J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2258

Fiscal Policy: The Long-Term Budget Outlook

Let us look at some numbers from the 2009 and 2010 versions of the Congressional Budget Office publication Long-Term Budget Outlook http://tinyurl.com/dl20100711b:

The first column shows (i) the type of projection--extended-baseline or alternative-fiscal--(ii) the date at which the outlook was taken--summer 2009 or summer 2010--and (iii) the period of the forecast--50 years (they also do 25- and 75-year forecasts).

The "revenues" column shows what--if the economy performs as...

The Real Estate Agent Said This Was Valley Oak Woodland, Not Semi-Arid...

Events since Early 2009...

Paul Krugman:

What Have We Learned?: Sometimes it’s useful to step back slightly from the current fray and ask what we’ve really learned about macroeconomics over, say, the past year and a half. Here’s how I see it: in early 2009 there was a broad divide between two policy factions. One, of which I was part, declared that we were in a liquidity trap, which meant that some of the usual rules no longer applied: the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet wouldn’t be inflationary — in fact the...

Why I Am Puzzled by Philosophers...

Richard Chappell:

Philosophy, et cetera: Non-Physical Questions: Would you still be conscious if your neurons were replaced by (functionally identical) silicon chips? It seems like this is an open question. But how do physicalists accommodate this datum? We know (by stipulation) all the physical facts of the story: we know that the resulting "brain" is functionally/computationally no different, but that the matter it's made of is different. If the physical facts exhaust the facts...

What Rough Beast?

Paul Krugman:

Lacking All Conviction: Atrios:

So let’s say Obama’s people have correctly deduced that there’s no chance in hell of getting anything through Congress. They have two basic options. First, they could get on the teevee every day and say, “This is my plan to help. Republicans in Congress won’t pass it.” They could hold rallies in Maine. Allies could run ads. At least people would know who is for and who is against…and just what it was that people are for or against.

...

Cutting-Edge Macro of 1829 Watch: I Really Don't Think That Stephen Williamson Quite Gets It...

He writes:

New Monetarist Economics: New Keynesians and New Monetarists: What's the difference between a New Keynesian and a New Monetarist? This sounds like I'm leading off to tell a joke (a duck walks into a bar...), but I'm not. A New Keynesian thinks that the real interest rate is too high, while a New Monetarist thinks the real interest rate is too low. In New Keynesian theory, the basic idea is that the key inefficiency that monetary policy should be correcting arises from the...

links for 2010-07-10

Louis Uchitelle: Paul Volcker Pushes for Reform, and Regrets His Past Silence







Joel Achenbach: In the Gulf of Mexico, what went wrong with the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig?







"The Orwell Temptation" by Joshua Micah Marshall







Hey! Do you report the news with that mouth? | TBogg







SteveAudio: Owner of a lonely heart




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Count Harry Kressler Liveblogs the Suppression of the Spartikists

From Harry Graf Kressler, Berlin in Lights:

Thursday 16 January 1919: Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Luxemburg have met with a dreadful and fantastic end. The midday edition of BZ has published the story. Last night Liebknecht was shot from behind while being taken in a truck through the Tiergarten and, so it is said, trying to escape. Rosa Luxemburg, having been interrogated by officers of the Guards Cavalry Division in the Eden Hotel, was first beaten unconscious by a crowd ther and then...

World War I: The Battle of Nitrogen

From Harry Kessler, Walther Rathenau: His Life and Work:

As early as October 1914 the nitrogen question had become so urgent that General Staff officers at the front considered that the war could not possibly last beyond the spring, since the supply of nitrate... indispensable for all forms of explosives would only last until then....

By appropriating these [nitrate:] supplies and deflecting them to the munitions factories (in the face of desperate opposition on the part of the...

Vichy France Liveblogs World War II: July 10, 1940

Vichy France:

The National Assembly gives full powers to the government of the Republic, under the authority and the signature of Marshall Pétain, to the effect of promulgating by one or several acts a new Constitution of the French state. This Constitution must guarantee the rights of labor, of family and of the fatherland. It will be ratified by the nation and applied by the Assemblies which it has created.