J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 228
February 23, 2019
Comment of the Day: Kansas Jack: The Jesus Landing Pad: "...
Comment of the Day: Kansas Jack: The Jesus Landing Pad: "It's more than foreign policy. Because the 2nd coming is imminent, Global Warming is not a threat either. And that is a lot of people in this country who believe Revelation has shown how the Earth ends and cite Genesis that God has promised never to again flood the world...
#commentoftheday
The very smart Simon Johnson believes that something like...
The very smart Simon Johnson believes that something like codetermination is essential if modern capitalism is going to work: Simon Johnson: Saving Capitalism from Economics 101: "Warren is proposing a much broader rethink. Large corporations can still do well, but they need to be held accountable in a much more transparent way. Incentives for executives would be adjusted, and running these companies would no longer be so much about lining their own pockets.... The legitimacy of capitalism���private ownership and reliance on market mechanisms���would be greatly strengthened under the Accountable Capitalism Act. So, yes, like it or not, this will be on the final exam...
#noted
John Holbo: @jholbo1: "Write an article entitled "Gasligh...
John Holbo: @jholbo1: "Write an article entitled "Gaslighting Political Liberalism". I thought of this reading Zizek ages ago but today I read Vermeule. The argument alleges a paradoxical, debilitating blindspot. Political liberalism is supposed to be broadminded, self-critical and yet-and yet!-it cannot see this hole at the heart of ... (bum-bum-BUM!) ITSELF! But the existence of the hole is un-demonstrated, merely asserted (this is the gaslight part of the production)...
...Vermeule: "Having dispensed with the superintending design of Providence in favor of contingent, indirect mechanisms, liberalism is astonished to find that there is no guiding hand to ensure the fulfillment of its own faith..." Delete 'astonished'. But deleting takes the fun out. Yet this is hardly news Vermeulathustra is bearing from ultramontane regions, beyond the provincial ken of liberals. Why be astonished? "The predictable reaction is liberal fideism, which insists ever more stridently on the truth of liberalism���s unverifiable and potentially self-defeating claims." Critical interest hinges on the liberal reacting pathologically to the revelation of something obvious. But no evidence is adduced of this.
'Liberal fideism' sounds odd, but 'liberal faith' comes to same and sounds generic. Is Rawls forever banging the drum of the 'truth' of liberalism? No. Has it worried liberals that liberalism might be unstable? Yes. Vermeule aims to establish, not that liberalism is wrong, but that it is tragically, fatally un-self-aware. Liberalism does not, cannot, know the shape of-liberalism! At best it may see itself, faintly, in the mirror of a different fideism, one which knows itself far better! A pleasing, ironic, Chestertonian fable. Meanwhile, back on earth: get in line, man.
Vermeule quotes the theologian Henri Grenier: "The end of liberalism is not the protection of private rights, full stop. Rather, the structure of the claim is that liberty itself tends to produce the good indirectly.... Thus the goal of civil society is to protect private rights so that various goods (peace and harmony) may result from them." But you could have read it in the pages of the liberal J.S. Mill. It's Mill's official view. Don't pretend it's Thomistic secret sauce.
Vermeule should play it like Nietzsche's madman. He cries in the market: 'liberalism is no Archimedean point and may even be self-undermining.' The liberals are not shocked but laugh merrily as they bustle about. Welcome to the party! Vermeule is then within his rights to stalk off, murmuring 'I have come too soon.' That is, liberals KNOW all this-all too well!-hence they aren't taking it seriously. They are playing with fire as if these are mere debate points for the seminar room.
In conclusion: carry your ashes down from the mountain, by all means. Let the honey of your wisdom overflow, in its goldenness. But don't gaslight us, man. (Thread worth writing in full because 'anti-liberalism by gaslight' is a common view, I find.)
(Zarathustra carries his ashes UP the mountain. Flame and honey roll down. We regret the error.)...
#noted
Perhaps the strangest thing seen in the clash between Ilh...
Perhaps the strangest thing seen in the clash between Ilhan Omar and Elliot Abrams on whether he has any business working representing the U.S. abroad (he does not have any such business) was the reaction of CAP Foreign-Policy Vice President Kelly Magsamen: "Elliott Abrams... is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable.... we share goals..."
I am flummoxed and flabbergasted:
Charles R. Pierce: Ilhan Omar Questions Elliot Abrams Over El Mozote Massacre, Activities in El Salvador, Guatemala, Central America: "Ilhan Omar's Cross-Examination of Elliot Abrams Honored Thousands of Central American Dead: Someone in Congress finally asked a world-historical ghoul to answer for what he did...
Eric Alterman: An Actual American War Criminal May Become Our Second-Ranking Diplomat: "Elliott Abrams spent the Reagan years abetting genocide���now, he has been floated as Trump���s deputy secretary of state...
