J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 276

Samuel Moyn: The Alt-Right���s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years...

Samuel Moyn: The Alt-Right���s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old: "What is 'cultural Marxism'? And why does Mr. Lind fantasize about its slaughter? Nothing of the kind actually exists. But it is increasingly popular to indict cultural Marxism���s baleful effects on society���and to dream of its violent extermination...

...Originally an American contribution to the phantasmagoria of the alt-right, the fear of ���cultural Marxism��� has been percolating for years through global sewers of hatred.... Ron Paul tweeted out a racist meme that employed the phrase. On Twitter, the son of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil���s newly elected strongman, boasted of meeting Steve Bannon and joining forces to defeat ���cultural Marxism.��� Jordan Peterson, the self-help guru and best-selling author, has railed against it too in his YouTube ruminations. ���Cultural Marxism��� is also a favorite topic on Gab, the social media network where Robert Bowers, the man accused of shooting 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last month, spent time. Mr. Lind may have only fantasized about mass death as a comeuppance for cultural Marxists, but others have acted on it....

The protagonist of Mr. Lind���s novel expounds on his theory to their faces: ���Classical Marxists, where they obtained power, expropriated the bourgeoisie and gave their property to the state,��� he says. ���Where you obtained power, you expropriated the rights of white men and gave special privileges to feminists, blacks, gays, and the like.��� It is on the basis of this parallel that the novel justifies carnage against the ���enemies of Christendom��� as an act showing that ���Western culture��� is ���recovering its will.��� Some Marxists, like the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci and his intellectual heirs, tried to understand how the class rule they criticized worked through cultural domination.... But neither the defense of the workers nor of other disempowered groups was a conspiracy... never was there a malignant plot to convert the first into the second ��� which is what ���cultural Marxism��� implies....

The... discourse around cultural Marxism today resembles nothing so much as a version of the Judeobolshevik myth updated for a new age.... As in Judeobolshevism, cultural Marxism homogenizes vast groups of shadowy enemies and assigns them a secret design to upend society.... That ���cultural Marxism��� is a crude slander, referring to something that does not exist, unfortunately does not mean actual people are not being set up to pay the price...

#shouldread #orangehairedbaboons #neofascim #fascism

One interesting thing here is that Jonathan Swift was one...

One interesting thing here is that Jonathan Swift was one of the biggest political liars of his generation���the anti-Whig Breitbart of his day, in some respects: Jonathan Swift (2010): Political Lying: "A political liar... ought to have but a short memory.... The superiority of his genius consists in nothing else but an inexhaustible fund of political lies, which he plentifully distributes every minute he speaks, and by an unparalleled generosity forgets, and consequently contradicts, the next half hour. He never yet considered whether any proposition were true or false, but whether it were convenient for the present minute or company.... You... will find yourself equally deceived whether you believe or not: the only remedy is to suppose, that you have heard some inarticulate sounds, without any meaning at all...

...I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim so frequent in every body's mouth, that truth will at last prevail. Here hath this island of ours, for the greatest part of twenty years, lain under the influence of such counsels and persons, whose principle and interest it was to corrupt our manners, blind our understanding, drain our wealth, and in time destroy our constitution both in church and state, and we at last were brought to the very brink of ruin; yet, by the means of perpetual misrepresentations, have never been able to distinguish between our enemies and friends.

We have seen a great part of the nation's money got into the hands of those, who, by their birth, education, and merit, could pretend no higher than to wear our liveries; while others, who, by their credit, quality, and fortune, were only able to give reputation and success to the Revolution, were not only laid aside as dangerous and useless, but loaden with the scandal of Jacobites, men of arbitrary principles, and pensioners to France; while truth, who is said to lie in a well, seemed now to be buried there under a heap of stones. But I remember it was a usual complaint among the Whigs, that the bulk of the landed men was not in their interests, which some of the wisest looked on as an ill omen; and we saw it was with the utmost difficulty that they could preserve a majority, while the court and ministry were on their side, till they had learned those admirable expedients for deciding elections, and influencing distant boroughs, by powerful motives from the city....

I shall endeavour to undeceive or discover those deluded or deluding persons, who hope, or pretend it is only a short madness in the vulgar, from which they may soon recover; whereas, I believe, it will appear to be very different in its causes, its symptoms, and its consequences; and prove a great example to illustrate the maxim I lately mentioned, that truth (however sometimes late) will at last prevail...

