J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 152

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: "Nothing at all wro...

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: "Nothing at all wrong with Weller, really. The truly odd point appears to be how he got nominated. It seems that Trump was pleased that Jim Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Fed, voted to cut the funds rate at the last meeting, and offered Jim the slot. Bullard turned it down (no regional president would ever be included to accept a Board post other than Chair or Vice Chair; no more real power, combined with less pay and no staff) and suggested Weller. That's not the usual way these things get done. The only 'hasty' Board nomination I can recall was Paul Volcker being named chair in the immediate wake of Bill Miller becoming Treasury Secretary. But in 1979 there was a clear need to have that slot filled as quickly as possible by a person of Volcker's (dare I say...) stature (groan). Update: Whoops���it slipped my mind that Martin replacing McCabe in 1951 was rushed. But the circumstances were also pretty extraordinary, even more so than 1979: the FOMC had pretty openly defied the President in the middle of a major shooting war. McCable (and Eccles) had to go as part of the Accord. Truman thought he got his guy in at the Fed, but learned otherwise...

#commentoftheday

Liveblogging: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Gregory, Augustine, and Ceolwulf

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.A. Giles and J. Ingram trans.): __: "A.D. 596. This year Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Britain with very many monks, to preach the word of God to the English people...

A.D. 597. This year began Ceolwulf to reign over the West-Saxons; and he constantly fought and conquered, either with the Angles, or the Welsh, or the Picts, or the Scots. He was the son of Cutha, Cutha of Cynric, Cynric of Cerdic, Cerdic of Elesa, Elesa of Gewis, Gewis of Wye, Wye of Frewin, Frewin of Frithgar, Frithgar of Brand, Brand of Balday, and Balday of Woden. This year came Augustine and his companions to England.

A.D. 601. This year Pope Gregory sent the pall to Archbishop Augustine in Britain, with very many learned doctors to assist him; and Bishop Paulinus converted Edwin, king of the Northumbrians, to baptism.

A.D. 603. This year Aeden, king of the Scots, fought with the Dalreathians, and with Ethelfrith, king of the Northumbrians, at Theakstone; where he lost almost all his army. Theobald also, brother of Ethelfrith, with his whole armament, was slain. None of the Scottish kings durst afterwards bring an army against this nation. Hering, the son of Hussa, led the army thither...

#liveblogging #history #anglosaxonchronicle

Liveblogging: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Ceawlin and Friends

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (J.A. Giles and J. Ingram trans.): __: "A.D. 568. This year Ceawlin, and Cutha the brother of Ceawlin, fought with Ethelbert, and pursued him into Kent. And they slew two aldermen at Wimbledon, Oslake and Cnebba...

...A.D. 571. This year Cuthulf fought with the Britons at Bedford, and took four towns, Lenbury, Aylesbury, Benson, and Ensham. And this same year he died.

A.D. 577. This year Cuthwin and Ceawlin fought with the Britons, and slew three kings, Commail, and Condida, and Farinmail, on the spot that is called Derham, and took from them three cities, Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath.

A.D. 583. This year Mauricius succeeded to the empire of the Romans.

A.D. 584. This year Ceawlin and Cutha fought with the Britons on the spot that is called Fretherne. There Cutha was slain. And Ceawlin took many towns, as well as immense booty and wealth. He then retreated to his own people.

A.D. 588. This year died King Ella; and Ethelric reigned after him five years.

A.D. 591. This year there was a great slaughter of Britons at Wanborough; Ceawlin was driven from his kingdom, and Ceolric reigned six years.

A.D. 592. This year Gregory succeeded to the papacy at Rome.

A.D. 593. This year died Ceawlin, and Cwichelm, and Cryda; and Ethelfrith succeeded to the kingdom of theNorthumbrians. He was the son of Ethelric; Ethelric of Ida...

#liveblogging #history #anglosaxonchronicle

Africa is the only region in which the number of people i...

Africa is the only region in which the number of people in dire poverty continues to increase. Can industrialization help? Maybe���but it may be too late for industrial firms to be a leading sector: Bright Simons: Africa���s Unsung ���Industrial Revolution���: "There is an industrial revolution underway in sub-Saharan Africa���s most entrepreneurial economies���places such as Ghana, Uganda, Senegal, and C��te d���Ivoire... Alibaba industrialisation.... No one is entirely sure why protectionist and state-led industrial policies of the type described earlier seem to induce large-scale industrialisation in Vietnam, South Korea, and Taiwan but not in Nigeria, Laos, or Uzbekistan. Every theory adduced is racked with contradictions and does not survive granular examination.... Small and medium-sized Chinese suppliers provide major chunks of the industrial jigsaw and African hustlers and unconventional industrialists act as shuttle-brokers of the various factors of production between China and Africa.... Chinese SMEs are becoming sophisticated global opportunity hunters, ditching the somewhat passive role they played as cogs in the Western outsourcing wheel three decades ago.... tailoring solutions for individual African country terrains, complete with logistics, training, and support packages. The effects of the modular transformation of the African industrial sector, whilst subtle, are already fascinating: reassembled knockdown luxury cars in Ghana; cutting-edge clay brick kilns in Uganda; and milk-vending now a thing in Kenya...

#noted

The old "secular stagnation" of the 1930s and 1940s was a...

The old "secular stagnation" of the 1930s and 1940s was a fear that the world was approaching satiation with respect to things that it would be profitable to build. The new "secular stagnation" is much more a fear of growing monopoly power and a growing desire for safety. It is thus a very different thing���or, rather, two different things happening alongside each other:

Emmanuel Farhi and Francois Gourio: Accounting for Macro-Finance Trends: "Most developed economies have experienced large declines in risk-free interest rates and lacklustre investment over the past 30 years, while the profitability of private capital has increased slightly. Using an extension of the neoclassical growth model, this column identifies what accounts for these developments. It finds that rising market power, rising unmeasured intangibles, and rising risk premia play a crucial role, over and above the traditional culprits of increasing savings supply and technological growth slowdown...

