J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2277

Ezra Klein on How the MSM Do Not Know How to Do Their Job

Ezra Klein:

Do the news media spend too much time on news?: There's a problem in the way the media cover substance. At the beginning of the debate, there's a fair amount of attention paid to the basics of the legislation. But... the argument moves on to smaller pieces... that are controversial. The media cover those points of controversy... people tune in, but they missed the beginning, and now everyone is talking about the bill's third CBO score, not about how the thing actually...

The Economist Needs a New Webmaster, Badly...

So I login to the Economist with my name address off my shipping label because I am curious about how long I have left on my print subscription. And I get back:

Thank you for contacting The Economist:

As your subscription was purchased through a third-party subscription agency, please contact them for all customer service inquiries regarding your account.

For your convenience, the contact details for the agency are provided below:

Phone: [my phone number:]

...

Dani Rodrik: Import Substitution vs. Washington Consensus in Latin America

Dani Rodrik writes:

Dani Rodrik's weblog: The most telling chart I have seen in a long time: Here is what seems to have happened: For all its faults, IS promoted rapid structural change.  Labor moved from agriculture to industry, and within industry from lower-productivity activities to higher-productivity ones.  So much for the inherent inefficiency of IS policies!

Under WC, firms and industries were able to accomplish a comparable rate of productivity growth, but they did so by...

Howard Kurtz Says That He Is Part of the Problem

Jamiso Foser:

In which I agree with Howard Kurtz: Howard Kurtz today:

In the abstract, government regulation sounds onerous. But when an offshore rig explodes, people want to know why the regulators weren't doing their jobs. Maybe Obama is going too far. This is a debate we need to have. This is a debate the media need to have, rather than just playing the video of Joe Barton embarrassing himself. John Aravosis of Americablog told me in a conversation the other day that such...

The Bar Is Indeed Low...

Joshua Green says that Jim Leach is a deficit hawk. The bar for Republicans to be "deficit hawks" is indeed low:

Pondering Orszag's Legacy: My dark horse candidate is Jim Leach, the former Republican congressman from Iowa, deficit hawk, and currently the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Putting a Republican like Leach in charge of OMB would be an intriguing move, since it would signal Obama's determination to cut the deficit and make it a bit harder for the GOP to...

Fade Away...

Andrew Sullivan:

How We Know What McChrystal Really Thinks - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: It's a shock, isn't it? Obama essentially gave McChrystal everything he asked for, and backed the full counter-insurgency strategy. He has, in my view, foolishly thrown more resources and more ambition at this hopeless task than his predecessor ever did. And yet, McChrystal and his flunkies still feel the need to bad-mouth and mock those who lost the argument. This is news, no? It's...

Time to Fade Away

James Fallows:

Obama Has to Fire McChrystal: It's about civilian control of the military, respect for the chain of command, and the concepts of disrespect and insubordination. Every officer and enlisted person in every military branch is well schooled in what those concepts mean. If the facts are as they appear -- McChrystal and his associates freely mocking their commander in chief and his possible successor (ie, Biden) and the relevant State Department officials (Holbrooke and...

William Shirer Liveblogs World War II: June 22, 1940

William Shirer:

The Germans [at Compiegne:] had been annoyed that the French delegation had arrived [to negotiate:] without authority to conclude an aristice except with the express agreement of the government at Bordeaux.... [T:]hey succeeded in setting up a telephone connection... right through the battle lines... to Bordeaux.... The next day I myself contrived to hear the German recording....

To the credit of [General Weygand:], who bears a grave responisibility for... the final...

links for 2010-06-21

Ellen and Jim: Debra Granik's Winter's Bone: an Antigone for our era







John Hawkes Takes Us Inside Winter's Bone









AS: "I'm sure that if Salam thought about it for a moment, he'd realize that the government pressuring BP to pay for the damage it caused out of its own pocket is not exactly "similar" to...

Forty-Five Percent?

Simon Johnson:

The Quiet Coup: From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent...