J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 13

Briefly Noted for 2020-12-11

Casey Newton: How Microsoft crushed Slack https://www.platformer.news/p/how-microsoft-crushed-slack: ���And why the era of worker-centered work tools may be over���

George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt���

DeLong COVID Dashboard https://research.stlouisfed.org/useraccount/dashboard/56322���

Ellora Derenoncourt & Claire Montialoux: Minimum Wages & Racial Inequality http://www.clairemontialoux.com/files/DM2020.pdf: ���The earnings difference between white and black workers fell dramatically in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.... The expansio... in this decline. The 1966 Fair Labor Standards Act extended federal minimum wage coverage to agriculture, restaurants, nursing homes, and other services which were previously uncovered and where nearly a third of black workers were employed.... Earnings rose sharply for workers in the newly covered industries. The impact was nearly twice as large for black workers as for white. Within treated industries, the racial gap adjusted for observables fell from 25 log points pre-reform to zero afterwards. We can rule out significant dis-employment effects for black workers.... The 1967 extension of the minimum wage can explain more than 20% of the reduction in the racial earnings and income gap during the Civil Rights Era���

Jonah Goldberg: Screwtape Went Down to Georgia https://gfile.thedispatch.com/p/screwtape-went-down-to-georgia: ���A certain subset of the right has convinced itself that the Democrats aren���t just wrong or even bad, but that they are singularly evil and lethally dangerous enemies of America, hell-bent on destroying all that is sacred by imposing godless socialism on us all. I���ll skip the usual structural reasons for this development���the Big Sort, media balkanization, and, yes, the behavior of some Democrats���and focus instead on the part relevant to my point. The president of the United States said this sort of thing a lot.... The president is a deeply flawed and crude person with a thumbless grasp of the Constitution, the duties of his office, and the most rudimentary tenets of religion and traditional morality. Because this is so incandescently obvious, casting the Democrats as an existential threat to All We Hold Dear makes it a lot easier to overlook these things. Hence all of that ���He���s our King David��� gibberish from the early days of the Trump presidency. When you���re in a Manichean existential battle with the unholy Forces of Darkness, it���s much easier to overlook the adultery, greed, deceit, and corruption of your anointed champion. Now, normally I���m not one to leap to the defense of Democrats, but I think offering the faint praise that they are not all evil incarnate is literally the least I can do.... For nearly five years now, it has been obvious that Trump was unfit for the job and the arguments marshaled in his defense were cynical rationalizations that, for some, eventually mutated into sincerely held delusions.... For a lot of otherwise decent politicians and commentators, doing the right thing was just too damn hard. At every stage, they fed the Trumpian alligator another piece of themselves and said ���This much, but no more.��� But now all that is left are stumps, and it���s hard to walk in the right direction on stumps or hold your hands up to shout, ���Stop!��� when you have no hands.... I understand that this all sounds awfully self-righteous. But I���ll tell you, I feel like I deserve my gloating. I���m not alone in my right to it, but I deserve my share. I���ve been saying ���don���t do this��� for five years and I���ve been mocked and shunned for it. So forgive me if I enjoy my I-told-you-so moment. Or don���t forgive me. I���m used to it���

Lisa Bryan: Hollandaise Sauce (Easy and No-Fail https://downshiftology.com/recipes/hollandaise-sauce/: ���The key to getting the consistency right all comes down to the hot melted butter. This recipe emulsifies butter into an egg yolk and lemon juice mixture. So you want to make sure you���re streaming in butter that���s hot enough (just melted won���t do). But in the case that your sauce does break and becomes a speckled mess, don���t fret. Below are two methods to try that will help bring your sauce back to life. Blend 1-2 tablespoons of boiling hot water: As you���re blending, slowly add in the hot water and blend until the consistency is right Add an extra egg yolk: While the blender is on, add an extra egg yolk with a teaspoon of hot water into the blender and blend until it becomes perfectly creamy���

Jonah Goldberg: As outrageous as his effort to delegitimize the election is���and it is very outrageous���that outrage pales like a lit candle next to the noonday summer sun when you compare it to an effort to literally overturn the popular and Electoral College vote and steal the election. But because that outcome is so unlikely, and Trump���s effort to pull it off is so comically inept, people are focusing on the more likely outrage rather than the more outrageous outrage. This was the plan.... His goal was always to steal the election if he didn���t win.... He told all of his voters to vote on Election Day. He expected this would give him a ���mirage��� lead that night, and then, because he had already established the illegitimacy of mail-in ballots, he could pretend to be justified in proclaiming victory on Election Night. Sure, there would be lawsuits and the like later, but Trump would have momentum on his side. He even telegraphed over and over that he expected the Supreme Court to come to his rescue.... That was his primary explanation for why he thought it was important to get Amy Coney Barrett confirmed. But as Grossman points out, there was just one problem: Trump wasn���t actually leading on Election Night.... This, by the way, explains why Trump World was so very, very, very, angry about Fox���s decision to call Arizona.... The Arizona call ruined the pretext. If Pennsylvania had been the tipping point, they thought they could get the election thrown to the court. But the Arizona call combined with the undeclared result in Georgia preempted that���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-11

