permanently depressed well below the previous normal. We tried to reach both of those lessons.

It seems that we failed. Or that we did not completely succeed.

As I look around me now, I find that the the consensus view of what high-quality economists are thought to think���which is different from what high-quality economists do think���has absorbed only the first of the two lessons of the Fiscal Policy in a Depressed Economy paper we wrote for the Brookings Institution.

The lesson that has been absorbed is that financing the debt is not an issue as long as demand for safe assets remains very high and thus Treasury interest rates remain very low.

But the more important lesson has not been absorbed: In a deeply depressed economy, borrow-and-spend increases the country���s short- and long-run prosperity and so increases its fiscal capacity by more than it increases its fiscal debt burden. The ratio of debt to fiscal capacity goes down, not up, with larger deficits. And this holds whether interest rates are high or low.

Levels of productivity certainly and long-term employment plausibly as well as levels of income depend powerfully on the state of the economy. Whatever prosperity-linked economic objective you are interested in, it is much more easily attained the higher pressure the economy is. And if the past generation has anything to teach us, it is that expansionary fiscal and monetary policies remain, as they have always been, very powerful tools for generating a higher-pressure economy.

Very few people recognize that essentially all of the damage done to the US economy by the Great Recession of 2007 to 2010 was permanent. The US economy recovered most of the way back to its previous trend from the depths of the Ford recession of 1975 and the Reagan recession of 1982. It even, eventually, more than recovered back to its previous trend after the Bush recession of 1992���Good growth enabling structural economic policies by Clinton in the arrivalof the dot-com boom are to be thanked for that. But the economy did not quite recover back to its previous trend from the bush recession of 2001. And the output gap between what the US economy was producing in 2019 and what pre-2007 the trends suggested the economy would be capable of producing in 2019 Dash that output gap in 2019 is as great as the output gap between actual and potential production was at the depths of the great recession in 2010. Yes, you have a lower debt to finance if you pivot to austerity in a depression. But the damage, the permanent damage, you thereby do to your economy is long run productive potential does much more to destroy the base that supports the financing of your current debt then it does good by reducing the amount of that. Even on a narrow government finance perspective, the game is not worth the candle.

And yet here we are, with the Republicans senatorial majority blocking the spending that would help people get through the coronavirus plague without permanently losing their businesses in this position us for a rapid return to full employment. What is going on here?

I think what is going on is that republican legislators really do believe that the economy is depressed right now because too many people are overly scared of the coronavirus and can afford to stay home. Thus anything that makes people more scared of the coronavirus Is bad, for the economy at least. Hence ignorance is best: if we did less testing so that fewer cases were reported we would be less scared and so better off. That is, I think, really how they are thinking. And anything that makes it possible for more people to be able to afford to stay home is bad. The problem, they think, is not that spending is down because people are reacting to uncertainty and risk by saving, hoping to take that cruise or that vacation or go to that restaurant next year after the vaccine has arrived. The problem, they think, is that too few people are willing to show up to work.

This is, of course, nonsense. There is no point to people showing up to work if there are no customers. And it is the number of customers that has fallen, not the number of people willing to work. If it were the number of people willing to work that had fallen and caused the depression, we would see total spending continue blindly along its previous course while real production fell. But that is not what we see: what we see is that both production and spending grow and fall in tandem���with the change in nominal higher than the change in real by the 2%/year of inflation��� as the plague hit the country. A supply-side recession because of too little ability to produce, like that of 1974-5, sees inflation rise. A demand-side recession because of too little spending does not. Guess which we have now?

And, of course, their tame economists are egging them on. I always have a very hard time knowing what to think about Casey Mulligan and Steve Moore. Are they really too stupid to draw an Aggregate Supply-Aggregate Demand diagram and note that prices and quantities move in opposite directions when it is the aggregate supply curve is shifting? Or do they know very well that they are talking bullshit when they claim that surges and ebbs in the desire to work are responsible? It was Milton Friedman, after all, who said: Supply curves slope up, demand curves slope down, and be very suspicious of anybody whose argument requires that they not do so.

And when Mulligan and Moore write something like this: ���in August, job openings fell for the first time since the start of the pandemic. This certainly wasn���t because the economy was faltering. Third-quarter gross domestic product surged at a 33% annualized rate������ what am I supposed to think? I know that the third quarter growth rate is largely baked in the cake before September. And I know that the overwhelming bulk of the very high third-quarter growth rate came from very strong growth in May, June, and July���not from anything happening in August and September. They cannot be so foolish and so ill-informed not to know this, can they? They cannot be so cynical as to assume that their readers will never check, can they?

