J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 342

We may not believe Bob Allen's provocative economic histo...

We may not believe Bob Allen's provocative economic history of Soviet Russia, however. I think that Russia is enough of a "European" country that an "Asian" or "Latin American" baseline is not appropriate. Aside from the value to the world of a heavy industrial complex in Magnitogorsk in 1939 (a big aside), the Stalinist road to industrial society was not only genocidal and long-run counterproductive but medium-run stupid. But why Mehmet Ali Pasha was unable to make Egypt a cotton-spinning and -weaving center remains a fascinating question: Tom Westland: Russia vs Egypt: "In both 19th century Egypt and 20th century Russia, the path to industrial growth was blocked by a formidable swamp: subsistence agriculture...

...Both Mehmet Ali Pa��a���s government and Russian thinkers from Stolypin and Witte to Bukharin and Preobrazhensky were forced to confront a classic question of development economics: should we screw the peasants? For the peasant-screwing faction, which included Preobrazhensky and Mehmet Ali Pa��a, this provoked subsidiary inquiries, such as: how exactly shall we screw the peasants? And how much shall they be screwed for?...

Industrialisation in a peasant economy requires certain things. In order to set up factories, you need machines, and you need to pay for the machines somehow. If you have state-led industrialisation, as in Russia and Egypt, then the easiest way to obtain money is by taxing people���the peasants, perhaps���or, equivalently, by imposing ���marketing boards��� for agricultural output that buy food at artifically low prices and sell at higher prices. The agricultural surplus is made to pay for the capital required to launch state-led industrialisation. What Mehmet Ali did was to impose an agricultural monopsony and food-retailing monopoly, buying up grain in the country at low fixed prices and selling it at high prices in the cities. The difference between low purchase price and high sale price was the state���s profit. Normally, this would have pushed up nominal wages in the factories, making manufactured goods expensive: except, as Laura Panza and Jeffrey Williamson argue, he owned the factories too, and so could impose real wage cuts on industrial workers....

In a famous article on the ���price scissors���, Joseph Stiglitz and Raaj K. Sah argue that this was in fact necessary: the argument made by Preobrazhensky in the case of Russia���that you could screw the peasants and have industrial growth without screwing industrial workers as well���was untrue, since any attempt to turn the intersectoral terms of trade against the peasants by lowering grain prices would necessarily lead to excess demand for grain by urban workers. Equilibrium in the grain market could then only be restored by lowering factory workers��� nominal wages so they could afford less grain. This result, of course, depends on the economy being closed at the margin....

If we believe Bob Allen���s provocative economic history of Soviet Russia, however, a stagnant trend (albeit with high variability) in peasant consumption in the 1930s was combined with growing consumption in the cities.... The people who really got lucky here are the people who were farmers in 1928 and became industrial workers by 1939. A farmer who stayed on the land consumed about 3% more in 1939 than in 1928; a worker who had been in the city through that period consumed about 18% more at the end of that period than at the start. However, if you were a worker in 1939 who had been a peasant in 1928, then you were consuming, on average, 115% more than you were a decade prior....

Unfortunately for Mehmet Ali Pa��a, even his firm grip on the hands of the ���scissors��� was not enough to procure a viable textile industry, and most of the factories he had established were shuttered by the end of his reign. It���s traditionally argued that this was because the competition of Manchester flooded Egyptian markets with English cloth, although recently this has been disputed���after all, despite formal undertakings not to put barriers to trade, Mehmet Ali Pa��a was able to use the purchasing power of the army to create a protected market for Egyptian cloth.... Which is, of course, not to say that Mehmet Ali Pa��a failed entirely as an economic steward. Indeed, his introduction of new crops, like long-staple cotton, arguably made the difference between a stagnant agricultural economy and one that grew substantially over the 19th century.... That said, we still know much less than we would like about Egypt���s industrialisation and (?) deindustrialisation in the nineteenth century...

#shouldread

I believe that this is the next-to-last letter from Washi...

I believe that this is the next-to-last letter from Washington to Jefferson, and that they never met in person thereafter: George Washington (1796): To Thomas Jefferson, 6 July 1796: "As you have mentioned the subject yourself, it would not be frank, candid, or friendly to conceal, that your conduct has been represented as derogating from that opinion I had conceived you entertained of me...

...That to your particular friends and connexions, you have described, and they have announced me, as a person under a dangerous influence; and that, if I would listen more to some other opinions all would be well. My answer invariably has been, that I had never discovered any thing in the conduct of Mr. Jefferson to raise suspicions, in my mind, of his insincerity; that if he would retrace my public conduct while he was in the Administration, abundant proofs would occur to him, that truth and right decisions, were the sole objects of my pursuit; that there were as many instances within his own knowledge of my having decided against, as in favor of the opinions of the person evidently alluded to; and moreover, that I was no believer in the infallibility of the politics, or measures of any man living. In short, that I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.

To this I may add, and very truly, that, until within the last year or two, I had no conception that Parties Would, or even could go, the length I have been Witness to; nor did I believe until lately, that it was within the bounds of probability���hardly within that of possibility, that while I was using my utmost exertions to establish a national character of our own, independent, as far as our obligations, and justice would permit, of every nation of the earth; and wished, by steering a steady course, to preserve this Country from the horrors of a desolating war, that I should be accused of being the enemy of one Nation, and subject to the influence of another; and to prove it, that every act of my Administration would be tortured, and the grossest, and most insiduous misrepresentations of them be made (by giving one side only of a subject, and that too in such exagerated, and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero; a notorious defaulter; or even to a common pickpocket). But enough of this; I have already gone farther in the expression of my feelings, than I intended...

That was the next-to-last letter we have from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson. The last letter is:

George Washington (1796): To Thomas Jefferson, 28 August 1796: "Philadelphia 28th. Augt. 1796. Dear Sir...

...As soon as I returned to this City, and had waded through the Papers, and other matters which were laid before me on my arrival, and claimed my earliest attention I recollected the request in your letter of the 19th. of June, and herewith enclose copies of the Papers agreeably to that request.

With great esteem & regard I am���

Dear Sir Your Obedt Servt

#shouldread

On the Negative Information Revealed by Marvin Goodfriend's "I Don't Teach IS-LM": Smackdown/Hoisted

So Rich Clarida's (who should be a good Fed Vice Chair) and Michelle Bowman's Federal Reserve nominations (whom I do not know) made it out of the Senate Banking Committee 20-5 and 18-7. Marvin Goodfriend���who made it out 13-12���is still hanging fire on the Senate calendar. There is no reason I see to think that Fed Governor is a job he should have: there are much more sensible and reality-based conservative and inflation-hawkish monetary economists out there. One of them would dominate Marvin along every dimension. So it is time to highlight this again:

Hoisted from the Archives: I think it is time to move Marvin Goodfriend over to the "unprofessional" and "should not have a role making monetary policy" side of the ledger. There are much better inflation hawks as far as policy judgment is concerned. And someone with a demonstrated desire to pander to the yahoos���which is the only way I can make this coherent���is not a good candidate for the Board of Governors: On the Negative Information Revealed by Marvin Goodfriend's "I Don't Teach IS-LM": The smart and snarky Sam Bell wants to taunt me into rising to his bait by twittering https://twitter.com/sam_a_bell/status/872116967070732288 a quote from likely Fed nominee Marvin Goodfriend: "I don't teach IS-LM". He succeeds. Here is the quote:

TOM KEENE: But, Marvin, with, you know, basic IS-LM and theory and all that stuff you teach in Economics 101, aren't we going to see a dampening of GDP if we see a restrictive Fed?

MARVIN GOODFRIEND: By the way, I don't teach IS-LM. But what I would say is this...

And here is the tape:

March 23, 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emvSYwUnWyI&ab_channel=Bloomberg

Let me start by analyzing "I don't teach IS-LM". And let me preface this by saying that Marvin Goodfried is a very sharp and honest economist. But I believe that whenever anybody says "I don't teach IS-LM" they are one of:

Making completely implausible and wrong claims about how the economy works.
Being lazy and/or stupid.
Declaring a tribal affiliation to a particular Carnegie-Mellon tradition of macroeconomic analysis that the late Rudi Dornbusch described to me and others as "Jim Tobin with original errors", and that I think has shed a lot more heat than light on real issues.

