J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2270

Evil Consequences of Listening to the Pain Caucus

Calculated Risk:

Calculated Risk: Ireland: Austerity in Action: From Liz Alderman in the New York Times: In Ireland, a Picture of the High Cost of Austerity

As Europe’s major economies focus on belt-tightening, they are following the path of Ireland. But the once thriving nation is struggling, with no sign of a rapid turnaround in sight.

...

Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. ... Lacking stimulus money, the Irish...

A Week in Which the Ten Year Bond Rate Drops Below 3% Is Not a Week to Call for Austerity...

Kevin Warsh demonstrates why he was a very bad choice for the Federal Reserve Board:

Paul Krugman comments:

The Conventional Superstition: The Conventional Superstition Calculated Risk points us to a speech by Kevin Warsh that strikes me as almost the perfect illustration of the predicament we’re in, in which policy is paralyzed by fear of invisible bond vigilantes. Warsh isn’t an especially bad example — but that’s the point: this is what Serious People sound like these days. The...

The Basic Story of "Modern" Macroeconomics as a Failed Research Program

Paul Krugman:

Learned Helplessness In Macro: the basic story of “modern” macro runs like this:

Lucas and his disciples agree that the economy looks Keynesian — that is, it surely looks as if monetary and fiscal policy have real effects — but argue that an equilibrium approach with imperfect information can explain why, while rejecting Keynesian policy implications. And they ridicule Keynesian economics.

By 1980 — three decades ago! — it is already clear that the Lucas project...

links for 2010-06-28

Maggie Koerth-Baker: Nature vs. Nurture: The neuroscientist with a murderer's brain







Nate Silver: Senate Forecast: Whereas, as of our last update, or simulations were projecting an average of 54.0 Democratic and 46.0 Republican seats, we now show 55.2 Democrats, 44.2 Republicans, and 0.6 Charlie Crists.







Mark Thoma Is Not as Pessimistic About American Governance as I Am







...

A Republican Party that Really, Really Doesn't Want Any Black or Hispanic People Voting for It Ever Again...

After last summer's Sotomayor circus, the Republicans are back for more--this time starring Elena Kagan in the center ring as the honorary Negro!

Christina Bellantoni for TPM:

Thurgood Marshall Takes Center Stage At Kagan Hearings: Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an "activist judge." As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple...

The FT Has Finally Let Jared Bernstein Out...

The Economic Advisor to the Vice President writes:

Deficit reduction is not the enemy of jobs: It is all too common for Washington’s economic debates to feature strongly held views with little underlying logic or evidence. The debate over whether the Obama administration should emphasise job growth or deficit reduction is only the most recent example.... America’s economy badly needs two policies that critics say pull in opposite directions: more government support for jobs and a...

Joan Walsh: People Whom Republicans Exclude from the Set of "Real Americans"

Joan Walsh is gobsmacked:

Twitter / Joan Walsh: I had minor surgery today, ...: I had minor surgery today, watching Hardball on Kagan: The Upper West Side and Thurgood Marshall slurs--can we really call this coded?

Listening to Arson

And we are live at Project Syndicate:

Listening to Arson: I had always thought that Barack Obama made a significant mistake in naming the Republican ex-senator Alan Simpson to co-chair the president’s deficit-reduction commission. Simpson was a noted budget arsonist when he was in the Senate. Indeed, he never met a budget-busting, deficit-increasing initiative from a Republican president that he would not lead the charge to pass. Nor did he ever meet a sober deficit-reducing initiative from...

Looks Like the Northwest Passage Will Be Open Soon...

Henry Hudson: only 400 years too early...

Is Macroeconomics Hard?

Is Macroeconomics Hard?

"Math is hard," said Malibu Barbie, famously--and a ton of criticism came down on her for the implicit message that her auditors should go off and do other, easier, things instead and leave the math to the trained professionals. Is macroeconomics hard in this sense? I confess that I do not think so. I think that macro is pretty easy...[1:]

Let's go back in time almost two centuries, to the days when--first after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and then in 1825-6--the...