Right now it looks as though we are on the cusp of a second dip in the coronavirus plague depression, as the resurgent virus drives spending and incomes down further and as the Republican senate caucus blocks meaningful action. Then, in the spring, with the violets, large-scale vaccination will arrive. We will then begin the business of reknitting our country���s economic division of labor.

It would be much, much better for us all if we are then focused on spending whatever it takes to get the economy back to full employment quickly���whatever it takes. Especially if you are worried about financing the debt. You need as large a productive base as possible to make financing the debt easier, and it should not be a hard idea to grasp that that productive base requires spending to get back to full employment quickly.

Now when you accumulate debt, there are debt financing issues: We surely do not want the Treasury to finance anything additional by selling more 30-year TIPS exclusively. We equally surely do not want the Treasury to sell only more 3-month T-Bills. Debt management, and the interaction of debt management with safety-and-soundness regulation���i.e., how many Treasury securities and reserve deposits at the Fed we require leveraged financial institutions to hold as reserves rather than letting them get away with dodgy things that someone has rated AAA���are important and complex issues. And the ���r��� in the equations above needs to be grossed up, by taking account of how additional debt may raise the rate at which existing debt is refinanced when it is rolled over.

The high-interest rate era of the 1980s and 1990s in which we worried about fiscal drag from expanded national debt is now long gone. Right now we are in what Larry calls ���secular stagnation���, in which Treasury rates are very low, markets expect Treasury rates to remain very low for decades, and the term structure gives the U.S. government power to lock in very low interest rates on its debt for the long term.

In some ways the right way to think about government debt is not as a cost but as a profit center for the government���like the Medici Bank of the Late Middle Ages, savers are willing to pay the U.S. government to accept their money because they believe the U.S. government can keep it safe. And it is in that context that we should think about debt finance.

I���m Brad DeLong. This is my DeLong Today briefing.

https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/delongtoday-debt-%26-high-pressure-2020-12-15.docx
https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/delongtoday-debt-%26-high-pressure-2020-12-15.pdf

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.#delongtoday #equitablegrowth #fiscalpolicy #highlighted #macro #2020-12-18

Simon Schama: Why John le Carr�� Is a Writer of Substance

Simon Schama: What Makes John le Carr�� a Writer of Substance https://www.ft.com/content/04df988d-9b09-4e6a-b7d8-70b1a5e654dc: ���Someone, sometime, had to translate Dean Acheson���s famous 1962 characterisation of a Britain that had ���lost an empire but has not yet found a role��� into literature. But until le Carr�� came along, no writer had nailed the toxic combination of bad faith and blundering, the confusion of tactical cynicism with strategic wisdom, with such lethal accuracy.... His writing did... have some precedents.... He belonged to the same ���lower-upper-middle-class��� as George Orwell.... Like Orwell... le Carr�� had a pitch-perfect ear for the disingenuous hypocrisies sustaining those who mistook ���Getting Away with It��� for national purpose. Le Carr�����s other literary pedigree... came from Anthony Trollope: the shrewd sense that institutions had collective personalities and psychologies, as if they were extended families. As such, they were the theatre of deadly, high-stakes dramas of loyalty and betrayal���. The scene at the beginning of An Honourable Schoolboy in the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, where ���a score of journalists, mainly from former British colonies .���.���. fooled and drank in a mood of violent idleness, a chorus without a hero��� is one of the great set pieces of le Carr�� writing. At its centre is one of his Dickens-Modern creations: the ancient Aussie, ���old Craw��� based on someone le Carr�� knew from that field trip to south Asia, and ���who had shaken more sand out of his shorts than most of them would walk over������

============

John le Carr��: The Honourable Schoolboy https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-le-carre-schoolboy.pdf: 'Perhaps a more realistic point of departure is a certain typhoon Saturday in mid-1974, three o���clock in the afternoon, when Hong Kong lay battened down waiting for the next onslaught. In the bar of the Foreign Correspondents��� Club, a score of journalists, mainly from former British colonies - Australian, Canadian, American - fooled and drank in a mood of violent idleness, a chorus without a hero. Thirteen floors below them, the old trams and double deckers were caked in the mud-brown sweat of building dust and smuts from the chimney-stacks in Kowloon. The tiny ponds outside the highrise hotels prickled with slow, subversive rain. And in the men���s room, which provided the Club���s best view of the harbour, young Luke the Californian was ducking his face into the handbasin, washing the blood from his mouth...