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2020-12-11.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026bdeacc5f2200c/edit

Unemployment Insurance Claims Signal Renewed Recession

The Macro News: Th 2020-12-10: Starting last June with every week the US economy got better���at least, the number of people continuing to claim unemployment insurance fell when we calculate it on a seasonally adjusted basis. Some of this was people who had been receiving unemployment insurance finding jobs. Some of this was people reaching the end of the benefits to which they were entitled. Nevertheless, if you were people were flowing into the pool of those receiving unemployment insurance payments then were getting out of it.

But this past week's numbers are a sign that that period has come to an end. While one frost does not make a winter, both the seasonally adjusted number of people continuing to receive and the number of people newly claiming unemployment insurance benefits jumped up last week.

The natural way to read this is that the third wave of the coronavirus plague is starting to send the economy into renewed recession. It is, as it was before, not because of lockdowns. As before, the principal cause of the economy turning down is people getting scared, and deciding that they will postpone spending that requires close personal contact off to next year.

The professional Republicans appear to have decided to claim that what the government needs to do is to keep people hungry this winter so that they think they must go to work will-virus or nill-virus, and to block government action to keep spending economy wide from declining.

It���s going to be a bad winter.

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0NPbjiG4_8j4JiUN7iYr9YucA

https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/ui-claims-signal-2020-12-10.pptx

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/unemployment-insurance-claims-signal-renewed-recession.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026bdeac6d1d200c/edit

.#coronavirus #forecasting #macro #unemploymentinsurance #2020-12-10

12.2.1-6. Lectures: Neoliberalism's Bankruptcy :: Econ 115 F 2020

https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-115-module-12.2-lectures-neoliberalisms-bankruptcy-1.53.pptx

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0MO6Z220goOVByRPobcMpzJPQ

12.2.1. East Asia���s Miracles 22.00 min

12.2.2. China Stands Up 9.00 min

12.2.3. How Do We Think About the State���s Role Here? 10.75 min

12.2.4. The Business Cycle Background 10.75 min

12.2.5. The Coming of the Near-Second Great Depression: 2001���2009 21.75 min

12.2.6. Where Did the Regulators & Macroeconomic Managers Go? 9.75 min

1:32.00 of audio���

====

Plus

12.2.7. Zoom Lecture & Q&A https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/94569606763?pwd=VjBPSU5DOVlqUkVQZVJuLzVMTDlMdz09

12.2.0. Neoliberalism���t Bankruptcy 8.00 min
https://share.mmhmm.app/e38d4f2886064bd089de73ba73d450e7 https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0cSW4RyldJX6TkrqjBSNs2y3g

https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-115-module-12.2-lectures-neoliberalisms-bankruptcy-1.53.pptx

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0MO6Z220goOVByRPobcMpzJPQ

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/11/1221-6-lectures-neoliberalisms-bankruptcy.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026bdea9692d200c/edit

12.2.0. Intro Video: Neoliberalism's Bankruptcy: Econ 115 F 2020

Interactive Video: https://share.mmhmm.app/e38d4f2886064bd089de73ba73d450e7 8:00 min

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0cSW4RyldJX6TkrqjBSNs2y3g

.berkeley #econ115 #economichistory #highlighted #politicaleconomy #2020-11-30

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/11/1220-intro-video-neoliberalisms-bankruptcy-econ-115-f-2020.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026bdea966df200c/edit

Briefly Noted for 2020-11-28

Mark Price: Adam Looney. Phd from Harvard. Undergrad at Dartmouth https://twitter.com/price_laborecon/status/1332651699450810371. Oh boy, can you smell trouble. If you can���t you may want to get tested for COVID-19. He served among other places in Obama���s Treasury. He has an op-ed from a little over a week ago which I���m not going to share again where he argues against the Warren-Schumer proposal to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt���. The point of the Schumer-Warren proposal is Biden can act without the Senate. We all want and need effort to help people cushion the crippling blow of COVID-19 but we have to wait for the Senate. Elevating food stamps as a superior form of stimulus is dishonest at best and deeply hypocritical for a man whose income is facilitated by a Koch-funded enterprise.... Another economist tweeted out the Looney Op-ed invoking their having worked with him in the Obama Administration.... The world is full of really wonderful people who went to Dartmouth and Harvard and work very hard to make sure that millions of poor and middle income children don���t get the same opportunities in life as their own children. That���s a hard lesson for people to learn and it���s an illustration of the way elite networks reinforce and reproduce inequality���

Duncan Black: ell Paid Bullshit Artists https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/11/well-paid-bullshit-artists.html: ���A standard trick in DC policy circles is to derail any policy by focusing on a "better" policy, which lets you imply the policy's advocates are stupid and/or cruel. One reason to focus on something like debt reduction is that it is something Biden has the power to do, unlike most everything else. This isn't the only reason. It's good on the merits, too, for a variety of reasons, but unless you have a plan to get Mitch McConnell to pass your fantasy plan, then you are just trolling���\

Andy Matuschak & Michael Nielsen: Quantum Country https://quantum.country/���

Jean-Louis Gass��e: PC Life After Apple Silicon https://mondaynote.com/pc-life-after-apple-silicon-a96861f58442: ���Apple Silicon, in its first incarnation as the M1 System-on-a Chip, combined with a new macOS version, is about to expand Apple���s share of the PC market ��� at Intel���s expense���

Paul Musgrave: McDonalds Peace Theory Epitomized America's 1990s Hubris https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/26/mcdonalds-peace-nagornokarabakh-friedman/: ���In the rich, lazy, and happy 1990s, Americans imagined a world that could be just like them���

Scott Cunningham: Causal Inference: The Mixtape https://scunning.com/cunningham_mixtape.pdf���

Charles P. Pierce: George H.W. Bush Dead at 94-41st President Failed to Confront the Republican Party's Rising Madness...

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-11-28

Briefly Noted for 2020-11-26

**Sully Prudhomme**: _Le Vase Bris�� (The Broken Vase)_ ���

**Jay Rosen**: : The GOP's verified account sent this out. That he won in a landslide. Here, I think, the party made official its break with American democracy. Not saying it wasn't apparent before. It was. Just more official now. As ridiculous as Sydney Powell is, this is a sobering moment. ���

**Kevin Liptak & Devan Cole**: _Chris Christie Calls Trump's Legal Team a 'National Embarrassment'_ : ���Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Trump has failed to provide any evidence of fraud, that his legal team was in shambles and that it's time to put the country first. "If you have got the evidence of fraud, present it," Christie said.... He decried efforts by the President's lawyers to smear Republican governors who have not gone along with the President's false claims of voter malfeasance. "Quite frankly, the conduct of the President's legal team has been a national embarrassment," he said, singling out Trump attorney Sidney Powell's accusations against Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp���

**Lex**: _Workers vs Robots: A New Kind of Onshoring_ : ���Oil rigs have been on the automation march for most of the past decade. Remote control rooms can manage everything from drilling to procurement. The safety advantage of having fewer bodies on rigs is obvious in a pandemic. Benefits to the bottom line are just as clear. Equinor, as Statoil is now known, says the move added more than NKr2bn ($212m) to earnings within a year of its Johan Sverdrup rig going digital.��The biggest savings come from shrunken payrolls. In the developed world, robots are set to replace humans in a range of physically tough, repetitive jobs, from order picking in warehouses to lifting the old and infirm���

**Josh Marshall**: _Folks, Let���s Get It the F--- Together_ : ���I really don���t know what the two years holds. But I���m certain of one thing. It is and will be immeasurably better than Donald Trump having been reelected to a second term in office. No question. You did that. You owe it to yourself to get pumped and rejoice in that. It���s something to savor. It will help sustain you through endless civic work to come���

**Jodi Enda**: _Trump���s Unexpected Power Helps Republicans Win Even If He Doesn���t_ : ���When Trump���s name is on the top of the ballot, Republicans down the line do better. It feels strange to write that sentence since Trump himself might lose the presidency in this nail-biter of an election. But it remains true that both times he topped the ticket, Republicans down the ballot out-performed expectations���

**Wikipedia**: _Leo Strauss_ : Strauss had also been engaged in a discourse with Carl Schmitt. However, after Strauss left Germany, he broke off the discourse when Schmitt failed to respond to his letters���. In 1932, Strauss left his position at the Higher Institute for Jewish Studies in Berlin for Paris��� married Marie (Miriam) Bernsohn, a widow with a young child���. Strauss became a lifelong friend of Alexandre Koj��ve and was on friendly terms with Raymond Aron, Alexandre Koyr��, and ��tienne Gilson���. Strauss found shelter, after some vicissitudes, in England, where, in 1935 he gained temporary employment at University of Cambridge, with the help of his in-law, David Daube, who was affiliated with Gonville and Caius College. While in England, he became a close friend of R. H. Tawney���. Unable to find permanent employment in England, Strauss moved in 1937 to the United States, under the patronage of Harold Laski, who made introductions and helped him obtain a brief lectureship���. Strauss secured a position at The New School, where, between 1938 and 1948, he worked the political science faculty and also took on adjunct jobs���. In 1949 he became a professor of political science at the University of Chicago���

**Om Malik**: _Why Are We Underestimating Zoom & It���s Impact?_ : ���The prevalence of Zoom has shown us that working from a home office can be better than sitting in traffic for two hours. Even if, at this point, we find ourselves despising Zoom and complaining of persistent Zoom fatigue, we will not be going back to our pre-Zoom ways after the pandemic subsides. Whether Zoom remains the standard or gets overtaken by some upstart, Bill Gates predicts ���that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away������

Rated: 5: **Scott Peterson**: _ROX Sonoma Coast Chardonnay 2019_ ���

**Alison Roman**: _Dan Roman's Buttery Roasted Chestnuts in Foil_ ���

**Christy Denney**: _Classic Stuffing Recipe_ ...



----

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-11-26

Boehlert: A Crack in the Noise Machine: How Murdoch Derailed Trump���Noted

The thoughtful and insightful Eric Boehlert misses the major moment at which Rupert Murdoch put his press empire at the service of Joe Biden and America in ending the insane clown show that his been the presidential reign of Donald Trump. On the evening of election day, at 23:20 EST, Arnon Mishkin on the Fox News decision desk called Arizona and its 11 electoral votes for Joe Biden. Without Arizona, Trump would need not just Georgia (which Biden won by 0.2%) and Wisconsin (which Biden won by 0.7%) but also at least one of Pennsylvania (which Biden won by 1.2%) or Michigan (which Biden won by 2.8%). Calling Arizona for Biden put an election close enough that it could be decided for Trump by complaisant judges and a little more voter suppression out of reach. Yet Biden won Arizona, in the end, by only 0.3%.

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0yDiAW0blL0iFnRMqyYSAuWIQ

Fox News did not call Michigan and Wisconsin for Biden until Wednesday afternoon, and did not call Pennsylvania until Saturday, and did not call Georgia until the 21st. Calling Arizona for Biden kept Fox News reporters and anchors���and those who relied on Fox���s numbers���from stating that Trump was on the way to victory Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

Arnon Mishkin���s thinking remains obscure. Facing pushback at Fox News Wednesday about how Trump might still have the votes outstanding to catch Biden, Mishkin snarked: ���If a frog had wings������ Mishkin said that he had made the call with only 20% of the vote outstanding. But if that outstanding vote had broken more than 1-in-60 for Trump than it in fact did, Trump would have won Arizona. ���Too close to call as of Tuesday night��� seems to have been the reality. Mishkin���s call was based on a misjudgment of how the vote would come in. The question we will probably never now for certain is how he came to make that misjudgment:

Eric Boehlert: A Crack in the Noise Machine: How Murdoch Derailed Trump https://pressrun.media/p/how-murdoch-derailed-trump: ���A longtime Beltway columnist recently lowered the boom on Republicans. "The sheer nuttiness surrounding the current mess is becoming deeply destructive," she wrote. "There is no realistic route to victory for the president, only to confusion and chaos and undermining"...

...If the wounded president is looking for media voices of comfort since Election Day, the last place he should look is Rupert Murdoch's editorial page at the Wall Street Journal. A longtime bastion of right-wing rhetoric and propaganda, the opinion section that waged a hysterical war on Bill Clinton for eight years and that remained a mostly steadfast ally of Trump, has had a clear message for him in recent weeks: Here's your hat, what's your hurry. That was the directive columnist Peggy Noonan sent last week in the passages quoted above, penning a sneering take-down....

Noonan has hardly been alone as Journal columnists, as well as the unsigned editorials that run on the page, have all lined up to mock and belittle Trump's failed effort to steal an election.... Using all three of his American properties, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch clearly sent a top-down message that he did not support Trump....

GOP propaganda works best, and has proven to be so effective over the years years, when there's a united media front pushing the same lies and distortions. It creates a powerful feedback loop.... It���s clear that it was Murdoch who sent out the dictate and who for weeks has enforced the company line. None of this stuff happens by chance.... For the last three weeks he's been using them to send a message to Trump, 'Move on,��� especially the hard-right pages of the Journal:

"If Mr. Trump had solid evidence of massive wrongdoing, it should be taken to court by a serious practicing attorney. Mr. Giuliani���s role as lead lawyer suggests this is political theater."
"His efforts so far to prove massive fraud have been as successful as O.J. Simpson���s efforts to find the real killer."
"There's no good evidence of voting problems that would come close to Mr. Biden���s lead of 73,000 votes in Pennsylvania or 145,000 in Michigan."

At the Post, the paper accused Trump of making an ���unfounded claim that political foes were trying to steal the election," while mocking his son, Donald Trump Jr., as the ���panic-stricken��� author of a ���clueless tweet" about election fraud.... "It���s a pervasive, unpatriotic lie," Jonah Goldberg said. "They are alleging an insane, bat guano crazy conspiracy theory."...

I don't know why he chose this moment to oppose Trump.... It���s important to note the role the media play in our politics and how small, rare rifts within the right-wing echo chamber can have long-term consequences.

