J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2196

Unhappy with the Obama Administration, Duncan Black Is

Speak like Yoda, he does not:

Eschaton: Decision Points. They screwed up first with a too small stimulus. They screwed up second last December/January when they got skeered of zombie unicorns invisible bond vigilantes. They screwed up the third time when they thought recovery summer was here and the jobs growth was coming, despite very little evidence of that.

Problem Set 3 for Econ 1: Fall 2010: U.C. Berkeley: J. Bradford DeLong

20100921 problem set 3

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Revised Econ 1 Syllabus for Econ 1: Fall 2010: U.C. Berkeley: J. Bradford DeLong

20100916 Revised Syllabus Economics 1 fall 2010

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Practice Midterm for Econ 1: Fall 2010: U.C. Berkeley: J. Bradford DeLong

20091021 practice midterm

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Scott Lemieux: People who make $400K a Year: Very Affluent

Scott:

People who make 400K A Year: Very Affluent : Lawyers, Guns & Money: Prof. Brad Deling has an excellent post on a particular type of rich person rage, i.e.

$400,000 a year isn’t really that much money, so any increase in marginal tax rates is outrageous.

In this case the argument seems to be that if you don’t have an unlimited budget for luxury trinkets and vacations after buying an extremely expensive house in a good neighborhood in a terrific city and sending...

After Barrington Moore: Draft for September 25, 2010 50th Anniversary Conference

20100921 Social Studies:

John Stuart Mill was perhaps the last who was substantially at home in and competent in all the branches of moral philosophy: political theory, psychology, history, public administration, political economy, sociology, etc.

Afterwards young scholars paying their dues found it simply impossible to learn everything and still have time to write anything. And since it is much easier to teach undergraduates what you know than what you don't, specialization in...

Karl Smith: No, Fannie and Freddie Did Not Cause the Housing Bubble

Karl Smith:

Fannie / Freddie Acquitted: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are members of a long list of individuals and entities including Gary Condit, Tom Delay, Michael Jackson, Rod Blagojevich and JonBenet Ramsey’s parents.... tried and convicted in the popular press essentially on the grounds that they were creepy.... As I hope to continue to argue, being creepy, a bad person, or even a usual suspect does not make one automatically guilty.... [G:]overnment subsidies in the housing market are...

Krugman and Rajan

Paul Krugman responds:

Fannie Freddie Further: OK, some readers want to know my answer to Rajan’s defense on the FF issue. So, first of all, the first time I wrote about FF, I got something wrong — I was unaware of their late in the game rush into subprime.

But Rajan’s other point, that securitization numbers — which show a much reduced role for FF at the height of the bubble — are misleading, is just wrong.... Rajan makes much of the fact that the GSEs sometimes buy whole...

Todd Gitlin on Marty Peretz

Todd Gitlin:

This Manichaean Moment: When the margins crawl with insanity, it is all the more important for the vital center of calm, reasonable, evidence-based thought to hold. But some minds that ought to know better are cowed, while others are playing with fire. When Martin Peretz, the editor-in-chief of this magazine, declared that “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims,” and “wonder[ed:] whether I need honor these people ['those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf':] and pretend that...

Liveblogging World War II: September 21, 1940

Convoy HX-72: Nova Scotia to Britain:

Convoy 41 ships. First sighting On 20 Sep 1940 by U-47. EscortfFrom 21st September: Escort Group (Cdr. Knapp) with: Sloop Lowestoft. Destroyer Shikari, Corvettes La Malouine, Calenduala, Heartsease. From 22nd September the destroyer Scimitar and Skate

U-boats: U-29, U-32, U-43, U-46, U-47, U-48, U-65, U-99, U-100

The battle: After sighting the convoy by U-47 the BdU tried to bring additional boats to the convoy, but not all...