...Luke was a wayward, gangling tennis player, an old man of twenty- seven who until the American pullout had been the star turn in his magazine���s Saigon stable of war reporters. When you knew he played tennis it was hard to think of him doing anything else, even drinking. You imagined him at the net, uncoiling and smashing everything to kingdom come; or serving aces between double faults. His mind, as he sucked and spat, was fragmented by drink and mild concussion - Luke would probably have used the war-word ���fragged��� - into several lucid parts. One part was occupied with a Wanchai bar girl called Ella for whose sake he had punched the pig policeman on the jaw and suffered the inevitable consequences: with the minimum necessary force, the said Superintendent Rockhurst, known otherwise as the Rocker, who was this minute relaxing in a corner of the bar after his exertions, had knocked him cold and kicked him smartly in the ribs. Another part of his mind was on something his Chinese landlord had said to him this morning when he called to complain of the noise of Luke���s gramophone, and had stayed to drink a beer.

A scoop of some sort definitely. But what sort?

He retched again, then peered out of the window. The junks were lashed behind the barriers and the Star Ferry had stopped running. A veteran British frigate lay at anchor and Club rumours said Whitehall was selling it.

���Should be putting to sea,��� he muttered confusedly, recalling some bit of naval lore he had picked up in his travels. ���Frigates put to sea in typhoons. Yes, sir.���

The hills were slate under the stacks of black cloudbank. Six months ago the sight would have had him cooing with pleasure. The harbour, the din, even the skyscraper shanties that clambered from the sea���s edge upward to the Peak: after Saigon, Luke had ravenously embraced the whole scene. But all he saw today was a smug, rich British rock run by a bunch of plum-throated traders whose horizons went no further than their belly-lines. The Colony had therefore become for him exactly what it was already for the rest of the journalists: an airfield, a telephone, a laundry, a bed. Occasionally - but never for long - a woman. Where even experience had to be imported. As to the wars which for so long had been his addiction: they were as remote from Hong Kong as they were from London or New York. Only the Stock Exchange showed a token sensibility, and on Saturdays it was closed anyway.

���Think you���re going to live, ace?��� asked the shaggy Canadian cowboy, coming to the stall beside him. The two men had shared the pleasures of the Tet offensive.

���Thank you, dear, I feel perfectly topping,��� Luke replied, in his most exalted English accent. Luke decided it really was important for him to remember what Jake Chiu had said to him over the beer this morning, and suddenly like a gift from Heaven it came to him.

���I remember!��� he shouted. ���Jesus, cowboy, I remember! Luke, you remember! My brain! It works! Folks, give ear to Luke!���

���Forget it,��� the cowboy advised. ���That���s badland out there today, ace. Whatever it is, forget it.���

But Luke kicked open the door and charged into the bar, arms flung wide.

���Hey! Hey! Folks!���
���Not a head turned. Luke cupped his hands to his mouth.

���Listen you drunken bums, I got news. This is fantastic. Two bottles of Scotch a day and a brain like a razor. Someone give me a bell.���

Finding none, he grabbed a tankard and hammered it on the bar rail, spilling the beer. Even then, only the dwarf paid him the slightest notice.

���So what���s happened, Lukie?��� whined the dwarf, in his queeny Greenwich Village drawl. ���Has Big Moo gotten hiccups again? I can���t bear it.���

Big Moo was Club jargon for the Governor and the dwarf was Luke���s chief of bureau. He was a pouchy, sullen creature with disordered hair that swept in black strands over his face, and a silent way of popping up beside you. A year back, two Frenchmen, otherwise rarely seen here, had nearly killed him for a chance remark he had made on the origins of the mess in Vietnam. They took him to the lift, broke his jaw and several of his ribs, then dumped him in a heap on the ground floor and came back to finish their drinks. Soon afterwards the Australians did a similar job on him when he made a silly accusation about their token military involvement in the war. He suggested that Canberra had done a deal with President Johnson to keep the Australian boys in Vung Tau which was a picnic, while the Americans did the real fighting elsewhere. Unlike the French, the Australians didn���t even bother to use the lift. They just beat the hell out of the dwarf where he stood, and when he fell they added a little more of the same. After that, he learned when to keep clear of certain people in Hong Kong. In times of persistent fog, for instance. Or when the water was cut to four hours a day. Or on a typhoon Saturday.

