J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2289

Tony Judt Talks About the State of Israel

Tony Judt:

Op-Ed Contributor - Talking About Israel, Without the Clichés: THE Israeli raid on the Free Gaza flotilla has generated an outpouring of clichés from the usual suspects... a little house cleaning is in order.

No. 1: Israel is being/should be delegitimized:** Israel is a state like any other, long-established and internationally recognized. The bad behavior of its governments does not “delegitimize” it, any more than the bad behavior of the rulers of North Korea, Sudan &mdash...

Benito Mussolini Liveblogs World War II: June 10, 2010

Benito Mussolini:

Declaration of War on France and England: Soldiers, sailors, and aviators! Black shirts of the revolution and of the [Fascist:] legions! Men and women of Italy, of the Empire, and of the kingdom of Albania! Pay heed! An hour appointed by destiny has struck in the heavens of our fatherland. The declaration of war has already been delivered to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France. We go to battle against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west...

Benito Mussolini Liveblogs World War II: June 10, 1940

Benito Mussolini:

Declaration of War on France and England: Soldiers, sailors, and aviators! Black shirts of the revolution and of the [Fascist:] legions! Men and women of Italy, of the Empire, and of the kingdom of Albania! Pay heed! An hour appointed by destiny has struck in the heavens of our fatherland. The declaration of war has already been delivered to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France. We go to battle against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west...

links for 2010-06-09

Gnagesh: twitter: why the media is dying







Are We Slipping Back Into a Recession? - Business - The Atlantic







Dan Gillmor: Whitman and Fiorina: Silicon Valley's shabby side







Joe Weisenthal: Shanghai: 1990 vs. 2010







Matthew Yglesias: The Best Case I Can Make for Fiscal Retrenchment

MY: "it's perhaps worth...

This Is Neither an Offer to Sell nor a Solicitation of an Offer to Buy Japanese Government Securities; Such an Offer Can Be Made Only in the Prospectus...

I know that I have said that more than half of the job of a U.S. Treasury Secretary is that of being a bond salesman. But Tim Geithner has a long way to go before he reaches the level of the bond sales campaigns of the Japanese government:

Does this mean that Japan is still very, very far away from the limits of its debt capacity? Or very close to them?

Japan is a somewhat strange country in many ways...

David Leonhardt on the Ratf*^#: Understanding the U.S. Reponse to the Great Panic

I don't want to blame the Obama administration for the fact that the unemployment rate is kissing 10% and will in all likelihood stay there for a while--I blame the Bush administration and the McCain political team and the Republicans in congress and the monstrous disaster for America that is the Republican Party. Without Obama and company the unemployment rate would not be kissing 10% but would be 12% or 15% right now.

But it is definitely a ratf*^#...

David Leonhardt tries to make sense...

Understanding Critics of Stimulus: Part LIX

Paul Krugman is reduced to psychology, and writes:

The Seductiveness Of Demands For Pain: Mark Thoma is astonished at Raghuram Rajan’s... desire to find some argument... for raising interest rates even though unemployment is near 10 percent.... I realized... I’d seen something like this before. Back in the summer of 2008, as the world was sliding into recession, Ken Rogoff demanded that the Fed and the ECB raise rates because of rising commodity prices and inflationary pressure in...

It's Not Clear that Mundell-Fleming Is the Right Model Here...

Not that I know what the right model is. Paul Krugman writes:

The Global Transmission of European Austerity: Some thoughts on the fiscal austerity mania now sweeping Europe: is anyone thinking seriously about how this affects the rest of the world, the US included? We do have a framework for thinking about this issue: the Mundell-Fleming model. And according to that model (does anyone still learn this stuff?), fiscal contraction in one country under floating exchange rates is in fact...

Maybe, Ben, Maybe

Ben Bernanke says:

Recovery can survive coming fiscal drag: Bernanke: The U.S. economy is strong enough to withstand the fiscal tightening that is ahead, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday. "Although the support to economic growth from fiscal policy is likely to diminish in the coming year, the incoming data suggest that gains in private final demand will sustain the recovery in economic activity," Bernanke said in remarks prepared for the House Budget...

Refighting the Civil War Department

In today's Republican Party, the Past Is Not Dead--It Is Not Even Past. They really do want to refight the Civil War--this time definitely not on the side of Abraham Lincoln.

Justin Elliott and Evan McMorris-Santoro:

Reid Opponent Embraces Secessionist Group: The peculiar ideology of Sharron Angle... is perhaps no better illustrated than by her embrace of the patriot group Oath Keepers, whose membership of uniformed soldiers and police take an oath to refuse orders they see as...