Let us start with (1), and let us start with Irving Fisher's monetarism: the quantity of money demanded in the economy is given by the equation:

Md = PY/V

where M is the quantity of money demanded, P is the price level, Y is the level of production, and V is the velocity of money���the value of transactions that having $1 in the bank or in cash as money can support, in the sense of manufacturing the needed trust so that the transactions will go through.

If you believe that that velocity of money is fixed by the institutions of the banking system and the technology supporting transactions, then you do not have to teach IS-LM. You have reached a full stop, and have the monetarist conclusion that the total nominal spending in the economy���prices times quantities produced���is equal to a constant times the economy's money stock, with the constant of proportionality chaining slowly over time as the institutions of the banking system and the technology supporting transactions slowly changes.

That is meaning (1) of "I don't teach IS-LM": I do not need to teach it because it is not important in determining how much spending there is the economy.

That is implausible and wrong.

Here is the graph of velocity since 1960���the thing that is supposed to be on a smooth and steady time trend if "I don't teach IS-LM" is a sensible thing to say:

Even before the 1990s, any model assuming an unproblematic relationship between the money stock and total spending was badly awry, although not as badly awry as it has been since.

 

Now let's move on to (2)���lazy and/or stupid. The graph above tells you that if you want to forecast���or even retrospectively explain���the relationship between the money stock and the level of spending, you need a model of what the determinants of the fluctuations of velocity we see are. If we draw a graph with the level of spending on the horizontal axis and some sufficient statistics for the determinants of velocity on the vertical axis, the path traced out by our equation:

Md = PY/V

is conventionally called "the LM curve". But you then need to know where on the LM curve the economy will be���you need another curve. And that other curve is conventionally called "the IS curve".

To claim that you do not teach IS-LM is to implicitly claim that you do not need to figure out where on the LM curve the economy will be. That is something it is only possible to say if you are being lazy, or stupid.

 

The third meaning of "I don't teach IS-LM" is that it is a CMU-school tribal identification marker, and has no purpose beyond that���no intellectual purpose.

So, yes, the fact that Marvin Goodfriend would go on Tom Keene's surveillance and say "I don't teach IS-LM" makes me think a good deal less of him. I do, however, interpret that claim as a declaration of tribal allegiance to CMU-school macro. I do not interpret it as a claim that you don't need a model of the determinants of fluctuations in velocity. I do not interpret it as a claim that there are no fluctuations in velocity large enough to worry about.

What worries me more, however, is what comes next in his conversation with Tom Keene:

GOODFRIEND: There is no way that this recovery can proceed with any degree of confidence unless the Fed makes sure that inflation does not move up. So I think the risks are exactly reversed from the way the Fed chairman discusses this. He has to make the public understand that any whiff of doubt about the Fed's ability and willingness to stabilize inflation is going to put a crimp into the public's willingness to take positions and commitments over the next two or three years that would produce genuine growth. And so I would just take it, and turn it on its head, and not put the question as you did to me, but reverse it.

The risks of allowing any latitude in inflation expectations to build dup, or any doubt about the Fed's willingness to do what it takes to keep inflation down, is to me the most likely risk in preventing this recovery from getting any traction...

Do notice that Marvin Goodfriend is, here, thinking in terms of an IS-LM model.

When he says "any whiff of doubt about the Fed's ability and willingness to stabilize inflation is going to put a crimp into the public's willingness to take positions and commitments... is to me the most likely risk in preventing this recovery from getting any traction...", he is saying: "any whiff of doubt about the Fed's ability and willingness to keep inflation low will cause a large leftward shift in the IS curve that will prevent this recovery from getting any traction..." He does not do more than gesture at an expectational mechanism for this leftward shift in the IS curve that he wants the Federal Reserve to take action to head off. But it is what he fears.

And, of course, Goodfriend was wrong: a continuation of Bernanke's extraordinary easing policies was not going raise "any whiff of doubt about the Fed's ability and willingness to stabilize inflation".

Here we have a market-based measure of inflation expectations���the ten-year breakeven inflation rate since 2010: that inflation rate over the forthcoming ten years that would, at each date, have made investments in conventional Ten-Year U.S. Treasury bonds and investments in Ten-Year Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) equally profitable:

The vertical blue line marks March 23, 2012: the date of Marvin Goodfriend's interview. The point that Marvin was hammering home again and again on March 23, 2012 was that the Federal Reserve needed to rapidly start shrinking its balance sheet and raising interest rates lest inflation expectations break out to the upside.