#shouldread #orangehairedbaboons #publicsphere

Blame the Economists?: No Longer Fresh at Project Syndicate

A short version of my review of Adam Tooze's excellent Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World: No Longer Fresh at Project Syndicate: Blame the Economists?: Ever since the 2008 financial crash and subsequent Great Recession, economists have been pilloried for failing to foresee the crisis, and for not convincing policymakers of what needed to be done to address it. But the upheavals of the past decade were more a product of historical contingency than technocratic failure: BERKELEY���Now that we are witnessing what looks like the historic decline of the West, it is worth asking what role economists might have played in the disasters of the past decade. From the end of World War II until 2007, Western political leaders at least acted as if they were interested in achieving full employment, price stability, an acceptably fair distribution of income and wealth, and an open international order in which all countries would benefit from trade and finance. True, these goals were always in tension, such that we sometimes put growth incentives before income equality, and openness before the interests of specific workers or industries. Nevertheless, the general thrust of policymaking was toward all four objectives. Then came 2008, when everything changed. The goal of full employment dropped off Western leaders��� radar... Read MOAR at Project Syndicate

How to evaluate and understand economists' role in the disasters of the past decade? We are, after all, now a full decade into what looks���this time for real���like the Decline of the (North Atlantic) west. From the end of World War II up until 2007 its rulers���understood as those that the voters elected not always and perhaps not often because of the policies they would pursue���were or were at least believed to be concerned with full employment, price stability, a middle class society with an acceptable distribution of income and wealth, and an open international order in which all countries benefited from international trade and finance. There were always tensions among these goals���perhaps we had to fall short on income distribution to generate incentives for growth, or fall short on openness to protect employment���but the thrust toward all four was not. Then come 2008 all this changed. The desire of North Atlantic rulers to push for full employment dropped off the radar even though there was no threat of inflation or benefits to openness. Making the international order win-win for all similarly disappeared as a policy goal, but not sacrificed for any tangible upside. Restoring the fortunes of the superrich seemed to become the guiding star of economic policy���with perhaps a hope, but not a plan, for it then to trickle down.

At the level of the macroeconomics at which I spend most of the time, this story of the past decade is almost always viewed and understood as a failure of economic analysis and communication. We economists failed to tell politicians and bureaucrats in a convincing way what needed to be done, in large part because we failed to analyze the situation fully and properly in real time. Some���like Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff���saw the dangers of financial crisis, but greatly exaggerated the risks of public spending to boost employment. Others���like me���were looking the wrong way at global imbalances rather than at U.S. financial misregulation as the principal source of risk, but understood well that expansionary monetary policy would not be enough. Still others���like Ben Bernanke���understood the importance of keeping interest rates low, but had a very exaggerated idea of how much good could be done by additional monetary policy tools like quantitative easing. If only we economists had thought more quickly and correctly, and been more convincing where we were right���and less convincing where we were wrong���all would be, if not well, considerably better.

Adam Tooze of Yale University has little time for this story. He is a historian. His history of the post-2007 Decline of the North Atlantic, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0525558802 is a story of deeper historical currents, not of technocratic errors of analysis and communication. Increasing inequality driving pressure for cowboy finance and lower taxes on the rich���and higher government deficits and debt���driving further increases in inequality. The George W. Bush administration's decision to busy giddy minds outside the administration as well as its own giddy mind with the ill-planned and ill-thought out attack on Iraq, robbing America of the status and credibility to lead the North Atlantic in 2007-9 when leadership was most needed. The breakdown of the rationality of American politics, as evidenced by the Republican choice of the unqualified George W. Bush and the unbalanced Richard Cheney in 2000, and then its doubling-down in 2008 with Sarah Palin and in 2010 with the Tea Party. when the combination of the financial crisis, the Great Recession, and the Failed Recovery led to the political apotheoses of a race-baiting and nasty ex-reality TV star on the one hand and of a Vermont self-labeled socialist who had previously failed to make alliances or have much of an impact as a legislator. "This denouement", Tooze writes, "might have seemed a little cartoonish"���probably too cartoonish for a writer for a "House of Cards", a "Veep", or a "West Wing" to submit to the showrunners.

Before the crisis it had been rising celebrity-superstar senator Barack Obama who warned that nativism and political breakdown would follow from a failure to construct a "purple America" that would address the concerns of working- and lower middle-class income stagnation and economic security. But the Obama administration he headed had little tolerance for what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had seen as the best way to attempt to deal with problems of this magnitude: "bold, persistent experimentation... common sense... take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something..."

