J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2226

links for 2010-08-19

P.Z. Myers: Episode XCIII: Lovely love song







Requiem







I.Asimov: A Memoir







Developed economies could get trapped in a limbo land of zero inflation | Gavyn Davies | FT.com

Gavyn Davies: Developed economies could get trapped in a limbo land of zero inflation: http://tinyurl.com/2b5rnv3 #worthreading





The...

Why Friends Don't Let Friends Read the Politico

Tim Fernholz on Mike Allen:

: I was at the same deep-background briefing where Allen had his "mindmeld"... I don't think he's got it right.... Allen references a part of the conversation that concerned the Deficit Commission.... The official believed that the largest consensus was forming around an undefined plan to support the long-term solvency of Social Security and was discussing why that hypothetical plan might help bolster political will for...

I Am Hearing It Was a Huge Mistake to Invite Mike Allen to the Meeting...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Apparently--according to other participants, who put it much much more strongly than Felix does in public--he did not understand what was said, misrepresented what he did understand, and dragged the conversation away from useful substance into pointless and uninformed horse-race speculation.

Not a win by the Treasury team.

Feix Salmon reports on what of substance was discussed:

What Treasury’s thinking: On Wednesday, there was another...

The Macroeconomic Situation and How We Got Here

Back in December 2008 I thought that prudent macroeconomic policy--policy geared to deal with a 20%-percentile outcome, that could then be cut back if and when it turned out that we had good or even neutral look--involved (a) a $1+ trillion fiscal stimulus, (b) the Federal Reserve taking the size of its balance sheet from $2 trillion to $3 trillion, (c) the Federal Reserve adopting a 3% annual inflation target and taking active steps to hit that target, and (d) the Treasury using its...

Delong Smackdown Watch: Beveridge Curve Edition

David Altig and Ryan Avent join Robert Waldmann in saying: "don't panic about the Beveridge Curve--yet."

Ryan writes:

Labour markets: How structural is unemployment?: The Atlanta Fed's David Altig recently noted that this could indicate growing structural unemployment, and Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota went much further, declaring that most of existing unemployment is structural. But Mr Altig provides another view of the Beveridge curve that complicates the...

The Heinlein Perplex

Reading William Patterson's Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: 1907-1948, Learning Curve simply increases my sense of the magnitude of the Heinlein perplex.

Heinlein in the 1940s, when he leaves left-wing populist politics and becomes a writer, seems much more than I had thought to have launched himself on a trajectory to spend the rest of his life as the center of a group whose raison d'etre was to try to live in the early days of a better future, to look sanely and...

links for 2010-08-18

Rachel Bloom







Upright Citizens Brigade







Labour markets: Summer spikes | The Economist

Ryan Avent Does Intellectual Garbage Cleanup on Casey Mulligan: http://tinyurl.com/22jzhjp #worthreading





Brad DeLong: Extremely Rough: A Note on Bullard's Interpretation in his "Seven Faces of 'The Peril'" Paper of Benhabib et al. (2001). - Grasping Reality with...

Know That the Walls Have Not Just Ears, But Tongues

David Kravets:

Court OKs Covert iPhone Audio Recording: Using an iPhone to secretly record a conversation is not a violation of the Wiretap Act if done for legitimate purposes, a federal appeals court has ruled. “The defendant must have the intent to use the illicit recording to commit a tort of crime beyond the act of recording itself,” (.pdf) the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. Friday’s decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which involves a civil lawsuit over a...

Lord Skidelsky Is a Member of the More Expansionary Policy Now Caucus

Robert Skidelsky:

Fixing the Right Hole - Project Syndicate: The “laws of holes” are as unforgiving as the laws of physics.  If you find yourself in a hole and want to get out, the first thing you do is to stop digging. If you confront a number of holes to fix and want to know which to fix first, you choose the one which poses the greater danger. These laws are particularly true when applied to government finance....

Contrary to Keynes, orthodox economists believe that, after a big...

Tim Duy Knew at the Time That There Was a Housing Bubble

May 23, 2005: Tim Duy:

Economist's View: Fed Watch: The Fed and the Housing Bubble: David Wessel reported in the Wall Street Journal that the Fed is becoming concerned about a potential housing bubble. Those concerns were reiterated by Greenspan in the Q&A.... I don’t blame Fed officials for raising the alarm. I’m concerned, too. But the important question is what are they prepared to do about it? I continue to believe that the Fed is not likely to change the path of monetary policy to...