Otherwise the Club was pretty much empty. For reasons of prestige, the top correspondents steered clear of the place anyway. A few businessmen, who came for the flavour pressmen give, a few girls, who came for the men. A couple of television war tourists in fake battle-drill. And in his customary corner, the awesome Rocker, Superintendent of Police, ex-Palestine, ex- Kenya, ex-Malaya, ex-Fiji, an implacable warhorse with a beer, one set of slightly reddened knuckles, and a weekend copy of the South China Morning Post. The Rocker, people said, came for the class. And at the big table at the centre, which on weekdays was the preserve of United Press International, lounged the Shanghai Junior Baptist Conservative Bowling Club, presided over by mottled old Craw the Australian, enjoying its usual Saturday tournament. The aim of the contest was to pitch a screwed-up napkin across the room, and lodge it in the wine rack. Every time you
succeeded, your competitors bought you the bottle, and helped you drink it. Old Craw growled the orders to fire and an elderly Shanghainese waiter, Craw���s favourite, wearily manned the butts and served the prizes. The game was not a zestful one that day, and some members were not bothering to throw. Nevertheless this was the group Luke selected for his audience.

���Big Moo���s wife���s got hiccups!��� the dwarf insisted. ���Big Moo���s wife���s horse has got hiccups! Big Moo���s wife���s horse���s groom���s got hiccups! Big Moo���s wife���s horse���s -���

Striding to the table Luke leapt straight on to it with a crash, breaking several glasses and cracking his head on the ceiling in the process. Framed up there against the south window in a half crouch he was out of scale to everyone: the dark mist, the dark shadow of the Peak Behind it, and this giant filling the whole foreground. But they went on pitching and drinking as if they hadn���t seen him. Only the Rocker glanced in Luke���s direction, once, before licking a huge thumb and turning to the cartoon page.

���Round three,��� Craw ordered, in his rich Australian accent. ���Brother Canada, prepare to fire. Wait, you slob. Fire.���

A screwed-up napkin floated toward the rack, taking a high trajectory. Finding a cranny it hung a moment, then flopped to the ground. Egged on by the dwarf, Luke began stamping on the table and more glasses fell. Finally he wore his audience down.

���Your Graces,��� said old Craw with a sigh. ���Pray silence for my son. I fear he would have parley with us. Brother Luke, you have committed several acts of war today and one more will meet with our severe disfavour. Speak clearly and concisely, omitting no detail, however slight, and thereafter hold your water, sir.���

In their tireless pursuit of legends about one another, old Craw was their Ancient Mariner. Craw had shaken more sand out of his shorts, they told each other, than most of them would ever walk over; and they were right. In Shanghai, where his career had started, he had been teaboy and city editor to the only English-speaking journal in the port. Since then, he had covered the Communists against Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang against the Japanese and the Americans against practically everyone. Craw gave them a sense of history in this rootless place. His style of speech, which at typhoon times even the hardiest sight pardonably find irksome, was a genuine hangover from the Thirties, when Australia provided the bulk of journalists in the Orient; and the Vatican, for some reason, the jargon of their companionship.

So Luke, thanks to old Craw, finally got it out.
������Gentlemen! - Dwarf, you damn Polack, leave go my foot! - Gentlemen.��� He paused to dab his mouth with a handkerchief. ���The house known as High Haven is for sale and his Grace Tufty Thesinger has flown the coop.���

Nothing happened but he didn���t expect much anyway. Journalists are not given to cries of amazement nor even incredulity.

���High Haven,��� Luke repeated sonorously, ���is up for grabs. Mr Jake Chiu, the well-known and popular real estate entrepreneur, more familiar to you as my personal irate landlord, has been charged by Her Majesty���s majestic government to dispose of High Haven. To wit, peddle. Let me go, you Polish bastard, I���ll kill you!���

The dwarf had toppled him. Only a flailing, agile leap saved him from injury. From the floor, Luke hurled more abuse at his assailant. Meanwhile, Craw���s large head had turned to Luke, and his moist eyes fixed on him a baleful stare that seemed to go on for ever. Luke began to wonder which of Craw���s many laws he might have sinned against. Beneath his various disguises, Craw was a complex and solitary figure, as everyone round the table knew. Under the willed roughness of his manner lay a love of the East which seemed sometimes to string him tighter than he could stand, so chat there were months when he would disappear from sight altogether, and like a sulky elephant go off on his private paths until he was once more fit to live with.

