J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2243

Steve M. on Why Friends Don't Let Friends Read Politico

It takes years of training and practice to be this clueless and blind to reality.

Steve M.:

No More Mister Nice Blog: It was the front page of Politico a little before 7:30 this morning.... Notice what was shown as an illustration of "rage"? Peaceful marchers demanding the reinstatement of Shirley Sherrod. Could any demand be more reasonable at this moment?

Oh, but they're from Code Pink.... [B:]ut this picture shows what seems to be the epitome of peaceful protest.

...

links for 2010-07-28

Tamarind Bay







Fiona Harvey: Research says climate change undeniable







Peter Orszag on the Budget







Justin Weidner and John C. Williams: How Big is the Output Gap?







Blinder and Zandi: How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End







Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney: Nevada's Economic Misery May...

John Quiggin's Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Sti...

John Quiggin's Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us... is scheduled for release on October 5, just in time for Halloween...

Yes, This Is a Really Big Downturn

Paul Krugman sends us to Catherine Rampell's chart:

Who Is Assigning Gramsci's Prison Notebooks for a Fall Economics Course at MIT?

The ARRA: Underpowered from the Start

The ARRA was--I thought--supposed to be only one of three big stimulative policy moves that was going to be undertaken in 2009. The ARRA, use of the TARP money to fund a very large risky asset purchase program by the Treasury, and quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve in order to restor confidence that there was no chance of deflation. Only the first of these happened at any scale.

And we were unlucky.

Paul Krugman:

How Did We Know The Stimulus Was Too Small?m: Those of us who say...

The No-Stimulus Baseline

David Leonhardt writes:

The Impact of Another Kind of Stimulus: On Wednesday, Alan Blinder, the Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, will release a new analysis of the federal government’s response to the Great Recession. As far as I know, it’s the first serious attempt at analyzing the effect both of the stimulus programs passed by Congress and of the various financial-market policies put in place by the Fed...

links for 2010-07-27

Vasco Curdia and Michael Woodford: The Central-Bank Balance Sheet as an Instrument of Monetary Policy







David Dayen: Obama Administration Threatens Veto on Any Bill Blocking EPA Carbon Regulations

DD: "This is pretty good news. It's important to note that the death of climate legislation does not mean the death of carbon regulation. It just moves it into a new phase, where the EPA takes the lead. And the Administration...

Richard Schmalensee and Rob Stavins Are Horrified by the Republican Party

They provide yet another set of reasons why it would be good for all of us if we were to dry it up and let it blow away right now:

Beware of Scorched-Earth Strategies in Climate Debates: [C:]onservative Republicans... should resist demonizing market-based approaches to environmental protection and reverting to pre-1980s thinking that saddled business and consumers with needless costs.... [M:]arket-based policies should be embraced, not condemned by Republicans.... Ronald Reagan’s...

DeLong Smackdown Watch: Beveridge Curve Edition

Robert Waldmann:

David Altig Says That Our Cyclical Unemployment Has Started to Turn Structural: Shorter Brad DeLong:

Terrible news, there are lots more job openings in the USA than there were a year ago.

Huh? I'd say that job openings are good news. Would you rather there were fewer? One might imagine that high unemployment and high vacancy rates are, as you directly state, a bad sign as high unemployment combined with high vacancies lasts longer -- that the...