The Federal Reserve ignored Marvin Goodfriend.

And Marvin Goodfriend was wrong. The shift to a tighter, more restrictive policy he demanded then was not necessary to prevent an upside breakout of inflation expectations.

In fact, the Federal Reserve's persistent problem since has been that expectations of���and actual outcomes for���inflation have been well below rather than above the Federal Reserve's targets.

I would very much like to hear Marvin Goodfriend explain why he misjudged the situation in the spring of 2012, and how he has updated his view of the economy and of optimal monetary policy since. He never has.

Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 2 January 1814: Weekend Reading

Thomas Jefferson: To Walter Jones, 2 January 1814: "You say that in taking Genl Washington on your shoulders, to bear him harmless thro��� the Federal coalition, you encounter a perilous topic...

...I do not think so. you have given the genuine history of the course of his mind thro the trying scenes in which it was engaged, and of the seductions by which it was decieved, but not depraved. I think I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly; and were I called on to delineate his character it should be in terms like these.

His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, tho��� not so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. it was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion. hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best. and certainly no General ever planned his battles more judiciously.

but if deranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in re-adjustment. the consequence was that he often failed in the field, & rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston & York.

he was incapable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calmest unconcern. perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed. his integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. he was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, & a great man.

his temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection & resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. if ever however it broke it���s bonds he was most tremendous in his wrath. in his expences he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contributions to whatever promised utility; but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects, and all unworthy calls on his charity. his heart was not warm in it���s affections; but he exactly calculated every man���s value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it.��

his person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble; the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback. altho��� in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. in public when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy & correct style. this he had acquired by conversation with the world for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.

his time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in Agriculture and English history. his correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalising his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors.

on the whole, his character was, in it���s mass perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance. for his was the singular destiny & merit of leading the armies of his country succesfully thro��� an arduous war for the establishment of it���s independance, of conducting it���s councils thro��� the birth of a government, new in it���s forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train, and of scrupulously obeying the laws, thro��� the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.

how then can it be perilous for you to take such a man on your shoulders?

I am satisfied the great body of republicans thinks of him as I do. we were indeed dissatisfied with him on his ratification of the British treaty. but this was short lived. we knew his honesty, the wiles with which he was encompassed, and that age had already begun to relax the firmness of his purposes: and I am convinced he is more deeply seated in the love and gratitude of the republicans, than in the Pharisaical homage of the Federal monarchists. for he was no monarchist from preference of his judgment. the soundness of that gave him correct views of the rights of man, and his severe justice devoted him to them.

he has often declared to me that he considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good: that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. and these declarations he repeated to me the oftener, and the more pointedly, because he knew my suspicions of Colo Hamilton���s views, and probably had heard from him the same declarations which I had, to wit, ���that the British constitution with it���s unequal representation, corruption and other existing abuses, was the most perfect government which had ever been established on earth, and that a reformation of these abuses would make it an impracticable government.���

I do believe that Genl Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. he was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birth-days, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.

These are my opinions of General Washington, which I would vouch at the judgment seat of god, having been formed on an acquaintance of 30. years. I served with him in the Virginia legislature from 1769. to the revolutionary war, and again a short time in Congress until he left us to take command of the army. during the war and after it we corresponded occasionally, and in the 4. years of my continuance in the office of Secretary of state, our intercourse was daily, confidential and cordial.

after I retired from that office great and malignant pains were taken by our Federal-monarchists and not entirely without effect, to make him view me as a theorist, holding French principles of government which would lead infallibly to licentiousness and anarchy. and to this he listened the more easily from my known disapprobation of the British treaty. I never saw him afterwards, or these malignant insinuations should have been dissipated before his just judgment as mists before the sun. I felt on his death, with my countrymen, that ���verily a great man hath fallen this day in Israel.���

More time and recollection would enable me to add many other traits of his character; but why add them to you, who knew him well? and I cannot justify to myself a longer detention of your paper. Vale, propri��que tuum, me esse tibi persuadeas.