���Don���t burble, your Grace, do you mind?��� said Craw at last, and tilted back his big head imperiously. ���Refrain from spewing low-grade bilge into highly salubrious water, will you, Squire? High Haven���s the spookhouse. Been the spookhouse for years. Lair of the lynx-eyed Major Tufty Thesinger formerly of Her Majesty���s Rifles, presently Hong Kong���s Lestrade of the Yard. Tufty wouldn���t fly the coop. He���s a hood, not a tit. Give my son a drink, Monsignor,��� - this to the Shanghainese barman -���he���s wandering.���

Craw intoned another fire order and the Club returned to its intellectual pursuits. The truth was, there was little new to these great spy-scoops by Luke. He had a long reputation as a failed spook-watcher, and his leads were invariably disproved. Since Vietnam, the stupid lad saw spies under every carpet. He believed the world was run by them, and much of his spare time, when he was sober, was spent hanging round the Colony���s numberless battalion of thinly-disguised China-watchers and worse, who infested the enormous American Consulate up the hill. So if it hadn���t been such a listless day, the matter would probably have rested there. As at was, the dwarf saw an opening to amuse, and seized it:

���Tell us, Lukie,��� he suggested, with a queer upward twisting of the hands, ���are they selling High Haven with contents or as found?���

The question won him a round of applause. Was High Haven worth more with its secrets or without?
���Do they sell it with Major Thesinger?��� the South African photographer pursued, in his humourless sing-song, and there was more laughter still, though it was no more affectionate. The photographer was a disturbing figure, crewcut and starved, and his complexion was pitted like the battlefields he loved to taunt. He came from Cape Town, but they called him Deathwish the Hun. The saying was, he would bury all of them, for he stalked them like a mute.

For several diverting minutes now, Luke���s point was lost entirely under a spate of Major Thesinger stories and Major Thesinger imitations in which all but Craw joined. It was recalled that the Major had made his first appearance on the Colony as an importer, with some fatuous cover down among the Docks; only to transfer, six months later, quite improbably, to the Services��� list and, complete with his staff of pallid clerks and doughy, well-bred secretaries, decamp to the said spookhouse as somebody���s replacement. In particular his t��te-��-t��te luncheons were described, to which, as it now turned out, practically every journalist listening had at one time or another been invited. And which ended with laborious proposals over brandy, including such wonderful phrases as: ���Now look here old man if you should ever bump into an interesting Chow from over the river, you know - one with access, follow me? just you remember High Haven!��� Then the magic telephone number, the one that ���rings spot on my desk, no middlemen, tape recorders, nothing, right?��� - which a good half dozen of them seemed to have in their diaries: ���Here, pencil this one on your cuff���, pretend it���s a date or a girlfriend or something. Ready for it? Hong Kongside five-zero-two-four...���

Having chanted the digits in unison, they fell quiet. Somewhere a clock chimed for three fifteen. Luke slowly stood up and brushed the dust from his jeans. The old Shanghainese waiter gave up his post by the racks and reached for the menu in the hope that someone might eat. For a moment, uncertainty overcame them. The day was forfeit. It had been so since the first gin. In the background a low growl sounded as the Rocker ordered himself a generous luncheon: ���And bring me a cold beer, cold, you hear, boy? Muchee coldee. Chop chop.��� The Superintendent had his way with natives and said this every time. The quiet returned.

���Well, there you are, Lukie.��� the dwarf called, moving away. ���That���s how you win your Pulitzer, I guess. Congratulations, darling. Scoop of the year.���

���Ah, go impale yourselves, the bunch of you,��� said Luke carelessly and started to make his way down the bar to where two sallow girls sat, army daughters on the prowl. ���Jake Chiu showed me the damn letter of instruction, didn���t he? On Her Majesty���s damn Service, wasn���t it? Damn crest on the top, lion screwing a goat. Hi sweethearts, remember me? I���m the kind man who bought you the lollipops at the fair.���

���Thesinger don���t answer,��� Deathwish the Hun sang mournfully from the telephone. ���Nobody don���t answer. Not Thesinger, not his duty man. They disconnected the line.��� In the excitement, or the monotony, no one had noticed Deathwish slip away.