.#noted #2020-11-25

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/11/boehlert-a-crack-in-the-noise-machine-how-murdoch-derailed-trumpnoted.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f0800388340263e97ad759200b/edit

Briefly Noted for 2020-11-25

Bibliotheca Augustana: Tapetum Bagianum http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost11/Bayeux/bay_tama.html: ���c. 1080���

Bret Devereaux: Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers! https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/���

Bret Devereaux: Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It? Part I, Mining https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-mining/���

Wikipedia: Pioneer Hi Bred International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Hi_Bred_International���

Wikipedia: DeKalb Genetics Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeKalb_Genetics_Corporation���

Steven Rattner: God Help Us if Judy Shelton Joins the Fed https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/opinion/federal-reserve-judy-shelton.html?smid=tw-share: ���Trump���s latest unqualified nominee to the Federal Reserve Board must be rejected...

Jeremiah: 22 KJV https://biblehub.com/kjv/jeremiah/22.htm: ���Thus saith the LORD: "Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place. For if ye do this thing indeed, then shall there enter in by the gates of this house kings sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, he, and his servants, and his people. But if ye will not hear these words, I swear by myself", saith the LORD, "that this house shall become a desolation." For thus saith the LORD unto the king's house of Judah: "Thou art Gilead unto me, and the head of Lebanon: yet surely I will make thee a wilderness, and cities which are not inhabited. And I will prepare destroyers against thee, every one with his weapons: and they shall cut down thy choice cedars, and cast them into the fire. And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say every man to his neighbour, 'Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this great city?' Then they shall answer, 'Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them'"���

Duncan Black: Failed 4th Estate https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/11/failed-4th-estate.html: ���I think the very Trump-specific sin of the media (as opposed to their normal sinning) was confusing an understandable decision to "treat this lunatic freakazoid as we would normally treat a president" with "go out of our way to portray this lunatic freakazoid as normal." I get it. It was difficult to do the first part without doing the second part. If the scandal-o-meter goes up to 7 on a tan suit, then anything resembling normal practices can't cope when Trump makes it hit 11 by 7am most days. And, who knows, maybe they didn't even do him any favors. Maybe The People love their lunatic freakazoid president. But the first draft of history has hardly been an accurate one���

Utah HERO Project: Covid-Research State Chart https://marriner.eccles.utah.edu/covid-research-state-chart/���

Joan Robinson (1962): Economic Philosophy ���

Bret Devereaux: Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It? Part I, Mining https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-mining/���

Oliver Wyman: Model Projections for COVID-19 Cases https://pandemicnavigator.oliverwyman.com/forecast?mode=country&region=United%20States&panel=baseline���

On 2017-12-17, Michael Boskin claimed the TMR tax cut would generate a big boom in equipment investment. Perhaps a full percentage point or so. None of the model-builders agreed with him. And he was wrong: there was none such in 2018 or 2019; spending did not wheel from consumption to investment; ���unlocked��� foreign earnings were paid out in dividends, not invested in equipment. He has never explained or analyzed why he was wrong. Or why he was confident in the first place: Michael Boskin (29017): Another Look at Tax Reform and Economic Growth__https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/republican-tax-plan-growth-effects-by-michael-boskin-2017-12���

100+ Economists (2017): Pass tax reform and watch the economy roar https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tax-reform-opinion-congress-pass-2017-11���

Stan Sakai: Usagi Yojimbo https://www.usagiyojimbo.com/: ���First published in 1984, [it] continues to this day. Usagi Yojimbo is one of the longest independent serialized comic book series in existence. Stan Sakai, the sole creator, author, and artist who is best known for his series Usagi Yojimbo, the epic saga of Miyamoto Usagi, a��samurai��rabbit living in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century Japan. ��Since then, Stan Sakai��has received numerous awards for Usagi Yojimbo including the�� National Cartoonists Society Award, multiple Eisner Awards, the Parents' Choice Award, and Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist���

An unprofessional beat sweetener about a Trumpism lobbyist who could neither plan nor execute a successful trade war: Jim Zarroli (2019): China Trade Talks: USTR Robert Lighthizer Is Trump's Hardball-Playing Negotiator https://www.npr.org/2019/02/21/696277594/expect-change-robert-lighthizer-is-trump-s-hardball-playing-china-trade-negotiat���

John Gruber: One More Thing: The M1 Macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/one_more_thing_the_m1_macs: ���The M1. The new M1-based MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini are... three different manifestations of the same computer... far faster machines than the Intel-based Macs they���re replacing. But the big win, and clear focus from Apple, isn���t speed but battery life.... This is the sellable bullet point for the mass market consumer.... The M1 really is an entire system on a chip. Everything is on the M1. The various processors, of course: the CPU cores, the GPU cores, the Neural Engine cores. But everything else is on the M1 too: the storage controller, the Secure Enclave, the memory controller, and, yes, the memory itself. The DRAM for M1-based Macs is on the package (���on the substrate���, I believe, is the technical lingo).... There���s no separate ���video memory��� and ���system memory������just memory.... Apple���s chip team is really proud of this UMA system and the integrated GPU on the M1. It���s a design that increases performance and power efficiency.... For over a decade, iPhones and iPads have had Apple-designed chips the competition could not and still cannot match. Now the Mac does too���

Sara Gibbs: Everything I Never Wanted to Have to Know About Labour & Antisemitismm https://medium.com/@sararoseofficial/everything-i-never-wanted-to-have-to-know-about-labour-and-antisemitism-649b5bc1e576: ���I want the last four years of my life back.... If you���re new to this and listening, thank you. I know a lot of my fellow activists will be annoyed that I���m taking this tone but at this point I am so exhausted from four years of begging people to listen on this subject that I am grateful for any new allies and support. If you are listening, you���re already doing more than most.
One of the most devastating aspects of Labour���s antisemitism crisis has been seeing the sheer volume of people I like, respect, even consider friends, denying or minimising this issue which has caused me so much personal devastation���

A huge amount���an absolutely huge amount���was lost when Harry Dexter White overrode John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods and placed responsibility for closing "fundamental disequilibria" on deficit countries alone. This policy mistake still haunts us. And odds are that it is about to haunt us again. Jeremy Bulow and Company sound the alarm: Jeremy Bulow & al.: The Debt Pandemic https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2020/09/debt-pandemic-reinhart-rogoff-bulow-trebesch.htm: ���The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly lengthened the list of developing and emerging market economies in debt distress. For some, a crisis is imminent. For many more, only exceptionally low global interest rates may be delaying a reckoning.... Yet new challenges may hamper debt workouts unless governments and multilateral lenders provide better tools to navigate a wave of restructuring���

*Neil Fligstein & Steve Vogel *: Political Economy After Neoliberalism http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/neil-fligstein-steven-vogel-political-economy-after-neoliberalism: ���First, then, governments and markets are co-constituted. Government regulation is not an intrusion into the market but rather a prerequisite for a functioning market economy.... Second, real-world political economy hinges on power, both political and market power. Specific forms of market governance���of the kinds we just sketched���do not arise naturally or innocently. They are the product of power struggles between firms, industries, workers, and governments within particular markets and in the political arena.... Third, there is more than one way to organize society to achieve economic growth, equity, and access to valued goods and services. The balance of power between government, workers, and firms differs greatly across countries and time���

Rachel Reeves: Best for Britain https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1288825505333030923: ���The PM said��� a trade deal would be secured by the end of July. Well��� we don���t have a trade deal. All we have is a blueprint for a giant lorry park in the middle of Kent���

Alan S. Blinder & Mark W. Watson (2016): Presidents & the US Economy: An Econometric Exploration https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20140913: ���The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regard- less of how one measures performance. For many measures, includ- ing real GDP growth (our focus), the performance gap is large and significant. This paper asks why. The answer is not found in technical time series matters nor in systematically more expansionary mone- tary or fiscal policy under Democrats. Rather, it appears that the Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, supe- rior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future���

Wikipedia_: Cocoliztli Epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoliztli_epidemics: ���A mysterious illness characterized by high fevers and bleeding. It ravaged the Mexican highlands in epidemic proportions... often referred to as the worst disease epidemic in the history of Mexico.... Recent bacterial genomic studies have suggested that.. a serotype of Salmonella enterica known as Paratyphi C, was at least partially responsible for this initial outbreak.[3] It might have also been an indigenous viral hemorrhagic fever

Paul Krugman: Why Did Trump���s Trade War Fail? https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Programs/Economics/Other%20docs/tradewarfail.pdf: ���There used to be an extensive literature on ���effective protection���.... Tariffs on imported inputs provided negative effective protection to downstream activities.
And that���s what seems to have happened with the Trump trade war. Tariffs were largely focused on intermediate rather than final goods. The net effect, then, may actually have been to discourage manufacturing!���

====

Plus: Kevin Drum: Why Are Republicans Being Such Assholes?s https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/07/why-are-republicans-being-such-assholes/: ���Bonus unemployment payments... expire today.... The main reason for extending them is because there are millions of Americans who are out of work and they desperately need the money.... [Plus] if the payments are cut off it will devastate an already ravaged economy.... So why are Republicans hemming and hawing?... From a purely selfish perspective, Republicans ought to be in favor of doing anything they can to keep the economy in decent shape through the election.... The whole thing is a disgrace.... Why are Republicans acting so contemptibly?���

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson & Mark Vandevelde: Stephen Schwarzman Defended Donald Trump at CEO Meeting on Election Results https://www.ft.com/content/558f2a68-7d42-4702-b86d-fae5458b3e64: ���Mr Schwarzman, a Republican donor who has been one of Mr Trump���s most energetic supporters on Wall Street, sought to assuage such fears, saying the president was within his rights to challenge election results and forecasting that the legal process would take its course. He asked whether other participants did not find it surprising that early votes in Pennsylvania had favoured Mr Trump, only for later counts to tip the state in Mr Biden���s favour. Mr Schwarzman said there had been news reports stating that ballots continued arriving days after the election and that some of them may not have been real���issues, he said, that needed to be resolved by the courts, as the president���s legal team has argued���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-11-25

