J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 34

Black: Cracking���Noted

Duncan Black: Cracking https://www.eschatonblog.com/2020/07/cracking.html: ���27% will support him no matter what, and another 13% will support him almost no matter what, but once you start losing at that latter group they don't come back. They're the ones who won't admit to voting for him in a few years (months). "Evaluation of Trump's oversight of the COVID-19 crisis reached a new low since ABC News/Ipsos began surveying on the coronavirus in March, with 67% disapproving of his efforts. One-third of the country approves of the president's oversight of the pandemic." They aren't reporting the overall approval rating, which I assume they asked, but��� .#noted #2020-07-10

Campos: The Trump Delusion���Noted

Paul Campos: The Trump Delusion https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/06/the-trump-delusion: ���How is it that, despite everything, 40% of America continues to support Donald Trump? I���ve suggested that Trump���s supporters can be sorted into a few broad categories, with many of those supporters belonging to more than one of these groups: White nationalists.... Alienated burn it all down anti-establishment types.... Upper class Republicans who want big tax cut.... Religious conservatives, overwhelmingly white evangelicals.... Low information voters who always vote Republican out of tribal habit. These people have the most fantastical ideas about Trump, such as for example that he���s a ���successful businessman,��� rather than a ���politician,��� which is why he manages to ���get things done.��� This last group in particular includes a lot of overlap with the more cultish strain of religious conservatives.... Relatively few people are capable of maintaining a genuine lesser of two evils attitude toward the leader of an essentially charismatic���to use Weber���s typology���political movement. Almost everyone in the movement must eventually embrace the delusion that the leader is actually a good person, despite all evidence to the contrary. For example, the following message has gone viral on social media over the last few days. The text is headed by the photo at the top of this post:

Anonymous: 'Let���s look at this man for one damn second!!!! A 74-year-old man is coming back home from work at 2 AM while most men his age are retired in their vacation homes. He comes back after a long day that probably started before the sun rose and gets back home exhausted with his tie open and hat in his hand, feeling that an accomplished day is finally over...

...This amazing man is in the age range of many people���s grandfathers, great grandfathers, or my grandfather when he passed away, but this man just came back home from work, for me, for you. This man left his massive gold-covered mansion where he could retire happily and play golf all day long. But this man put his wealth aside and went to work for free, for $1 a year, for me, for you, for us, for AMERICA.

While other presidents became rich from the presidency, this man LOST over 2 billion dollars of his wealth during this short 4 years of his life. He put aside his amazing retirement lifestyle for getting ambushed every single day by the media and the Radical Left Democrats that trash this man who works for them until 1 AM for free!

No, he doesn���t do it for money or power, he already had it. He is doing it so their houses will be safe, so their schools will get better, so they will be able to find jobs or start a new business easier, so they will be able to keep few dollars in their pockets at the end of the month.

Look at this picture again, that man is at the age of your fathers, grandfathers or maybe YOU! Where is your respect? Honor? Appreciation? Are you THAT BLIND? THAT BLIND to not see a thing this man is doing for you and for your family? THAT BLIND that after all his work for minority groups in America you keep calling him a racist? I am the son of an Auschwitz Survivor and someone who lost 99% of my family to the camps and ovens of Nazi Germany. And I���m no fool! DONALD TRUMP IS NO RACIST OR ANTI-SEMITE!

Are you THAT BLIND to not see how much this country developed in last 4 years? President Donald J. Trump, I want to thank you with all my heart. I am so sorry for blind hatred you have been made to endure. You are a good and generous man. I KNOW THIS.

What I don���t know and think about often is what kind of people is it who can be so hateful in their hearts to spew such hate and evilness, not just at you but at your family too? Or people mocking and making jokes of you because you���re not a professional politician groomed in speech making and straight faced lying. Or how about them attacking your wife and young son? How awful that must make you feel.

People are sure they have not been manipulated. People believe their hatred is their own. But for why, they can���t articulate. What kind of people are these? WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE ARE THESE?? People not realizing they have been manipulated and brainwashed by such a deep-rooted EVILNESS MOTIVATED BY AN EVIL MEDIA AND DEMOCRAT PARTY. The American People are in a bad place right now���.in their hearts and souls. God help us���Trump is not the problem.

This level of frankly delusional thinking is, I believe, far more common than either an enthusiastic embrace of anyone resembling the actual Donald Trump, or the sort of arms-length transactional support of people who recognize him for what he is, but have concluded that Paris is worth a mass.

Which is a fancy way of saying that a lot of his supporters are, at this point, basically insane.

...Meanwhile:

Aaron Rupar: 'This morning, Trump retweeted a QAnon account, thanked supporters of his who were filmed yelling ���white power,��� and issued a misleading non-denial of a story about him turning a blind eye while Russia offered bounties for US troops. All before 9 am...

