J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2267

The Situation Has Developed Not Necessarily to Ireland's Advantage

When would it be time to judge the Irish experiment in preemptive fiscal austerity to be a failure, Tyler?

Tyler Cowen:

Marginal Revolution: One green shoot: "Ireland climbed out of recession on Wednesday with the economy returning to growth in the first quarter [2.7 percent:], after suffering one of the deepest downturns of any advanced industrialised economy." Don't get too giddy with optimism: the Irish economy had declined fifteen percent.  Still, it's far too early to judge the...

Winston Churchill Liveblogs World War II: July 1, 1940

Winston Churchill:

Prime Minister to General Ismay

The Admiralty are retaining Nelson and her four destroyers in home waters, and Operation "Catapult" should go forward, aiming at daybreak the 3rd.

During the night of 2nd-3rd all necessary measures should be taken at Portsmouth and Plymouth, at Alexandria, and if possible at Martinique, on the same lines as "Catapult". The reactions to these measures at Dakar and Casablanca must be considered, and every precaution taken...

How Vulnerable Is RomneyCare to Gaming the System via Guaranteed Issue? Not Very

One worry about health-care reform is that guaranteed issue creates incentives for people to game the system--to "forget" to purchase insurance until they get sick, thus loading the burden of paying for the system as a whole and for themselves when they get sick onto other. How important is this? Austin Frakt says not very:

Short-term insurance buyers in Massachusetts: Massachusetts has about 6.6 million residents, of which roughly 6.4 million are insured. So, the number gaming the...

Can't Anybody Play This Game?: Obama Fiscal Commission Department

The key is not to have a big government or a little government but a right-sized, efficient, and effective government...

Dean Baker watches Obama fiscal commission co-chair forget this:

Deficit Committee Co-Chair Reveals Himself as Numerologists: Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chairman of President Obama's deficit commission, revealed that he was a numerologist yesterday when he suggested that the commision should set a limit on federal government spending at 21 percent of...

A Better World Is Possible...

Butbit ain't here now:

By Jeffry Bartash: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits jumped by 13,000 in the latest week to 472,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected initial claims to fall to 455,000. The four-week average of initial claims -- a better gauge of employment trends than the volatile weekly number - rose by 3,250 to 466,500, the highest level since early March.

...

Department of "Huh?!": Fifty Herbert Hoovers Watch

Jeremy Gerst and Daniel Wilson:

Fiscal Crises of the States: Causes and Consequences: [T:]he impact of state fiscal crises on the overall economy will likely be more modest. Projected 2010 state budget gaps account for only about 1% of national GDP. The combined state budget gaps from 2009 through 2012... total less than the estimated cost of the 2009 federal stimulus package...

Let's give the microphone to Rex Nutting:

CBO fights back at stimulus critics: The $800...

Neville Chamberlain Liveblogs the Nazi Invasion of Czechoslovakia

Neville Chamberlain's speech to the Birmingham Unionist Association, March 17, 1939:

An Attempt to Dominate the World by Force: I had intended tonight to talk to you upon a variety of subjects, upon trade and employment, upon social service, and upon finance. But the tremendous events which have been taking place this week in Europe have thrown everything else into the background, and I feel that what you, and those who are not in this hall but are listening to me, will want to hear is...

links for 2010-06-30

Will Bunch: "Torture" study reveals appalling cowardice of America's newspapers







David Leonhardt: Just How Bullish Is the White House?







Woot







A plain blog about politics: CBO's ACA Follies







Marty Weitzman: GHG Targets as Insurance Against Catastrophic Climate Damages

MW: "A critical issue in climate-change...

Jeffrey Goldberg Says: Who Are You Going to Believe: Me, or Adolf Hitler?

Jeffrey Goldberg, June 30, 2010, quoting Yaacov Lozowick:

There was no Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, no invasion of Slovakia, hardly one of Austria and even less of Bohemia...

Adolf Hitler, March 15, 1939:

Last Sunday the die was cast.... [I have:] given the order for the invasion by the German troops and for the incorporation of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich...

Yep. The un-toilet trained Jeffrey Goldberg has defecated on our internet yet again...

Why...

False Antonyms...

We have:

Barkley Rosser: ...the estimable Mark Thoma...

Adam Posen: ...the inestimable Paul Krugman...

As near as I can see, Barkley's and Adam's adjectives mean exactly the same thing--in spite of the fact that they are, structurally, antonyms.

Are there other words whose meaning is identical to that of their structural antonyms? "Flammable" and "inflammable," yes, but others?