Till now, old Craw the Australian had lain dead as a dodo. Now, he looked up sharply. ���Dial it again, you fool,��� he ordered, tart as a drill sergeant.���
With a shrug, Deathwish dialled Thesinger���s number a second time, and a couple of them went to watch him do it. Craw stayed put, watching from where he sat. There were two instruments. Deathwish tried the second, but with no better result.���
���Ring the operator,��� Craw ordered, across the room to them. ���Don���t stand there like a pregnant banshee. Ring the Operator, you African ape!��� Number disconnected, said the operator.���
���Since when, man?��� Deathwish demanded, into the mouthpiece.���
No information available, said the operator.

���Maybe they got a new number, then, right, man?��� Deathwish howled into the mouthpiece; still at the luckless operator. No one had ever seen him so involved. Life for Deathwish was what happened at the end of a viewfinder: such passion was only attributable to the typhoon.

No information available, said the operator.

���Ring Shallow Throat,��� Craw ordered, now quite furious. ���Ring every damned stripe-pants in the Colony!���
Deathwish shook his long head uncertainly. Shallow Throat was the official government spokesman, a hate-object to them all. To approach him for anything was bad face.

���Here, give him to me,��� said Craw and rising to his feet shoved them aside to get to the phone and embark on the lugubrious courtship of Shallow Throat. ���Your devoted, Craw, sir, at your service. How���s your Eminence in mind and health? Charmed, sir, charmed. And the wife and veg, sir? All eating well, I trust? No scurvy or typhus? Good. Well now, perhaps you���ll have the benison to advise me why the hell Tufty Thesinger���s flown the coop?���

They watched him, but his face had set like a rock, and there was nothing more to read there. ���And the same to you, sir!��� he snorted finally and slammed the phone back on its cradle so hard the whole table bounced. Then he turned to the old Shanghainese waiter. ���Monsignor Goh, sir, order me a petrol donkey and oblige! Your Graces, get off your arses, the pack of you!���

���What the hell for?��� said the dwarf, hoping to be included in the command.

���For a story, you snotty little Cardinal, for a story your lecherous, alcoholic Eminences. For wealth, fame, women and longevity!���

His black mood was indecipherable to any of them.���
���But what did Shallow Throat say that was so damn bad?��� the shaggy Canadian cowboy asked, mystified.���
The dwarf echoed him. ���Yeah, so what did he say, Brother Craw?������
���He said no comment,��� Craw replied with fine dignity, as if the words were the vilest slur upon his professional honour.���
So up the Peak they went, leaving only the silent majority of drinkers to their peace: restive Deathwish the Hun, long Luke, then the shaggy Canadian cowboy, very striking in his Mexican revolutionary moustache, the dwarf, attaching as ever, and finally old Craw and the two army girls: a plenary session of the Shanghai Junior Baptist Conservative Bowling Club, therefore, with ladies added - though the Club was sworn to celibacy. Amazingly, the jolly Cantonese driver took them all, a triumph of exuberance over physics. He even consented to give three receipts for the full fare, one for each of the journals represented, a thing no Hong Kong taxi-driver had been known to do before or since. It was a day to break all precedents. Craw sat in the front wearing his famous soft straw hat with Eton colours on the ribbon, bequeathed to him by an old comrade in his will. The dwarf was squeezed over the gear lever, the other three men sat in the back, and the two girls sat on Luke���s lap, which made it hard for him to dab his mouth. The Rocker did not see fit to join them. He had tucked his napkin into his collar in preparation for the Club���s roast lamb and mint sauce and a lot of potatoes.

���And another beer! But cold this time, hear that, boy? Muchee coldee, and bring it chop chop.���

But once the coast was clear, the Rocker also made use of the telephone, and spoke to Someone in Authority, just to be on the safe side, though they agreed there was nothing to be done.

.#noted #2020-12-17

"Bezos Charts!"

A ���Bezos Chart��� is a chart that has no scale, anywhere: it is a chart that conveys absolutely no accurate quantitative information:

Jason Snell: ���I apologize, I forgot to add a label to my Bezos Chart https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/481863414180896769...

.#noted #2020-12-17

Randall Munroe���s 2020 Election Map���Noted

Randall Munroe is an international treasure. This is the best 2020 election map that I have yet seen. It combines geographic fidelity with information accuracy and density. You will learn a lot not just about what and where Biden���s edge was in the 2020 election, but also about who Americans are���

Randall Munroe: 2020 Election Map https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1339341149488746498: ���http://xkcd.com/2399 ...

