J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2271

Eric Rauchway's Alternative to the DSGE Tradition

It’s only a model:

The Economist: The Washington Post Sets Itself on Fire

His bosses at the Washington Post were shocked, shocked to learn that David Weigel was not a "conservative"--never mind that he was Ron Paul-supporting and Bob-Barr volunteering--and so decided that he was not fit to cover the conservative movement for them.

So Marcus Brauchli, Raju Narisetti, and company set themselves and their paper on fire.

Democracy in America watches, horrified:

: IT'S a bit late to say anything...

Liveblogging World War II: June 28, 1940

The U.S. Congress passes the Smith Act:

Smith Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act (18 U.S.C. § 2385) of 1940 is a United States federal statute that makes it a criminal offense for

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity...

Changing the Rules of the U.S. Senate by Majority Vote in Midstream

Jon Walker:

Byrd Did Not Just Write the Book on Senate, He Rewrote Its Rules: Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) and James Abourezk (D-SD) performed a post-cloture filibuster... by offering a slew of amendments... forcing a roll-call vote for each.... Byrd raised a point of order to require the chair [Mondale:] to rule all post-cloture dilatory amendments out of order. When Metzenbaum and Abourezk lost their appeal of the chair’s ruling, Byrd used the new precedent to rule all of their amendments...

Greg Sargent Opens Fire on the Anonymice Inside the Washington Post Newsroom

If I were Marcus Brauchli, I would think that perhaps ten employees from the Washington Post print side of a decade ago add value to the enterprise--and think hard about whether any of the rest were worth keeping.

Greg Sargent writes about his Washington Post colleagues:

A little message to Jeffrey Goldberg's anonymous Post sources: [H:]ere's a response to the anonymous sources inside the Post who used Jeffrey Goldberg's blog to urinate on the type of opinionated journalism that...

Fast Is Good When It Is Accurate--Not When It Is Wrong

The View That the U.S. Government Is on the Verge of Reaching Its Debt Capacity and Cracking the Treasury Bond's Status as Safe Asset in the World Economy Is...

...surprisingly widely held, especially inside the Federal Reserve, but simply insane.

Paul Krugman:

The Invisible Bond Vigilantes Continue Their Invisible Attack: Ten-year bond rate now down to 3.05 percent. Clearly, we must slash spending immediately to satisfy the market’s demands...

Tim Lee on Why the Washington Post Is Dying

Tim Lee:

Dave Weigel and the Decline of the Post | Bottom-up: Things have gotten so grim that the paper is flailing, trying one strategy after another in hopes of hitting on a strategy that will work. Hiring Dave and Ezra Klein was apparently one such attempt. Unfortunately, the paper didn’t do its homework. They seem not to have read enough of Dave’s past work to realize that his style of reporting was fundamentally different from the style practiced by other reporters at the Post. When...

America Speaks!

Matthew Yglesias:

Public Opinion and Social Security: Political scientists Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs have an excellent paper (PDF) on the foolishness of the Peterson Institute’s “America Speaks” event and the extremely strong public consensus in favor of Social Security. The whole thing’s worth a read, but the key takeaway lines are: “Support for Social Security is strong and widespread across the population, including among young people. Many more Americans want to increase...

Attempted (But Unsuccessful) DeLong Smackdown Watch: Kartik "Malibu Barbie" Athreya

In terms reminiscent of Malibu Barbie's "math is hard," now comes Kartik Athreya from the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank to say "Economics Is Hard":

Matthew Yglesias, John Stossel, Robert Samuelson, and Robert Reich... [are:] exceedingly unlikely... [to:] have anything interesting to say about economic policy....

Deficits, short-term interest rate targets, sovereign debt are all chewed over with a level of self-assuredness that only someone who doesn’t know more could. The list of...