#noted

Very wise from Josh Barro: There���s No Need for the Sena...

Very wise from Josh Barro: There���s No Need for the Senate to Confirm Anyone to the Fed: "Trump... says he will nominate Judy Shelton and Christopher Waller to... fill out the board.... Shelton... like Cain and Moore before her has traded in a long track record of hawkish gold-buggery for a new, dovish outlook that calls for the low interest rates President Trump wants. In 2015, she said low interest rates were 'making suckers out of savers'. Now, even though the economy has gotten stronger and the argument for low rates should have, if anything, gotten a little bit weaker, Shelton is suddenly an advocate of cutting interest rates to zero, in order to increase access to capital. Shelton���s flip-flop is, if anything, more egregious than Moore���s and Cain���s, because monetary policy is supposed to be an actual area of expertise for her...

...Art Laffer, to whom the president just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, has been attacking the very concept of Federal Reserve independence.... Historically, Fed independence has been a bigger concern for conservatives than for liberals.... It is kind of funny that it is a Republican president and conservative economic pundits like Laffer and Moore who are urging politicization of the Fed.... But conservatives in the Senate have reasons to take a long view.... The best tool they have to protect the Fed from Trump is the one they have been using: Their authority to refuse to confirm his nominees.... The Fed Board can work just fine with only five members. So long as Trump is the person making nominations, there���s no reason to aim for seven...

#noted

Is Plutocracy Really the Problem?: Fresh at Project Syndicate

Fresh at Project Syndicate: Is Plutocracy Really the Problem?: After the 2008 financial crisis, economic policymakers in the United States did enough to avert another Great Depression, but fell far short of what was needed to ensure a strong recovery. Attributing that failure to the malign influence of the plutocracy is tempting, but it misses the root of the problem.... In fact, big money does not always find a way, nor does its influence necessarily increase as the top 0.01% captures a larger share of total income.... The larger issue...is an absence of alternative voices. If the 2010s had been anything like the 1930s, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Conference Board would have been aggressively calling for more investment in America, and these arguments would have commanded the attention of the press. Labor unions would have had a prominent voice as advocates for a high-pressure economy. Both would have had very powerful voices inside the political process through their support of candidates. Did the top 0.01% put something in the water to make the media freeze out such voices after 2008?... Read MOAR at Project Syndicate

#projectsyndicate #highlighted #politicaleconomy #publicsphere #greatrecession




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Arthur Eckstein: Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, a...

Arthur Eckstein: Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome: "The history of the next fifty years [after 390 BC] in Latium appears to be a repeat of the fifth century, with Rome fighting the same rivals for power in the same geographical realm as before (Aequi, Volsci, Latin and Etruscan city-states, primarily in Latium and extreme southern Etruria)���and with the same equivocal success. In the 350s the Romans were still fighting wars with Latin Tibur and Praeneste, only thirty miles away. The evidence of the second Ro- man treaty with Carthage (ca. 348 b.c.) shows a Rome that has not advanced the geographical scope of its power much beyond the first treaty with Carthage, 150 years previously: Roman power is still limited to Latium, and does not control all states even there (see Polyb. 2.24.5). As Oakley says, no state can have benefited much from having its city destroyed...

#noted

Moving from correlation to causation is one of the most s...

Moving from correlation to causation is one of the most subtle and puzzling topics in social science. I think Judea Pearl is a genius, and this book is well worth reading. Andrew Gelman is right in that there is a lot to disagree with in Pearl's intellectual history���Pearl seems unable to give an even slightly charitable or generous reading of anybody else. But Andrew Gelman is also right that the meat of the book���the case studies and examples���"is great". And I at least think that Andrew Gelman is wrong in thinking that Pearl's writing on causal inference has little point. I believe Pearl's framework of confounders-colliders-mediators is of great help, at least to those of us whose thought is not as smart and subtle as Andrew Gelman's:

Andrew Gelman: "The Book of Why" by Pearl and Mackenzie: "Pearl and Mackenzie���s book is really three books... an exposition of Pearl���s approach to causal inference... an intellectual history... a series of examples.... I have difficulty understanding the point of Pearl���s writing on causal inference.... About the intellectual history... I disagree with a lot of what Pearl says.... The examples in the book. These are great.... The examples are interesting and they engage the reader���at least, they engage me���and I think they are a big part of what makes the book work...

... ...

#noted

Rachael Meager: Understanding the Average Effect of Micro...

Rachael Meager: Understanding the Average Effect of Microcredit: "The idea that giving small loans to poor households would help them escape poverty was once considered so compelling that it won Mohammed Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize. The global microloan portfolio is now worth over 102 billion and is growing yearly (Microfinance Barometer 2017). Yet microcredit now enjoys so little support among academics and policymakers that the Washington Post recently felt the need to assure us that 'microcredit isn���t dead'.... To estimate how much the effect of microcredit varies across studies, and how uncertain we should be about the effect of expanding access to microloans in new settings, I perform a Bayesian hierarchical analysis of the microcredit literature (Meager 2019).... I find that, in general, the effects on these outcomes are likely to be small and uncertain, around 7% of the average control group���s mean outcome.... Overall, there is little evidence that microcredit harms borrowers as was feared by some of its critics, but there is also little evidence of the transformative positive effects initially claimed by its advocates...

#noted