.#noted #2020-12-17

Briefly Noted for 2020-12-17

Jonathan V. Last: Everyone Trump Touches Dies: The List https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/everyone-trump-touches-dies-the-list���

Edward B. Foley (2019): Preparing for a Disputed Presidential Election: An Exercise in Election Risk Assessment and Management https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2719&context=luclj���

Jason Snell: ���I apologize, I forgot to add a label to my Bezos Chart.https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/481863414180896769...

Simon Schama: What Makes John le Carr�� a Writer of Substance https://www.ft.com/content/04df988d-9b09-4e6a-b7d8-70b1a5e654dc: ���Someone, sometime, had to translate Dean Acheson���s famous 1962 characterisation of a Britain that had ���lost an empire but has not yet found a role��� into literature. But until le Carr�� came along, no writer had nailed the toxic combination of bad faith and blundering, the confusion of tactical cynicism with strategic wisdom, with such lethal accuracy.... His writing did... have some precedents.... He belonged to the same ���lower-upper-middle-class��� as George Orwell.... Like Orwell... le Carr�� had a pitch-perfect ear for the disingenuous hypocrisies sustaining those who mistook ���Getting Away with It��� for national purpose. Le Carr�����s other literary pedigree... came from Anthony Trollope: the shrewd sense that institutions had collective personalities and psychologies, as if they were extended families. As such, they were the theatre of deadly, high-stakes dramas of loyalty and betrayal���

Clove & Hoof: Oakland Butchery & Restaurant https://cloveandhoofoakland.com/���

Sascha Segan: Qualcomm Is a Little Too Unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/qualcomm-is-a-little-too-unbothered-by-apples-m1-macs: ���Qualcomm execs brushed off the superior performance of Apple's new ARM-based Macs. They shouldn���t���

John Gruber: M1 Macs: Truth & Truthiness https://daringfireball.net/2020/12/m1_macs_truth_and_truthiness: ���M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs���all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants���

Nadim Kobeissi: On the Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Pro https://nadim.computer/posts/2020-11-26-macbookm1.html: ���Five nanometer process, an ARMv8-AArch64 instruction set, unified memory, separate performance and efficiency cores and a ton of accompanying hardware offering acceleration for video decoding, cryptographic operations and more. There���s also a bunch of dedicated silicon for GPU cores that have been shown to rival the Nvidia GTX 1060. This is all on an integrated SoC that consumes a maximum of 15 watts and that generally runs on far less. This is all in a context where Intel is shipping 45W and 65W processors inside laptops, built on 10-14nm transistors, with a dinosaur-age x64 instruction set and integrated graphics that are certainly not even close to competing with a dedicated GTX 1060���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-17

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2020-12-17.html

Briefly Noted for 2020-12-13

Supreme Court: 'The State of Texas���s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution��� https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121120zr_p860.pdf...

The Hellenistic Age Podcast: Syrian Nights, Macedonian Dreams https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2020/11/26/055-the-seleucid-empire-syrian-nights-macedonian-dreams/���

Melissa: My Singing Vegetables https://www.mysingingvegetables.com/���

Robert J. Gordon: The Rise & Fall of American Growth: 'The year 1870 represented modern America at dawn. Over the subsequent six decades, every aspect of life experienced a revolution. By 1929, urban America was electrified and almost every urban dwelling was networked, connected to the outside world with electricity, natural gas, telephone, clean running water, and sewers. By 1929, the horse had almost vanished from urban streets, and the ratio of motor vehicles to the number of households reached 90 percent. By 1929, the household could enjoy entertainment options that were beyond the 1870 imagination, including phonograph music, radio, and motion pictures exhibited in ornate movie palaces���

Noah Smith: Why I'm so Excited About Solar & Batteries https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-im-so-excited-about-solar-and: ���In the 19th century we switched to coal... in the 20th century we upgraded to oil.... After World War 2, a global extraction regime and price controls allowed us to keep cheap oil flowing. That ended with the Oil Shocks of the 70s. And though oil became cheaper again in the 80s and 90s, it never attained its former lows, or its low volatility. Then in the 00s it got expensive again.... We didn���t get anything better than oil during this time.... More expensive energy makes physical innovation harder in every way.... This stagnation in energy technology almost certainly contributed to the productivity slowdown of the 1970s.... Why didn���t bits fill the gap?... IT did drive the re-acceleration of productivity that began in the late 80s and continued through the early 00s.... But around 2005... that productivity growth faded.... Some have argued that digital services are substantially undervalued in our economic production statistics.... Physical technology is less ���skill-biased��� than IT, meaning that pretty much anyone can be a factory worker but only a few people can use computers productively and effectively... [or] IT simply touches less of our lives than energy does.... ���Bits��� innovation sometimes drives fast productivity growth, and sometimes doesn���t.��� The cost declines in solar and batteries ��� and to a lesser extent, in wind and other storage technologies���comprise a true technological revolution.... And there���s no end in sight to this revolution. New fundamental advances like solid state lithium-ion batteries and next-generation solar cells seem within reach, which will kick off another virtuous cycle of deployment, learning curves, and cost decreases���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-12

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2020-12-13.html

Briefly Noted for 2020-12-12

SIEPR Associate's Meeting with Josh Bolten https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVLqRr-PlhM&feature=youtu.be���

Matthew Yglesias: The Real History of Race & the New Deal https://www.slowboring.com/p/new-deal���

Robert Wade (2003): What Strategies Are Viable for Developing Countries Today? The World Trade Organization and the Shrinking of 'Development Space��� https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-wade-2003-strategies.pdf���

Wikipedia: Martha Gellhorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Gellhorn���

Martha Gellhorn: The Face of War https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-gellhorn-face.pdf...

Vowel https://www.vowel.com/���

Apple: AirPods Max https://www.apple.com/airpods-max/���

Filipe Esp��sito: iPad Air 4 Benchmark Results https://9to5mac.com/2020/10/04/ipad-air-4-benchmark-results-emerge-on-the-web-as-apple-reportedly-prepares-a14-apple-tv/: ���First observed by the Twitter user Ice universe, the Geekbench test was performed on an iPad Air 4 running iOS 14.0.1. The Geekbench score reports 1583 for single-core and 4198 for multi-core, compared to 1112 for single-core and 2832 for multi-core of the A12 Bionic chip that powers the previous iPad Air 3. That means the A14 chip has 42% better performance than the A12 chip in single-core and 48% better in multi-core ��� which can be considered a great improvement for those upgrading from an iPad Air 3. Compared to the iPhone 11���s A13 Bionic chip, the A14 chip is about 20% faster in single-core (1327) and 28% faster in multi-core (3286)���

Jessica Price: Do Not Be Daunted...: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1024317315620294657: '"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work. But neither are you free to abandon it...". The text it's referencing is from Pirkei Avot... part of the Mishnah.... Here's the quote that that meme is referencing (Pirkei Avot 2:15-16): "Rabbi Tarfon said: 'The day is short and the work is much, and the workers are lazy and the reward is great, and the Master of the house is pressing'. He used to say: 'It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it...'" While it's a translation that definitely isn't word-for-word, it's actually a very good interpretive translation and completely in keeping with the text.... The "do justly, now" triad is from Micah 6:8. The rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud assumed intimate familiarity with the entire Tanakh/Hebrew Bible, so they often make oblique references to verses and assume the reader will know the verse they're hinting at. The passage from Micah is one of the most famous elucidations of what the work of repairing the world, tikkun olam, consists of. So Shapiro adding it here isn't really an interpretive stretch--it's more just making the implicit explicit. And that beautiful opening? "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief"? It's definitely a bit of poetic license, but I'd say that's the point of "the day is short and the work is much������

Robert J. Gordon: The Rise & Fall of American Growth: 'The year 1870 represented modern America at dawn. Over the subsequent six decades, every aspect of life experienced a revolution. By 1929, urban America was electrified and almost every urban dwelling was networked, connected to the outside world with electricity, natural gas, telephone, clean running water, and sewers. By 1929, the horse had almost vanished from urban streets, and the ratio of motor vehicles to the number of households reached 90 percent. By 1929, the household could enjoy entertainment options that were beyond the 1870 imagination, including phonograph music, radio, and motion pictures exhibited in ornate movie palaces���

Tom Friedman (2005): It���s a Flat World, After All https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-friedman-2005-flat.pdf���

Daniel Jaffee (2012): Weak Coffee: Certification and Co-Optation in the Fair Trade Movement https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-jaffee-2012-weak-coffee.pdf���

Olga San Miguel-Valderrama (2009): Community Mothers & Flower Workers in Colombia https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-sanmiguel-2009-colombia.pdf���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-12

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