J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 2311

links for 2010-05-12

Robert Gonzalez: The GOP's Growing Hispanic Rift

RG: "By failing to embrace the immigrant, those Republicans are making themselves largely irrelevant in a new era.... The hard work of my parents, along with God's providence, plus some luck here and there, fulfilled our American dreams, and ensured that we wanted not. I went to Princeton University for my undergraduate education, followed by Stanford Law School. My brother attended Washington University...

Carrots of Unusual Size and Shape

Posted via web from delong's posterous

Martin Feldstein on the Road to Damascus

Allow all the Bush tax cuts to expire, he says, in a couple of years when the recovery is well-established.

It's very nice to see. He is right, of course.

Marty:

Martin Feldstein: Extend the Bush Tax Cuts—For Now: Although it is important to avoid increasing the current tax rates until the recovery is well established, the enormous budget deficits that are now projected for the rest of the decade must not be allowed to persist. While legislation to reduce future government spending or...

Alan Blinder on Raghuram Rajan in 2005

In the interest of keeping our eye on the ball in FinReg, let me present Alan Blinder stating that incentives in banks that are too big to fail simply must be totally and completely broken and misaligned:

I’d like to defend Raghu a little bit against the unremitting attack he is getting here for not being a sufficiently good Chicago economist and just emphasize the sentence in his paper which says, “There is typically less downside and more upside risk from generating investment...

DeLong Smackdown Watch: Robert Waldmann: "On Proletarian Internationalism and the Renegade DeLong"

Robert Waldmann:

Should We Ban Naked CDSs? - Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Oh my oh my, Brad DeLong prof Noise Trader Risk ... himself seems to have left noise traders completely out of the story. Point 3 (used to be point 4 and I'm still throwing the same cow)

People who have done research and learned information about the structure and likely evolution of the market can bet on their knowledge: they win because they make their positive expected-value bets"

...

The Contrast in Mood Between Today and 1983

The most astonishing and surprising thing I find about Washington DC today is the contrast in mood between DC today and what DC was thinking a generation ago, in 1983, the last time the unemployment rate was kissing 10%. Back then it was a genuine national emergency that unemployment was so high--real policies like massive monetary ease and the eruption of the Reagan deficits were put in place to reduce unemployment quickly, and everybody whose policies wouldn't have much of an effect on...

The most astonishing and surprising thing I find about Wa...

The most astonishing and surprising thing I find about Washington DC today is the contrast in mood between DC today and what DC was thinking a generation ago, in 1983, the last time the unemployment rate was kissing 10%. Back then it was a genuine national emergency that unemployment was so high--real policies like massive monetary ease and the eruption of the Reagan deficits were put in place to reduce unemployment quickly, and everybody whose policies wouldn't have much of an effect on...

is the U.S. Like Greece?

Paul Krugman says no, and has a graph:

And he spanks David Leonhardt:

Are We Greece?: David Leonhardt tries to draw parallels. But how strong is the parallel, really? I would really question this comparison:

The numbers on our federal debt are becoming frighteningly familiar. The debt is projected to equal 140 percent of gross domestic product within two decades. Add in the budget troubles of state governments, and the true shortfall grows even larger. Greece’s debt, by...

Say It Ain't So, David...

Any story about the U.S. deficit today that does comparisons between the U.S. and Europe aiming to inform its readers really needs to make six points:

Starting around 2020 the U.S. has to finally solve the problem that Ronald Reagan created in the 1980 presidential campaign with his claim that the federal government could tax like Alabama and spend like Connecticut and somehow everything would work out. It won't. The U.S. has another decade to decide whether it wants to tax like Alabama...

Nobody Has Any Business Funding, Working for, or Voting for Today's Republican Party

Matthew Yglesias:

Twitter / mattyglesias: Taking all of Rep Cantor's ...: Taking all of Rep Cantor's proposed cuts together would slice $5 billion from a $1,171 billion deficit. http://bit.ly/a2ejWL

Clean up your act, guys...