Briefly Noted for 2020-11-24

Jonathan Bernstein (2020-11-19): Senate Republicans, Stop Trump���s Vote Antics Now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-19/senate-republicans-stop-trump-s-vote-antics-now: ���It���s no longer enough just to acknowledge the obvious fact that Biden won���

Jonathan Bernstein (2020-11-10): Donald Trump���s Antics Show Contempt for His Own Voters https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-19/donald-trump-s-antics-show-contempt-for-his-own-voters: ���The president���s election challenges have no realistic chance of succeeding. The goal now is to keep the donations flowing���

Jonathan Bernstein (2020-11-18): Why Are Republicans Embracing Judy Shelton for the Fed Now? https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-18/why-are-republicans-embracing-judy-shelton-for-the-fed-now: ���After months of blocking her nomination to the Fed, suddenly the Senate majority has had a change of heart���

Jonathan Bernstein (2020-11-17): Joe Biden Has One Urgent Task Right Now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-17/joe-biden-has-one-urgent-task-right-now: ���The president-elect can do something Donald Trump never has: offer a coherent message on Covid-19���

Jonathan Schifman: The Entire History of Steel https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20722505/history-of-steel/: ���From hunks of iron streaking through the sky, to the construction of skyscrapers and megastructures, this is the history of the world's greatest alloy���

Wikipedia: David Malpass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Malpass���

Wikipedia: Kenneth Elzinga https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=kenneth+elzinga&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8���

Wikipedia: Ferrous Metallurgy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrous_metallurgy | History of the Steel Industry (1850���1970) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steel_industry_(1850%E21970) | History of the Steel Industry (1970���Present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steel_industry_(1970%E2present)

Steve Randy Waldman: Social democracy or feudalism https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/8012.html: ���if we should recognize an echo of empire in contemporary trade imbalances, should we not also recognize an echo of feudalism in contemporary class dynamics? The class wars embedded in trade wars of the past generation have provoked growing chasms of inequality (within societies inscribed by nation-state borders), along with (oh Gatsby curve) declining mobility and dynamism between classes���

Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22120/22120-h/22120-h.htm: ���Now preye I to hem alle that herkne this litel tretis or rede, that if ther be any thing in it that lyketh hem, that ther-of they thanken oure lord Iesu Crist, of whom procedeth al wit and al goodnesse. And if ther be any thing that displese hem, I preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute of myn unconninge, and nat to my wil, that wolde ful fayn have seyd bettre if I hadde had conninge. For oure boke seith, 'al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine'; and that is myn entente���

Scott Lemieux: COVID's Been Everywhere, Man https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/11/covids-been-everywhere-man: ���Remember when Bret Stephens assured us that it was unpossible for COVID to spread beyond the densest urban areas? Obviously, he started with the premise that doing anything to stop the pandemic was bad���. Pro-Trump Republicans are no more likely to update their priors despite them being massively wrong all along���. Bret Stephens is, at least in a strictly formal sense, a professional writer���

Steve M.: Is This Futile? https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2020/11/are-we-sure-they-know-this-is-futile.html: ���47% of the country will have an even darker view of Democrats and cities and black voters and "the Deep State." Then we'll be even more divided and the right will be even angrier and more paranoid���. But these cynics don't care that they're encouraging a state of permanent cold civil war���

.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-11-24

11.1. The Neoliberal Turn, & Hyperglobalization: Readings: Econ 115 F 2020

Required Readings Note:

The required readings for Module 11 are rather long���but not nearly as long as for Modules 9 & 5, where I wound up taking two weeks per module.

There is Skidelsky chapter 6 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapter-skidelsky-keynes-6.pdf. The chapters of Skidelsky before this one I've been all about how canes was smart and right. This chapter is, from Skidelsky���s view as of 1995, as an enthusiastic advocate of the neoliberal turn, how Keynes���s disciples were dumb and wrong. It is a very good analysis, on the level of events and ideas, of why people decided to take the neoliberal turn.

