J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 202
April 4, 2019
Martin Wolf: A Long Brexit Extension Offers a Chance To T...
Martin Wolf: A Long Brexit Extension Offers a Chance To Think Again: "The withdrawal agreement does not command the needed support in parliament or country.... The UK economy is already some 2.5 per cent smaller than it would have been if Britain had not decided on Brexit. The knock-on effect on the public finances is, it argues, ��360m a week, almost exactly the sum that the fount of economic wisdom, Boris Johnson, promised would be available after Brexit.... Philip Hammond, chancellor of exchequer, used to say that the British people 'did not vote to be poorer'. But they did. Alas, it could get far worse.... The view that the British people are enslaved by the EU is laughable. But the analogy is better than Mr Johnson knew. The freed Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. That was not the promise of the Brexit campaign. But it is probably accurate. A no-deal Brexit is likely to deliver a large negative shock, followed by decades of weaker growth in an economy with reduced access to its natural markets and shorn of global confidence. The prime minister is absolutely right to reject this option, though that has come far too late...
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Now we are up to four professional Republicans saying tha...
Now we are up to four professional Republicans saying that Steve Moore is unqualified for the Fed: Greg Mankiw, Ross Douthat, Steve Moore himself, and now James Pethokoukis: James Pethokoukis: Don't let Trump blow up the Fed: "It is important that the Fed be independent both in practice and perception. We know what happens when it isn't.... While we don't know for sure why Burns decided to run a loose monetary policy in an already inflationary environment, his actions 'helped to trigger an extremely costly inflationary boom���bust cycle', concludes economist Burton Abrams in How Richard Nixon Pressured Arthur Burns: Evidence from the Nixon Tapes...
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According to the 2011 Census,, 140,000 people living in t...
According to the 2011 Census,, 140,000 people living in the United Kingdom had been born in France, with half of them���70,000���among the 8,000,000 people living in London. Of course, many more have French ancestry: The richest person under 30 in the world, Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster, has prominent French ancestor���he is descended from Hugh the Fat Hunter, _gros veneur in France. And Elizabeth Windsor, the occupant of the most impressive house in London���a veritable palace���is herself descended from a French-Danish thug named Guillaume le Batard���"the bastard". But why is Tom Friedman such an idiot?: Tom Friedman: The United Kingdom Has Gone Mad: "The grievances of... of those who voted to leave... swamped by E.U. immigrants.... 300,000 French citizens living in London.... I had a drink with a member of Parliament in the bar in the House of Commons on Tuesday, and as we sat down he whispered to me that 'not a single person working in this whole building is British'...
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April 3, 2019
Alexander Clarkson: "They could call it 'Freedom of Mobil...
Alexander Clarkson: "They could call it 'Freedom of Mobility': Adam Bienkov: 'Jeremy Corbyn���s spokesman on whether retaining free movement will be one of his demands in talks with May: ���Freedom of movement ends when we leave the EU and we will replace it with fair management of migration...���' The attempt to scrap the UK's involvement in the EU's 'Freedom of Movement' structure is already falling apart at a glacial pace. It is heading to the point Switzerland has landed where cosmetic tweaks to keep cultural conservatives happy are a facade behind which nothing changes...
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Can you tell us how to get to Sesame Street? Our immensel...
Can you tell us how to get to Sesame Street? Our immensely powerful mass and segmented media could be used for much good���if we could figure out how to keep them from hacking our brains to glue our eyeballs to the screen so they could sell ads from people who often do not wish us well: Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine: Early Childhood Education by Television: Lessons from Sesame Street: "We investigate whether preschool-age children exposed to Sesame Street when it aired in 1969 experienced improved educational and labor market outcomes. We exploit geographic variation in broadcast reception derived from technological factors, namely UHF versus VHF transmission...
...This variation is then related to Census data on grade-for-age status, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes. The results indicate that Sesame Street improved school performance, particularly for boys. The point estimates for long-term educational and labor market outcomes are generally imprecise...
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Jonathan Chait: My Article Saying Trump Was Compromised b...
Jonathan Chait: My Article Saying Trump Was Compromised by Russia Was Right: Dduring the campaign, Trump was pursuing a building deal in Russia worth several hundred million dollars.... This deal created two forms of secret leverage for Vladimir Putin...