That Barack Obama beforehand saw���or at least talked as though he saw���the need for aggressive action, but that his adminstration could not carry through, is powerful evidence that Tooze has strong arguments. Economists were unconvincing because ongoing political breakdown, the throwing-away of American credibility, and the malign influence of rising plutocracy meant that economists calling for "bold, persistent experimentation" along the lines suggested by well-founded economic theories were trying to swim against the tide. The political nation���or at least the journalistic-bureaucractic-influence peddling castes often mistaken for the political nation���did not demand and would not tolerate policies that would have made things right.

But I do not find Tooze's arguments to be as strong as he thinks they are. We economists and our theories did make a big difference: save for Greece, we had nothing like a rerun of the Great Depression, and we might have had one. Had we been smarter and more articulate���and less divied, with too many of us chasing red herrings and false wills-o-the-wisp���we might have made a bigger difference.

No Longer Fresh at Project Syndicate: Blame the Economists?: Ever since the 2008 financial crash and subsequent Great Recession, economists have been pilloried for failing to foresee the crisis, and for not convincing policymakers of what needed to be done to address it. But the upheavals of the past decade were more a product of historical contingency than technocratic failure.

BERKELEY ��� Now that we are witnessing what looks like the historic decline of the West, it is worth asking what role economists might have played in the disasters of the past decade.

From the end of World War II until 2007, Western political leaders at least acted as if they were interested in achieving full employment, price stability, an acceptably fair distribution of income and wealth, and an open international order in which all countries would benefit from trade and finance. True, these goals were always in tension, such that we sometimes put growth incentives before income equality, and openness before the interests of specific workers or industries. Nevertheless, the general thrust of policymaking was toward all four objectives.

Then came 2008, when everything changed. The goal of full employment dropped off Western leaders��� radar, even though there was neither a threat of inflation nor additional benefits to be gained from increased openness. Likewise, the goal of creating an international order that serves everyone was summarily abandoned. Both objectives were sacrificed in the interest of restoring the fortunes of the super-rich, perhaps with a distant hope that the wealth would ���trickle down��� someday.

At the macroeconomics level, the story of the post-2008 decade is almost always understood as a failure of economic analysis and communication. We economists supposedly failed to convey to politicians and bureaucrats what needed to be done, because we hadn���t analyzed the situation fully and properly in real time"

Some economists, like Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, saw the dangers of the financial crisis, but greatly exaggerated the risks of public spending to boost employment in its aftermath.

Others, like me, understood that expansionary monetary policies would not be enough; but, because we had looked at global imbalances the wrong way, we missed the principal source of risk ��� US financial mis-regulation.

Still others, like then-US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, understood the importance of keeping interest rates low, but overestimated the effectiveness of additional monetary-policy tools such as quantitative easing. The moral of the story is that if only we economists had spoken up sooner, been more convincing on the issues where we were right, and recognized where we were wrong, the situation today would be considerably better.

The Columbia University historian Adam Tooze has little use for this narrative. In his new history of the post-2007 era, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, he shows that the economic history of the past ten years has been driven more by deep historical currents than by technocrats��� errors of analysis and communication.

Specifically, in the years before the crisis, financial deregulation and tax cuts for the rich had been driving government deficits and debt ever higher, while further increasing inequality. Making matters worse, George W. Bush���s administration decided to wage an ill-advised war against Iraq, effectively squandering America���s credibility to lead the North Atlantic through the crisis years.

It was also during this time that the Republican Party began to suffer a nervous breakdown. As if Bush���s lack of qualifications and former Vice President Dick Cheney���s war-mongering weren���t bad enough, the party doubled down on its cynicism. In 2008, Republicans rallied behind the late Senator John McCain���s running mate, Sarah Palin, a folksy demagogue who was even less suited for office than Bush or Cheney; and in 2010, the party was essentially hijacked by the populist Tea Party.

After the 2008 crash and the so-called Great Recession, years of tepid growth laid the groundwork for a political upheaval in 2016. While Republicans embraced a brutish, race-baiting reality-TV star, many Democrats swooned for a self-declared socialist senator with scarcely any legislative achievements to his name. ���This denouement,��� Tooze writes, ���might have seemed a little cartoonish,��� as if life was imitating the art of the HBO series ���Veep.���

Of course, we have yet to mention a key figure. Between the financial crisis of 2008 and the political crisis of 2016 came the presidency of Barack Obama. In 2004, when he was still a rising star in the Senate, Obama had warned that failing to build a ���purple America��� that supports the working and middle classes would lead to nativism and political breakdown.