.#noted #2020-07-10

Higgins & Klitgaard: Japan���s Experience with Yield Curve Control���Noted

For reasons that have never been clear to me, central banks have hitherto always focused on influencing interest rates at the short end of the yield curve. I understand why you would do so in a financial crisis: in a financial crisis it is the stringency of short term money that is the key problem. But when central banking moves out from dealing with dire and immediate crises into the business of making Say���s Law generally true in practice even though it is false in theory���the business of matching the propensity to save with the animal spirits of enterprisers���the short run opportunity cost of immediate cash money is no longer a key or even an especially interesting financial economic quantity to manage. Yet central banks have consistently, historically, and traditionally focused on managing it. Now, finally, the Bank of Japan has been experimenting with alternatives. And they look very promising indeed:

Matthew Higgins & Thomas Klitgaard: Japan���s Experience with Yield Curve Control https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2020/06/japans-experience-with-yield-curve-control.html: ���Any central bank considering a move to implement its own version of YCC... has many questions to ponder.... For Japan... YCC has had one clear benefit. Under the new policy, the BoJ has been able to exert fairly close control over the term structure of interest rates without resorting to large-scale interventions in the JGB market. Investors accept that the Bank can buy whatever quantity of JGBs is needed to keep yields from rising and, as a result, it has not had to buy many at all... .#macro #monetarypolicy #2020-07-10

Time for Another Ethics Panel: Keyvan���Noted

Time for Another Ethics Panel!: Keyvan: 'LOL https://twitter.com/shafieikeyvan/status/1280617693704531971: Turns out one of the signatories of the Harper���s letter, Cary Nelson, actually defended his university���s decision in 2014 to rescind Steven Salaita���s tenured appointment because of his comments about Israel. this letter is the biggest joke I���ve encountered in sometime!��� .#noted #2020-07-10

Boushey: The Link Between Structural Racism, the Coronavirus Recession, & Economic Inequality���Noted

Very much worth reading: Heather Boushey: The Link Between Structural Racism, the Coronavirus Recession, & Economic Inequality https://medium.com/@heatherboushey/the-link-between-structural-racism-the-coronavirus-recession-and-economic-inequality-c392c0d260ca: ���The evidence that inequality harms is all around us. The vulnerability of communities of low-income, as well as Black, Latinx, and Native American families to the effects of the coronavirus and the recession is stark. The same living and working conditions that obstruct people���s economic opportunities���the lack of access to affordable housing, inadequate healthcare, unsafe working conditions, the lack of paid sick leave���expose them in greater numbers to sickness and death from COVID-19. The failure to have effective institutions that protect all workers means our entire economy is less resilient���and more economically unstable as a result.... This brings us back to trust. Government must work on behalf of low-income, Black, Latinx, and Native American people and make sure their needs are truly reflected in the policy agenda. People must see that they can both develop and deploy their talents and skills in the economy and that those at the top are not encouraged to subvert outcomes to benefit themselves rather than our economy and society writ large. People must have both confidence and proof that they are protected from oppression and state-sanctioned violence. As we look to strengthening our democracy and recovering from this coronavirus recession in the years to come, core to any economic agenda must be to confront the role that effective institutions play in fostering growth that is strong, stable, and broadly shared. If large portions of our population can���t trust the government to act on their behalves, then we need to acknowledge our government isn���t working the way it needs to��� .#equitablegrowth #noted #2020-07-10

Bergquist, Mildenberger, & Stokes: Americans Want Green Spending In Federal Coronavirus Recession Relief Packages���Noted

There is potential political support for, and there is certainly both technocratic justification and fiscal space for, hitting both the economic recovery and the global warming fighting birds with the stone that is coronavirus plague depression relief:

Parrish Bergquist, Matto Mildenberger, & Leah Stokes: Americans Want Green Spending In Federal Coronavirus Recession Relief Packages https://equitablegrowth.org/americans-want-green-spending-in-federal-coronavirus-recession-relief-packages/: ���We launched a nationally representative survey of slightly more than 1,000 people between May 15, 2020 and May 20, 2020.... The public supports green stimulus but not at the expense of broad economic relief. Our experimental results show that including green infrastructure spending increases support for a coronavirus relief package. Support for wind and solar investments and for clean transportation investments is particularly strong. Including these measures increases support by 8.5 percentage points and 6.1 percentage points, respectively. Notably, including electricity transmission investments does not cause a change in support for the package��� .#equitablegrowth #noted #2020-07-10

Hipple & Fischer: Enhanced U.S. Social Insurance Will Be Necessary Until the Coronavirus Recession Recedes���Noted