...First, the money was a powerful incentive for Trump to stay in Putin���s good graces. And second, since Trump was publicly denying that he had any dealings with Russia, Putin had access to secret information that he could use to embarrass Trump if he so desired.... A wide array of counterintelligence experts have explained that Russia really does make a concerted effort to compromise foreign dignitaries in politics and business. But the process is subtle, often affable on the surface, sometimes resorting to outright blackmail but more commonly using greed and persuasion as levers. I likened the relationship between Trump and the Kremlin to the sorts of covert ties Russia has formed with right-wing politicians in other Western countries. The data we have seen since my story ran has largely bolstered its conclusion. Shortly after the piece ran, Trump flew to Helsinki and appeared strikingly and uncharacteristically submissive alongside Putin...
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Collecting Talking Points...
Is it worth while to try to collect all of the "talking points" I have prepared over the years?
Talking Points:
Economics, Identity, and the Democratic Recession: CFR April 9, 2019
On MSNBC: March 5, 2019: "The Obama Administration and Its Misperceptions, and Other Topics...
Commonwealth Club Talking Points and snippets: January 26, 2019
Forecasting and Steve Moore
Talking Points on Trump: September 2018
Employment Situation: March 2017: Nearly every indicator except the headline unemployment rate suggests an economy with no labor-side inflationary pressure and substantial headroom for cyclical growth:
Infrastructure Investment: March 2017
Trumpenomics Talking Points: 2016
Talking Points for Fox News Business: September 15, 2016
"America's Imminent Budget Crisis": February 2015
North Atlantic Macro Outlook: November 2014
What Are "Talking Points"?: November 2014
Modern Capitalism: Growth and Equality: October 10, 2014
Ebola Virus Talking Points: October 2014
Robots, Wages, Technology, Peter Thiel: September 30, 2014
For the Virtual Green Room: June 22, 2011
Today's Election-in-Process Talking Points: November 4, 2008
Deficit Spending and the Recovery: KQED Forum, September 4, 2009, 9 AM PDT, 88.5FM, San Francisco
Why Obama's Health Plan Is Better: September 2008
Every Time I Try to Crawl Out, They Pull Me Back in!: June 2008
The 2008 Federal Budget: Radio: KQED Forum 88.5 FM 9:00 AM Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Idiots? (Social Security Edition): May 2005
EPI Economy Talking Points: 2005
Why Not the Gold Standard? 1996
Talking Points: Page: https://www.bradford-delong.com/talking-points.html https://www.bradford-delong.com/talking-points.htmlhttps://www.bradford-delong.com/talking-points.html
#talkingpoints #notebook #highlighted
Fairly Recently: Must- and Should-Reads, and Writings... (April 3, 2019)
Greenspan and Wooldridge Argue the American Love and Embrace of Capitalism Is the Key...: In America, successful entrepreneurs, innovators, organizers, and promoters have become not just well-off, but heroes. They are who we want to be. As John Steinbeck once remarked, here in America "we didn���t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist..." They have become our heroes so even though, as Greenspan and Wooldridge say, "entrepreneurs are seldom the easiest of heroes"...
Economics, Identity, and the Democratic Recession: Talking Points: The Polanyiist Party Line: That people believe they ought to have rights to stable communities that support them (land), to the income they expected (labor), and to continuity of employment (finance); but the only rights the market respects are property rights; and the only property rights that are worth anything are those that help you make things for which rich people have a serious and unsatiated jone...
So Far, Only Three Professional Republicans Are Willing to Say that Stephen Moore Is Not Qualified to Be a Fed Governor: They are: Greg Mankiw, Ross Douthat, Steve Moore...
Note to Self: Kevin Hassett has given up his internal opposition to Stephen Moore: Squawk Box...
Comment of the Day: John Howard Brown: "It always seemed to me, that there are two probable causes for little current evidence of life elsewhere...
Comment of the Day: Ronald Brakels: "I don't have much confidence that machines won't outclass humans in, eventually, everything...
Comment of the Day: I thought it was 20 pounds of berries for one pound of wax? But I could be wrong...: Nils: The Lighting Budget of Thomas Jefferson: "Those 'myrtle' candles Jefferson was asking for would be bayberry...
Glory M. Liu: Research
Wikipedia: Cara cara Navel Orange
Glory M. Liu: Rethinking the ���Chicago Smith��� Problem: Adam Smith and the Chicago School, 1929���1980
Paul Krugman (2013): The Neo-Paleo-Keynesian Counter-Counter-Counterrevolution
Andrew M. Childs et al. (2002): Exponential Algorithmic Speedup by Quantum Walk: "We construct an oracular (i.e., black box) problem that can be solved exponentially faster on a quantum computer than on a classical computer.... We show how to implement the quantum walk efficiently in our oracular setting...