#shouldread

Ten Years Ago on Grasping Reality: July 9, 2008

Real Fiscal Responsibility: And we are underway: Henry Aaron, Nancy Altman, Kenneth Apfel, James Blum, J. Bradford DeLong, Peter Diamond, Robert Greenstein, James Horney, Richard Kogan, Jack Lew, Marilyn Moon, Van Doorn Ooms, Uwe Reinhardt, Charles Schultze, Robert Solow, and Paul Van de Water: (1) agree that the nation faces large persistent budget deficits that ultimately risk significant damage to the economy, (2) concur that policymakers should begin now to make the tough choices needed to avert such deficits, (3) But the methods set forth in the Brookings/Heritage/Concord "Taking Back Our Fiscal Future" proposal strike us as misguided. Specifically: TBOFF subjects Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to the threat of automatic cuts while giving a free pass to regressive open-ended tax-loophole and tax-break entitlements... thus departs from the "shared sacrifice" approach... does not focus adequate attention on... rising health care... attempts to restrain public health care spending growth without taking measures to alter the dynamics of the private health care markets... places a large share of the burden of adjustment on the poorer members of American society... relies on automatic cuts... [that] congress has never in the past been willing to actually let... take effect...

New Republic Death Spiral Watch: Outsourced to Dan Drezner: "Sweet Jesus, who let Alan Wolfe review economics books?... Lord knows one could use a lot of adjectives to characterize von Hayek and Friedman, and not all of them would be complementary.��'Marginal' and 'bizarre' are not ones that immediately come to mind.... Whoever assigns and edits Alan Wolfe at The New Republic should really be taken out to the back of the woodshed today." That would be Franklin Foer, Leon Wieseltier, and Marty Peretz.

Teh Rude Pundit: Republican Economists Say: "Please, Sir, May I Have Another?": The Rude Pundit addresses Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Vernon Smith, Martin Feldstein, Anne Krueger, John Taylor, Michael Boskin, Glenn Hubbard, Paul MacAvoy, Burton Malkiel, Paul McCracken, William Poole, Harvey Rosen, Beryl Sprinkel, John Taylor, Murray Weidenbaum, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, June O'Neill, James Miller, and Tim Muris).... "John McCain proposes a gas tax holiday and economists almost universally say it's a stupid idea.... McCain, being a reasonable man, chooses to mock the economists.... Now McCain has put forth a great and mighty economic plan.... And his campaign has released a letter from, well, who else? Economists who support it. Oodles of them. Guess they know a lot about economics, eh?..."

Ezra Klein on the Disloyalty of the Clinton Staffers: The performance of Penn, Ickes, Wolfson, and company in February--happily dishing dirt, blaming the others for the failure to wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday, in the hope of getting brownie points with reporters--was the most staggering and astonishing act of political disloyalty I have yet seen...

I Never Knew That George Washington Had Saved the Life of Citizen Edmond-Charles Gen��t from Robespierre....

Conor Cruise O'Brien's book about Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution suffers from the same flaw as the dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park and as Ronald Syme's superb The Roman Revolution: all take DNA from some place else and use it to fill in the gaps. In the case of The Roman Revolution, Ronald Syme takes Mussolini and uses him to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the man born Gaius Octavius Thurinus who became Augustus. In the case of Jurassic Park, they use frog DNA to fill out the dinosaur double helixes. In the case of The Long Affair, Conor Cruise O'Brien uses Kerensky, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin to complete his picture of the French Revolution and of Lafayette, Danton, Hebert, and Robespierre. This method produces a great book to read (or movie to watch). But it is not really history wie es eigentlich gewesen.

My view is that Jefferson believed in the French Revolution not because he wanted the Tree of Liberty to be watered by blood or because he wanted to see the U.S. Congress tamed by the New York or Philadelphia mob, but because he knew he was losing to Adams and Hamilton in the struggle over the future of America, knew that he desperately needed reinforcements, and hence the French Revolution had to succeed in order to provide them. The Long Affair, however, remains a great book���but not quite great history as much as a meditation on "revolutionary excesses" and motivated reasoning: Conor Cruise O'Brien (1996): The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago: 0226616533) (https://books.google.com/books?id=ABKA2MDozAQC: "Gen��t, although recalled at Washington's request, remained in America, under Washington's protection...