Put me down as saying that we require, right now, not just additional social insurance payments but additional government purchases, additional government employment of test-&-tracers and barefoot nurses, plus powerful steps to boost all forms of investment spending while in-person consumption is depressed: Liz Hipple & Amanda Fischer: Enhanced U.S. Social Insurance Will Be Necessary Until the Coronavirus Recession Recedes https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-finds-enhanced-u-s-social-insurance-will-be-necessary-until-the-coronavirus-recession-recedes/: ���Raj Chetty and his Opportunity Insights colleagues... U.S. consumer spending fell dramatically over the past few months, driven by public health and safety concerns... [that] are keeping people, especially those in high-income households, away from purchasing in-person services, indicating that until people feel safe engaging again in in-person services such as dining out or getting haircuts, consumer spending on services���which accounts for 66 percent of all consumer spending���will not meaningfully rebound.... To fix the U.S. economy... [requires] first fix[ing] the U.S. public health crisis. Merely announcing that the economy is ���reopened��� will not make it so.... Investing in social insurance programs���such as the expanded unemployment benefits enacted by Congress in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act���is the best way to mitigate economic suffering during the recession, rather than stimulus measures targeted toward businesses or the rich.... The fall-off in consumer spending is being driven by high-income households, particularly in areas with high rates of COVID-19.... As of May 31, two-thirds of the total reduction in credit card spending since January was from households in the top 25 percent of the income distribution, whereas spending by households in the bottom quartile had returned to normal levels��� .#equitablegrowth #noted #2020-07-10

Equitable Growth: Unemployment Benefits���Noted

High-frequency business cycle data is rarely reliable, both because the data is unreliable and the official statistics measures that high frequency indicators are used to estimate is unreliable as well. But if I had to guess right now, I would say that the bounceback is over: that it is more likely than not that the US economy will worsen along the business cycle dimension than strengthen���at least over the next three months:

Equitable Growth: 'The week ending July 4 https://twitter.com/equitablegrowth/status/1281205517113872386, 1.4 million workers filed for regular unemployment benefits. The number of initial UI claims have declined every week since reaching a record high the first week of April, but claims have now plateaued. Another 1,038,905 workers filed for initial PUA, the program that extended eligibility to workers who do not have enough earnings history to be eligible for regular jobless benefits, such as caretakers and the self-employed. Regular continued claims, which represent the number of workers who are now insured, fell to 16.8 million the week of June 27. The share of the workforce that is receiving benefits decreased to 11.5 percent, a 0.5 percentage point increase from the week before. As @lizhipple and @amandalfischer write, policymakers should focus on "supporting the incomes of the tens of millions of workers who have lost their jobs...Most importantly, this includes extending the additional $600 in Unemployment Insurance benefits"... .#equitablegrowth #noted #2020-07-10

Lopez: Just 4 States Meet Criteria to Reopen & Stay Safe���Noted

No. The U.S. is not yet ready to ���reopen the economy������unless you want an ultimate 2019 coronavirus plague death total above one million. Why do you ask? And then there is hte danger that New York, New Jersey, and New England that would be able to handle the outbreak and reopen if they were a country that could control its borders will be taken down by infections coming from people fleeing Arizona, Texas, and Florida:

German Lopez: Just 4 States Meet Criteria to Reopen & Stay Safe https://www.vox.com/2020/5/28/21270515/coronavirus-covid-reopen-economy-social-distancing-states-map-data: ���Experts told me states need three things to be ready to reopen. State leaders, from the governor to the legislature to health departments, need to ensure the SARS-CoV-2 virus is no longer spreading unabated. They need the testing capacity to track and isolate the sick and their contacts. And they need the hospital capacity to handle a potential surge in Covid-19 cases. More specifically, states should meet at least five basic criteria. They should see a two-week drop in coronavirus cases, indicating that the virus is actually abating. They should have fewer than four daily new cases per 100,000 people per day ��� to show that cases aren���t just dropping, but also below dangerous levels. They need at least 150 new tests per 100,000 people per day, letting them quickly track and contain outbreaks. They need an overall positive rate for tests below 5 percent ��� another critical indicator for testing capacity. And states should have at least 40 percent of their ICU beds free to actually treat an influx of people stricken with Covid-19 should it be necessary. So far, most states are not there. As of July 8, just... Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York��� .#noted #2020-07-10

This Is What a President Looks Like���For the Weekend

If you won't vote for this guy over the incompetent buffoon that is Donald Trump, do me a favor and please never vote again. You are too much of an easily-grifted moron for your voting to be a good idea for anybody: Joe Biden & Ady Barkan: In Conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4CLoiA3vfQ:

.#fortheweekend #moralresponsibility #politics #2020-07-10