Barry Ritholtz: Math, Money, and Making a Difference: "MIT alumnus James Simons is a mathematician and founder of the highly quantitative investment firm Renaissance Technologies where he served as CEO for over 30 years before becoming board chair...
Lucas Kwan Peterson: For Cramped New York, an Expanding Dining Scene: "In the city that never sleeps, as they say, the marquees of Times Square nearly make one forget the concrete dystopia of what is seemingly an unlivable urban wasteland. Surrounded by rats, black trash bags and graffiti-tagged storefronts on Broadway Street, New York���s primary thoroughfare, I wondered aloud if I would be able to find a decent meal in what was surely a culinary heart of darkness. In Los Angeles, we���re spoiled by the breadth and quality of our dining options...
Mike Idsin: The Educational Admissions Scandal Widens Dramatically: "Wealthy parents would approach a person affiliated with a national organization, technically incorporated as a nonprofit, known by the initials NAR.... The individual would then provide a list of other people in the communities in question who, for a payment often topping 1 million, would permit the family to modify their mailing address in such a way that guaranteed entry into the exclusive schools. The details of the mailing-address system are complex and relate to systems often criticized by advocates, where complex laws dictate a precise and convoluted geographic zone where this address-modification scheme is permissible. The family would in most cases have to physically live in the location 'sold' by the counterparty, who would use the money to flee the jurisdiction.... A significant commission, often 5-6% of the payment, would go to the NAR agent(s)...
Facebook defines "some passwords" = 600000000 passwords: Pedro Canahuati: Keeping Passwords Secure: "As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems...
Noah Smith: Trump's Industrial Rebirth Is a Dead End: "There's no future in the U.S. for old-line manufacturers that dominated the mid-20th century economy...
2016: Monday Smackdown: Debating Societies, Talking Points, and Choosing Our Governors
2013 Monday Smackdown: No, Amity Shlaes Has No Idea What She Is Talking About. Why Do You Ask?: WTF!?!?!?!? Weblogging: Galbraith's claim that Coolidge did not know���i.e., did not know enough to feel he could challenge Mellon's talking points���and did not care���i.e., thought the US headed for disaster but did not bother to learn enough to think he had an informed enough view to challenge Mellon--seems to me to hit the nail on the head. Certainly Herbert Hoover thought so...
2006: Avadim Hayinu l'Pharaoh b'Mitzrayim: For a 'normal' California teenager like George Allen was once to sign up with the Confederacy is weird and creepy. For a half-Jewish California teenager to sign up with the Confederacy...
2009: Paul Krugman Urges Greg Mankiw to Pay More Attention to Quality Control: To me, the thing to note about the economists-the Mankiws, the Lucases, the Beckers, the Barros, and all the rest-who have pledged allegiance to the Republican Party this year is how much they have stopped thinking like economists.... I still remember being convinced by Rick Ericson when I had just turned 18 that thinking like an economist required that one always pay attention to three key principles: market equilibrium, individuals responding to incentives, cost-benefit tradeoffs.... I thought that Chicago-School economists believed in these principles too...
2005: Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Idiots? (Social Security Edition): It is a clown show,... The administration's Social Security gurus shove Bush out there with talking points saying that passing the Bush plan is essential because if we don't the Social Security trust fund balance will hit zero in 2041, and big benefit cuts will then be necessary���and then they roll out a plan in which the Social Security trust fund balance hits zero in 2030...
2008: Every Time I Try to Crawl Out, They Pull Me Back in!: Called on forty minutes' notice, I trot over to the J-School studio to be a talking head on BBC/Newsnight about Fannie and Freddie. I have my talking points ready: The chance that American taxpayers will actually lose any money if Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson decide that Fannie and Freddie need government support is very low.... Nevertheless, there is now a risk that Fannie and Freddie will need some form of government support in the next month.... And what do I find also on BBC/Newsnight when I get there? I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!! I FIND THAT I AM ON WITH GROVER-FRACKING-NORQUIST!!! WHO HAS THREE POINTS HE WANTS TO MAKE: Barack Obama wants to take your money by raising your taxes and pay it to the Communist Chinese. Oil prices are high today and the economy is in a near recession because of Nancy Pelosi.... Economic growth is stalling because congress has not extended the Bush tax cuts.... I am not paid enough to deal with this lying bullshit...