Eric Alterman: The Rehabilitation of Elliott Abrams: "In the Reagan State Department, Abrams (who also teaches foreign policy at Georgetown) repeatedly and purposely misled Congress about the government���s involvement with the death-squad-riddled Salvadoran military, the Nicaraguan Contra counter-revolutionaries and other Central American mass murderers. He whitewashed their massacres as well as the abuses of the Argentinean junta (who were kidnapping babies at the time and selling them) and the genocidal Guatemalan regime of Gen. Efr��an R��os Montt (currently on trial for crimes against humanity). Abrams did all this while casting aspersions on the motives of journalists and human rights workers who sought to tell the truth about these crimes. As a result of these offenses, among others, Abrams was forced to plead guilty to unlawfully withholding material information from Congress and to apologize to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was also disbarred in the District of Columbia.��After biding his time during the Bush I and Clinton administrations, Abrams resumed his previous patterns...
#noted
There has never been such a clown show.
Lighthizer, des...
There has never been such a clown show.
Lighthizer, desperate, tries to lecture his boss, and then renames his "Memorandum of Understanding" a "Trade Agreement".
Why? Because Trump thinks the agreement is binding if it is called "Trade Agreement" and not binding if it is called "Memorandum of Understanding":
Jennifer Jacobs and Justin Sink: Trump's Trade Chief Lectures His Boss and Gets Earful in Return: "Negotiators have been drafting MOUs.... Trump told gathered reporters that the memorandums would 'be very short term. I don���t like MOUs because they don���t mean anything. To me, they don���t mean anything'.... Lighthizer then jumped in to defend the strategy, with Trump looking on. 'An MOU is a binding agreement... detailed.... It���s a legal term. It���s a contract'.... But the president, unswayed, fired back at Lighthizer. 'By the way I disagree', Trump said. The top Chinese negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He, laughed out loud...
...���The real question is, Bob,��� Trump said, ���how long will it take to put that into a final binding contract?���... Lighthizer eventually deferred to his boss. ���From now on we���re not using the word memorandum of understanding anymore. We���re going to use the term trade agreement,��� Lighthizer told reporters. ���We���ll have the same document. It���s going to be called a trade agreement.��� He then turned to Liu to ask if the Chinese would accommodate the new terminology, winning a nod from the Chinese leader. ���Good, I like that term much better,��� Trump said, before again complaining that memorandums of understanding were not that meaningful...
#noted
February 22, 2019
I am told that somewhere on the internet there was once a...
I am told that somewhere on the internet there was once an exchange where Scott Winship told Matthew Yglesias that Winship's strategy was to become famous and influential by concern-trolling progressive researchers and analysts. Anybody know where it is? Don't give him oxygen. And no, I have never here anybody ever say "Scott Winship values integrity above nearly all else": Scott Winship: "I recently accused researchers at the Center for American Progress of an 'amateur-hour' mistake.... I had been accused of double-counting in the debate that drove me off Twitter.... I never suggested the CAP researchers were trying to mislead anyone. People��who know me���even those who regularly disagree with me and who don't like me, I think���know that I value integrity above nearly all else.... For reasons that end up being technical... I was wrong in my specific charge of double-counting against the CAP researchers.... I do believe that other statements in the report I criticized and a comment by CAP president Neera Tanden in the Vox.com piece that highlighted the report do in fact double-count in the way I (incorrectly) said that a specific chart did. And I have other criticisms...
#noted
Marcy Wheeler: How Amy Berman Jackson Got Roger Stone to ...
Marcy Wheeler: How Amy Berman Jackson Got Roger Stone to Step in It and Then Step in It Again: "Here���s what she did.... Impose a gag that a Twitter account bearing Stone���s name may have violated within an hour. Get Rogow and Stone on the record explaining why the terms of her gag won���t impact Stone���s ability to make a living, undercutting a significant part of the First Amendment claim they���ve been making. Provide a basis for the gag that Rogow did not anticipate, which may be far harder���and politically more difficult���to challenge. Provide an opportunity for both the prosecution and herself to catch Stone in multiple sworn lies (which, again, I���m sure the FBI is busy at work proving now), which if charged as perjury would lead to Stone���s immediate jailing...
#noted
The Federal Reserve in 2011 Debates Christina Romer's Ideas About the Need for "Regime Change": Weekend Reading
Weekend Reading: The Federal Reserve in 2011 Debates Christina Romer's Ideas About the Need for "Regime Change": https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/FOMC20111102meeting.pdf
I believe that in a generation or two the histories of the Bernanke Fed are overwhelmingly likely to concentrate on two puzzles:
The failure to seek an environment in which inflation was high enough to allow a Federal Funds rate of 5% or so at the [peak of the business cycle, so that Bernanke's successors would have room to respond to a downturn in aggregate demand.
