J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2287

Shame on the Republican Party of California

When I think that Tom Campbell and Chuck de Vore have run for office more times than Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have vote...

*Sigh.* Clive Crook Once Again Fails to Read

Clive Crook:

Galston v Krugman: The earlier exchange with Paul Krugman which Galston refers to is worth reading. Krugman has set his face against "deficit crazies" -- meaning, I think, anybody who expresses concern about the long-term US fiscal position (Jeff Sachs, for instance, Raghuram Rajan, Paul Volcker: the list of idiots talking nonsense is long)...

That's simply not true.

"Deficit crazies" are people who think that concerns about the long-term U.S. fiscal position require...

Paul Krugman: That Yield Spread Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

A year and a half ago Paul Krugman warned about how to interpret an upward-sloping yield curve:

The yield curve: I’m a little late getting to this, but via Mark Thoma I see that economists at the Cleveland Fed are taking some comfort from the positive slope of the yield curve. Long-term interest rates are higher than short-term rates, which is usually a sign that the economy will expand. Not this time, I’m afraid. It’s all about the zero lower bound.

The reason for the historical...

Ryan Avent Asks Why David Brooks Has a Job

It is a very good question. Ryan Avent:

Deficit reduction: David Brooks doesn't inspire confidence: David Brooks' column.... I think it's a total mess.... [I:]t's meant, I think, to be about fiscally responsible ways to invest in America's future. But... odd detours.... The piece begins with a rumination on the effectiveness of last year's stimulus plan.... Mr Brooks then transitions:

Voters, business leaders and political leaders do not seem to think that the stimulus was such...

Phil Izzo of the Wall Street Journal Knows Better than to Put David Brooks Forward via a "He Said, She Said" Item as an Expert on the Economy

But he does it anyway.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

A Contest: Analogies for the Pain Caucus

Worrying about inflation and mounting government debt when the unemployment rate is at 10%, capacity utilization at 72%, and the U.S. government can borrow for 30 years at a real interest rate of 1.86% per year is like...

The winner so far is Ben Furnas: ...worrying about getting your furniture wet when your house is on fire.

My best entry so far is: ...telling a fire department that its first priority is to stop filling its firehoses with water and start filling them with gasoline.

...

Short-Term and Long-Term Debts and Deficits

Henry Blodget asks a question:

Buzzup Finance - Our Questions For Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Niall Ferguson, And The Tea Party: How are we going to work our way out of our long-term debt-and-deficit problem?  If you're going to point to the post-WW2 period as evidence that our projected debt-to-GDP ratio is nothing to worry about, please acknowledge that one fundamental difference between now and then is that overall debt-to-GDP (including consumer and private sector debt) is VASTLY...

DeLong Smackdown Watch of the Day for June 11, 2010: Gene Healy

Michael F. Cannon:

Twitter / Michael F. Cannon: I hear they're very absorb ...: I hear they're very absorbent. RT @nmkurokawa: Oil spills: bad. Illegal immigrants helping to clean up the oil: WORSE.

We would all be better off it it shut down. The (few) good people will be picked up elsewhere...

Gene Healy emails:

Prof. DeLong: given that I know both of the folks on the er, “retweet” you reference here, the fact that they were being sarcastic and that the thrust of what they...

Why We Would Be Better Off without the New York Times: Yet Another David Brooks Edition

Outsourced to Dean Baker:

David Brooks and the Power of Magical Thinking at the NYT: David Brooks doesn't like the stimulus.... Today he engages in... magical thinking.... His first invention is telling us: "deficit spending in the middle of a debt crisis has different psychological effects than deficit spending at other times." This is very interesting, what "debt crisis" is Brooks referring to? We can point to a debt crisis in Greece, and arguably Portugal and Spain, but it is not...

The Thoughtful Steven Pearlstein Has a Wrong Theory About Disagreement Over Economic Policy

It's wrong. But he has a theory. Steve Pearlstein:

Enough with the economic recovery: It's time to pay up: Just about now, you may be a bit confused about the economy. Some... see the beginnings of a sustainable recovery. Others note that most... recent growth... is... unsustainable. Some... worry about deflation. Others... warn of inflation just over the horizon. Some insist there is an urgent need for another shot of Keynesian fiscal stimulus.... Others warn that any more debt will...