Yet, after the crash, the Obama administration had little stomach for the medicine that former President Franklin D. Roosevelt had prescribed to address problems of such magnitude. ���The country needs���bold persistent experimentation,��� Roosevelt said in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression. ���It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.���

The fact that Obama failed to take aggressive action, despite having recognized the need for it beforehand, is a testament to Tooze���s central argument. Professional economists could not convince those in power of what needed to be done, because those in power were operating in a context of political breakdown and lost American credibility. With policymaking having been subjected to the malign influence of a rising plutocracy, economists calling for ���bold persistent experimentation��� were swimming against the tide ��� even though well-founded economic theories justified precisely that course of action.

Still, I do not find Tooze���s arguments to be as strong as he thinks they are. We economists and our theories did make a big difference. With the exception of Greece, advanced economies experienced nothing like a rerun of the Great Depression, which was a very real possibility at the height of the crisis. Had we been smarter, more articulate, and less divided and distracted by red herrings, we might have made a bigger difference. But that doesn���t mean we made no difference at all.

#shouldread #tooze #greatrecession #financialcrisis #highlighted

Nathaniel Rakich: What The Heck Is Happening In That Nort...

Nathaniel Rakich: What The Heck Is Happening In That North Carolina House Race?: "Affidavits... in which voters said that people came to their doors to collect their unsealed absentee ballots. One voter alleged that her ballot was incomplete at the time and that the collector said 'she would finish it herself'. Another claimed to have received an absentee ballot that she did not request.... Something unusual happened in absentee-by-mail voting in Bladen County.... In six of the district���s eight counties, fewer than 3 percent of total votes were absentee-by-mail ballots. But in Bladen County, that number was 7.3.... Absentee-by-mail ballots tended to be much better for McCready than other ballots���except in Bladen County... [where] absentee-by-mail ballots were more Republican-leaning than the rest of Bladen���s votes by 8 percentage points. But if we look at the whole district, absentee-by-mail ballots were 24 points more Democratic-leaning...

#shouldread #orangehairedbaboons #politics #voterfraud

Berkeley Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging:...

Berkeley Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging: Inequality in Life and Death: Policy and Prospect: "Featured Speaker: ��Peter Orszag.... Speakers: ��Yuriy Gorodnichenko... Hilary Hoynes... Ronald Lee... Gabriel Zucman.... Moderator: ��Alan Auerbach.... Inequality has become a central focus of policy discussions, but inequality has multiple dimensions and correspondingly many potential policy interventions. This mini-conference will consider inequality from this broad perspective...

#shouldread #equitablegrowth

Hold on, every day, to the fact that this is not normal: ...

Hold on, every day, to the fact that this is not normal: Matthew Yglesias: Trump Wall Street Journal Interview: Transcript Shows Trade Ignorance: "He confuses tariffs and interest rates, and invents phantom new steel plants.... One of Trump���s earliest trade moves was to impose broad new taxes on imported steel and aluminum, which has allowed him to hand out exemptions as political favors.... It���s been bad for American companies that manufacture things made out of metal. Trump���s view, however, is that this policy has been a stunning success that���s made America���s steel industry 'vibrant'.... 'You know, they���re building plants all over the country because I put steel���because I put tariffs, 25 percent tariffs, on dumping steel'...

...In Trump���s mind, of course, ���they���re building plants all over the country,��� which is something he says constantly at rallies even though it isn���t true. Yet perhaps precisely because so much of his presidency consists of these fanciful rhetorical constructs, he doesn���t seem to understand that he has policymaking authority beyond just saying stuff. Cars are made out of metal, so taxing foreign metal in order to let American metal-makers raise prices is bad for American carmakers.... While Trump has a lot of thoughts on the subject, he doesn���t actually have a policy to offer. Asked if he has ���any comment on GM shutting its plants, laying off employees,��� Trump starts with a nice message of solidarity... [and then] Trump just filibusters:

Well, it���s one plant in Ohio. But I love Ohio. And I told them: You���re playing around with the wrong person. And Ohio wasn���t properly represented by their Democrat senator, Senator Brown, because he didn���t get the point across. But we will all together get the point across to General Motors. And they better damn well open up a new plant there very quickly. You know, they haven���t closed ��� they���re reallocating it, it���s called. And I said, because their Cruze car isn���t selling, OK? They make a car called Chevy Cruze. And it���s not selling well. So I said: Then put a car that is selling well in there but get it open fast.