11.1. The Neoliberal Turn, & Hyperglobalization: Readings

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0wiN44cBruFAXnvv0weXzgCNw

https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-115-module-11.1-neoliberal-turn-readings.pptx

https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/11/111-the-neoliberal-turn-hyperglobalization-readings.html

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026bdea77620200c/edit
Frame your reading of it around these three quotes:

Anyone who wants to keep the spirit of Keynes alive has to face the failures of Keynesianism honestly, without always trying to shield the Master from the mistakes of the disciples. In essence, the Keynesian revolution was ruined by over- ambition ��� hubris might be a better word -driven by impatience and backed by unwarranted claims to both theoretical and practical knowledge. The monetarist counter-revolution was a plea for more modesty, and greater trust in the spontaneous forces of the market���

Keynesian policies come to us today wrapped up in a history of rising inflation, unsound public finance, expanding statism, collapsing corporatism, and general ungovernability, all of which have seemed inseparable from the Keynesian cure for the afflictions of industrial society���. By the 1980s, Keynes��� had joined Marx as the God that failed���

Keynes���s star was fading���. The Keynesian age had collapsed in theoretical disarray and policy disorder, victim of simultaneous inflation and unemployment which Keynesian economists could not explain and Keynesian policy-makers could not control. It was in this situation that classical economics��� [that] Keynes had apparently overthrown��� made a big comeback, and governments reverted to a modified pre-Keynesian policy stance. Markets were deemed to be optimally self-regulating; the macroeconomic task of government was restricted to to maintaining ���sound money���; government���s task in the micro-economy was to free up markets in order to lower the ���natural rate of unemployment���. The revival of classical economics and its theory of economic policy���

 

Eichengreen: Globalizing Capital 5-7 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapters-eichengreen-globalizing-5-6-7.pdf tells the same story as Skidelsky ch 6 at much greater length, and with much more focus on the international side. It, too, broadly approves of the neoliberal turn���or at least regards it as inevitable. In Eichengreen���s view, countries could not simultaneously (a) reap the benefits of market allocation of investment capital and incentivization of savings, (b) stabilize their domestic economies, and (c) stabilize exchange rates so that they would not be massively vulnerable to international currency and financial markets. They could not control, but had to submit to the market: the question was how best to do so.

Eichengreen when writing this version of GC (there is a later one) saw European countries as giving up their individual abilities to stabilize their economies (betting that recessions would be small, short, and infrequent) and other countries as giving up exchange rate stability (in large part because half a century had taught that countries could not keep their promises to forever peg their currency to the dollar.)

I thought of making this Eichengreen reading optional���indeed, I would recommend you skip it now, and read it during R&R week as review as an alternative to rereading Skidelsky ch 6.

 

In fact, let me make that recommendation stronger. The other outside reading is Eichengreen: Populist ch 8 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapter-eichengreen-populist-8.pdf. It, too, goes over the same ground���things falling apart, although Barry���s chapter title only echoes and does not copy Achebe https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-achebe-things.pdf and Yeats https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/poem-yeats-1919-second-coming.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem). One thing worth noting is where Barry quotes economist Sidney Weintraub on the Carter years 1977-1981 that Carter had ���succeeded ��� where all Democrats���and Republicans���have failed��� namely, in making his own name a synonym for economic mismanagement and expunging memories of Herbert Hoover dawdling at the onset of the Great Depression���. The extraordinary thing is that growth was faster in the Carter years than it was to be later���the only thing wrong was moderate inflation. And yet: ���AS BAD AS OR WROSE THAN HERBERT HOOVER!!��� was the then-public reaction. The Trente Glorieuses had really raised the bar. (But then, somehow, the bar was immediately lowered again���for the new neoliberal order persisted.)
This chapter is worth reading closely, as Barry gives a masterful summary of how, in the global north, neoliberal policies failed to deliver any notably good results, and few results at all except for an enormous rise in income and wealth inequality, the creation of plutocracy, and the illusion of stability and low risk���an illusion that was going to be brutally shattered in 2008.

 

And then there are the three DeLong chapters. Usually you would be well-advised to pay close attention to what I have written. Perhaps not here. I am less confident that I have the right interpretation of these historical processes than of the rest of this history. And I am less satisfied with the arrangement I have made of things. Chapter 19 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/slouching-19-neoliberal-%23tceh.pdf is worth studying. Chapter 21 is worth skimming���I am far from sure I have gotten the argument right here https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/slouching-21-cold-war-end-%23tceh.pdf. And chapter 22 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/slouching-22-hyperglobalization-%23tceh.pdf is both repetitious and unfinished���I had hoped to have another draft for you by now, but I do not. I regret this.

 

====

 

Required Readings:

Skidelsky: Keynes ch 6 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapter-skidelsky-keynes-6.pdf
Barry Eichengreen: The Populist Temptation ch 8 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapter-eichengreen-populist-8.pdf

Barry Eichengreen: Globalizing chs 5-7 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapters-eichengreen-globalizing-5-6-7.pdf

DeLong chs 19, 21, & 22 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/slouching-19-neoliberal-%23tceh.pdf https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/slouching-21-cold-war-end-%23tceh.pdf https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/slouching-22-hyperglobalization-%23tceh.pdf

 

====

 

Optional Reading:
Richard Baldwin: The Great Convergence https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/book-baldwin-great-convergence.pdf

.#berkeley #economicgrowth #globalization #highighted #neoliberalism #neoliberalturn #politicaleconomy #tceh #teaching #slouchingtowardsutopia #2020-11-23