Wikipedia: Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick
Olivia Nuzzi: Trump Aides Fear He Is Overselling His ���Exoneration���: "'There will be plenty of unfavorable things about the president in the full report, which we think will eventually come out, so let���s not go overboard saying there���s no wrongdoing. Let���s move on', one senior White House official told me...
Mark Bergen: YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Let Toxic Videos Run Rampant: "Proposals to change recommendations and curb conspiracies were sacrificed for engagement, staff say...
Aaron Rupar: On Twitter: "TRUMP during NRCC speech: 'If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, okay? Rerrrr rerrrr!'...
This strikes me as a very good thing: Sophia S. Armenakas and Molly C. McCafferty: Laibson and Furman to Take Over Ec10, Increase Number of Lectures: "Kennedy School Professor and former Obama economic advisor Jason Furman ���92 and Economics Professor David I. Laibson ���88 will take over teaching Economics 10: 'Principles of Economics' next fall. The two professors will replace Economics Professor N. Gregory Mankiw as course heads of Ec10, the department���s year-long flagship introductory course and one of Harvard���s largest undergraduate courses. Mankiw announced in early March that he will step down from teaching the course at the end of the semester to pursue 'new pedagogical challenges'. The two said they plan to change the course structure from its current format to make lectures 'far more frequent'. Instead of attending three sections per week with approximately 20 of those sections replaced by a lecture, students will attend two lectures and one section per week...
Anna Stansbury: "The Black Death in England in the mid-1300s was an enormous human tragedy-and a fascinating labor supply shock. (Who said economists are heartless?) A thread FRED has a new record holder: The longest data series now belongs to a new addition, Population in England, which dates back to 1086. Check it out here: http://ow.ly/Dzkb50kfrvA. The Black Death first hit England in 1348. The population fell by more than a third in just a few years: from over 6 million to less than 4 million. As the graph from @stlouisfed and @bankofengland shows, it would take another 250 years for the population to recover...
British Whigs in the mid-nineteenth century were not democrats���and not that anti-slavery: John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1866): "In a great speech... Mr. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, spoke these words: 'The corner stone of our new government rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. Our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth'...
Kevin Drum: Five Things Donald Trump Said on Tuesday: "Today President Trump: 1. Tried three times to say the word 'origins' but instead said 'oranges'. 2. Said that his father was born in Germany, not New York City. 3. Complained, in a speech being televised on CSPAN, that he had to be careful because someone was probably going to leak what he said to the media. 4. In the same speech, warned Republicans to be 'more paranoid' because he 'doesn���t like the way the votes are being tallied.' 5.Said about wind farms, 'They say the noise causes cancer'. But don���t worry. His mental state is just fine. Nothing to see here...
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Kevin Drum: Five Things Donald Trump Said on Tuesday: "To...
Kevin Drum: Five Things Donald Trump Said on Tuesday: "Today President Trump: 1. Tried three times to say the word 'origins' but instead said 'oranges'. 2. Said that his father was born in Germany, not New York City. 3. Complained, in a speech being televised on CSPAN, that he had to be careful because someone was probably going to leak what he said to the media. 4. In the same speech, warned Republicans to be 'more paranoid' because he 'doesn���t like the way the votes are being tallied.' 5.Said about wind farms, 'They say the noise causes cancer'. But don���t worry. His mental state is just fine. Nothing to see here...
#noted
British Whigs in the mid-nineteenth century were not demo...
British Whigs in the mid-nineteenth century were not democrats���and not that anti-slavery: John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1866): "In a great speech... Mr. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, spoke these words:
The corner stone of our new government rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. Our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...
...Here, then, was a society... more aristocratically constituted than those of feudal times.... The decomposition of democracy was arrested in the South by the indirect influence of slavery.... In the United States... the work of emancipation... has been an act of war, not of statesmanship or humanity.... They have not protected the white man from the vengeance of barbarians, nor the black from the pitiless cruelty of a selfish civilization.... Slavery... [was] by one part of the nation it was wickedly defended, and by the other as wickedly removed....
The spurious liberty of the United States is twice cursed... by exhibiting the spectacle of a people claiming to be free, but whose love of freedom means hatred of inequality, jealousy of limitations to power, and reliance on the state as an instrument to mould as well as to control society, it calls on its admirers to hate aristocracy and teaches its adversaries to fear the people. The North has used the doctrines of democracy to destroy self-government. The South applied the principle of conditional federation to cure the evils and to correct the errors of a false interpretation of democracy...
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