We���ve gone from the president boldly reviving American industry by taxing foreign metal to the president kind of vaguely begging the CEO of a car company to keep a marginal factory open. Trump seems to realize this is weak, so upon follow-up, he recasts himself in a more confrontational light:

President Trump: I spoke with Mary Barra, the head of General Motors, last night. I said: I heard you���re closing your plant. It���s not going to be closed for long, I hope, Mary, because if it is you���ve got a problem.... So she told me: The car���s not selling. I said, so maybe you got to make a better car.

That���s Trump���s solution for Midwestern communities devastated by the loss of auto manufacturing plants. Maybe the bosses should make better cars. Maybe!...

#shouldread #oranagehairedbaboons #tariffs #globalization

I really wish that they had included something like my fu...

I really wish that they had included something like my full quote���that: "It is Trump's policies that have created a situation in which a Federal Reserve headed by Jay Powell cannot do otherwise than raise interest rates, and so raise the value of the dollar and increase the trade deficit. So what is he complaining about, really?" Philip Rucker et al.: Trump Says He's Not Happy with Chairman of Fed: "Trump says he's not happy with chairman of Fed: 'I'm doing deals, and I'm not being accommodated by the Fed', Trump said. 'They're making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me'...

...He added: 'So far, I'm not even a little bit happy with my selection of [Powell]. Not even a little bit. And I'm not blaming anybody, but I'm just telling you I think that the Fed is way off-base with what they're doing.'... Powell took over as chairman earlier this year. Since then, the Fed has raised interest rates three times and is expected to increase them another time next month.... "I'm not playing by the same rules as Obama," Trump said. "Obama had zero interest to worry about; we're paying interest, a lot of interest.... And just so you understand, I'm playing a normalization economy, whereas he's playing a free economy. It's easy to make money when you're paying no interest. It's easy to make money when you're not doing any pay-downs. Despite that, the numbers we have are phenomenal numbers." Brad DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said the Fed was responding in part to economic conditions Trump had helped foster, such as growth spurred by last year's tax cut. "The Federal Reserve cannot be expected to do otherwise than raise interest rates," DeLong said. "This is what Trump bought when he made his Fed appointments. So why is he surprised?"...

#shouldread #orangehairedbaboons #macropolicy

Paul Krugman: The Bank of England's Dire Estimates of Bre...

Paul Krugman: The Bank of England's Dire Estimates of Brexit: "Another trade discussion where I would like to believe the worst but not convinced: Brexit. The Bank of England just released some very dire scenarios...

...And I won't make a full judgement until I see the details. But their bad-case losses from a no-deal Brexit look extremely high. I mean, 8 percent of GDP was the kind of estimate we used to make for countries with 150 percent effective rates of protection. I don't understand how you can get that kind of cost without making some big ad hoc assumptions about productivity or something. And I have worried in all this about motivated reasoning on the part of people who oppose Brexit for the best of reasons. As best I can tell, the big results depend on assumed relations between trade/FDI flows and productivity. It's really important to understand that this channel does not follow from basic trade theory and comparative advantage; it's a black-box story. What we have are correlations between trade and investment flows and productivity that don't really follow from standard models. Are these causal? There is surely room for skepticism. Yet that seems to be the big driver of the whole thing. So I'm worried .

Again, I'm anti-Brexit, and have no doubt that it will make Britain poorer. And the BoE could be right about the magnitude. But they've really gone pretty far out on a limb here...

#shouldread #orangehairedbaboons #globalization

Tyler Feder: Time for a New Installment of Work-From-Home...

Tyler Feder: Time for a New Installment of Work-From-Home L����ks���

#shouldread

Marcy Wheeler: Mueller Just Guaranteed He Can Issue a Pub...

Marcy Wheeler: Mueller Just Guaranteed He Can Issue a Public Report: "Mueller���s team appears to have��no doubt that Manafort was lying to them.... Giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors... while reporting... to Trump ... increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers... full of lies.... That 'detailed sentencing submission'... Mueller mentions?... There���s your Mueller report, which will be provided in a form that Matt Whitaker won���t be able to suppress...

#shouldread #orangehairedbaboons