The failure to use the credibility of its commitment to low inflation long and painfully built up by Volcker and Greenspan to support policies to rapidly return prime-age employment to its normal share of the population.
In late 2011, in a context in which prime-age employment was severely depressed and not going anywhere, the failure to see these two as policy priorities that called for, well, "regime change" is likely to appear largely inexplicable, and to be judged harshly:
FOMC November 1-2, 2011: CHAIRMAN BERNANKE: I���m sure many of you have seen some of the commentary on, for example, nominal GDP targets. Christina Romer made the point over the weekend that one potential advantage of something like a nominal GDP target is that it could be viewed as a regime change, and to the extent that it reflects a real change in how the Fed is doing business, it might have a more dramatic effect on expectations than something more incremental. That being said, of course, big changes are also dangerous, and that���s something we need to keep in mind....
MR. EVANS. I���m happy to see that there are policy approaches available to us that should produce economic outcomes that are vastly preferred to our current outlook, and as you just mentioned, Mr. Chairman, it���s easy to see why there���s a growing clamor among an impressive variety of outside experts calling for more aggressive action, like Christy Romer, Mike Woodford, Ken Rogoff, the staff at Goldman Sachs, et cetera. Outsiders have an easier time advocating these prescriptions. For us insiders, details matter for the implementation. But before we can even consider technical details, I think the first major issue to grapple with is this: Has our current policy framework limited our effectiveness because it���s not properly understood by the Committee in its fullness or by the public, or because we disagree on the particulars of our framework? I personally think this is a concern. I mentioned this back in August when I said I thought that there were cracks emerging in our policy framework. I won���t belabor this issue. I���ve given two speeches on the dual mandate and my interpretation of its implications for our policymaking....
MR. FISHER. Reference has been made to Ms. Romer. I thought that was an interesting article. However, I must tell you that all I got out of it was, ���Be bold.��� That was what her message was. I wasn���t convinced by her argumentation. I have listened very carefully to Ken Rogoff, who is on our advisory committee at the Dallas Fed and our Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute. I respect him enormously. And then, I observed the pushback that came from another person I respect enormously named Paul Volcker. I understand that Tobin made the arguments in the 1970s, but I also understand that no other central bank has attempted what we are talking about. You had a slight variation of price-level targeting in 1930 by the Swedes. We love to evoke the Scandinavians at this table. But it was not held for very long, and it was a variation of price-level targeting. To my knowledge, no central bank has adopted nominal income targeting. It is true that Tobin made the argument in 1970. It is true that Martin Feldstein agreed with it.
I did have Professor Feldstein down the other day to the Dallas Fed. He is completely against it presently. Why? Because he doesn���t think we are quite credible yet in having anchored���and this is his own personal view���our commitment to long-term price stability. I come back to long-term price stability. To me, that is the key variable. The flexibility around it is something that we need to define, and then we need to socialize it. Despite the interest that has been shown by Goldman Sachs and Christy Romer and others, I think we need to socialize it further....
CHAIRMAN BERNANKE. A number of people have mentioned Christy Romer���s piece, and she talked about the 1979 regime change. I actually think that���s the wrong example. As President Bullard pointed out, when Chairman Volcker changed the policy regime, in fact, it took a long time for people to appreciate it and understand it, and one implication of that is there was a long recession and real interest rates remained very high, and so on. But there are other examples, like 1933, when Roosevelt took the U.S. off the gold standard, and prices and asset prices changed almost overnight. There are other examples like the end of hyperinflations, and so on. There���s something sometimes about regime changes that has remarkable effects on an economy. I���m not saying that we know how to predict that, but that���s something that we haven���t really understood or really explored in this conversation. That being said, I think that there was a lot of agreement that there are a lot of practical issues associated with implementing such an intermediate target, including both the very long horizons over which they have to operate and the issues of communication and credibility...
#weekendreading #monetarypolicy #macro #highlighted
Revisiting the American Nazi Supporters of ���A Night at the Garden��� | The New Yorker
Margaret Talbot: Revisiting the American Nazi Supporters of ���A Night at the Garden���: "Even more unnerving than the strangeness of the spectacle is the creeping sense of familiarity it evokes. Kuhn���s snarky excoriation of the 'Jewish-controlled' press, his demand 'that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it', and even the idolatry of the Founding Fathers all have their echoes in far-right politics today. No moment in the film seems more redolent of our current demagogue���s maga rallies than the one in which a protester scrambles onto the stage���he was Isadore Greenbaum, a twenty-six-year-old plumber���s helper from Brooklyn���and is promptly tackled and pummelled by Kuhn supporters, amid appreciative laughter and hooting from the crowd. One advantage to living through Trumpism is that it has compelled a reckoning with aspects of our country���s past that, for a long time, many Americans preferred not to acknowledge...
#noted
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