...The new Jacobin Government demanded his arrest and deportation, but le vieux Washington, that miserable Fayettiste, refused because he knew that if Genet returned to France he would meet with the same fate as those who had given him the instructions that he had followed all to faithfully. So Citizen Genet, alone of the Girondin elite, survived the triumph of the Jacobins. He married his Cornelia and lived peacefully in America for the rest of his days, without ever returning to France. There is no record that he ever expressed any gratitude to the man he had defied and maligned, and who in return had saved his life. But then, according to Genet's ideas, it was Washington who had been ungrateful���to France, which had liberated him, along with the other Americans. France was wonderful, when contemplated from America. Genet and Jefferson could agree on that much...

A Thomas Jefferson quote I find very illuminating: Thomas Jefferson: To George Mason, 4 February 1791: "I am to make you my acknowledgements for your favor of Jan. 10. and the information had from France which it contained...

...It confirmed what I had heard more loosely before, and accounts still more recent are to the same effect. I look with great anxiety for the firm establishment of the new government in France, being perfectly convinced that if it takes place there, it will spread sooner or later all over Europe. On the contrary, a check there would retard the revival of liberty in other countries.

I consider the establishment and success of their government as necessary to stay up our own and to prevent it from falling back to that kind of Halfway-house, the English constitution. It cannot be denied that we have among us a sect who believe that to contain whatever is perfect in human institutions; that the members of this sect have, many of them, names and offices which stand high in the estimation of our countrymen. I still rely that the great mass of our community is untainted with these heresies, as is its head. On this I build my hope that we have not laboured in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.

You have excited my curiosity in saying ���there is a particular circumstance, little attended to, which is continually sapping the republicanism of the United states.��� What is it?���what is said in our country of the fiscal arrangements now going on? I really fear their effect when I consider the present temper of the Southern states. Whether these measures be right or wrong, abstractedly, more attention should be paid to the general opinion.

However all will pass. The excise will pass. The bank will pass. The only corrective of what is amiss in our present government will be the augmentation of the numbers in the lower house, so as to get a more agricultural representation, which may put that interest above that of the stock-jobbers.

I had no occasion to sound Mr. Madison on your fears expressed in your letter. I knew before, as possessing his sentiments fully on that subject, that his value for you was undiminished. I have always heard him say that tho you and he appeared to differ in your systems, yet you were in truth nearer together than most persons who were classed under the same appellation. You may quiet yourself in the assurance of possessing his complete esteem.

���I have been endeavoring to obtain some little distinction for our useful customers the French. But there is a particular interest opposed to it, which I fear will prove too strong. We shall soon see. I will send you a copy of a report I have given in, as soon as it is printed. I know there is one part of it contrary to your sentiments: yet I am not sure you will not become sensible that a change should be slowly preparing. Certainly whenever I pass your road I shall do myself the pleasure of turning into it. Our last year���s experiment however is much in favor of that by Newgate.

I am with great respect & esteem, Dear Sir, Your friend & servt...

Interesting that Edmund Burke saw the French Revolution as opening the floodgates to the rule of "sophists, calculators, and economists" while Jefferson saw the French Revolutionary spirit as the cure...

Edmond-Charles Gen��t to Thomas Jefferson, 1797: Weekend Reading

Poor Gen��t! Arriving in the United States thinking that his task is to bring the French Republic's steadfast ally the American Republic into the common war against Britain, and finding that everyone in the American government is lying to him save Alexander Hamilton: Edmond-Charles Gen��t (1797): To Thomas Jefferson: "...and when the Minister to whom he [Washington] had delegated the executive power during his absence, I imparted to you the resolution I had formed to open my heart to him with frankness, and try to put an end to disputes that were every day becoming more serious...

...You represented to me that this procedure would be contrary to established usage; that all communication of Foreign Ambassadors with the Executive should pass through the Secretary of State, and that probably I would not be admitted. But resolved to attempt everything that might conciliate matters, I went the same evening to the President's house; I found him with Mrs. Washington and Senator Morris. After some very polite and obliging discourse on the part of Mrs. Washington, I arose, and approaching the chair of the President, said to him, that I desired to have a private interview with him. He at first made me the answer that you foresaw; but insisting and assuring him that it was of the highest importance for the maintenance of good understanding between our two countries; that we were per haps both of us deceived and that it was necessary to understand one another, he passed with me in to the next room.

After being seated, I spoke to him as a man who sincerely meant well. I protested to him, that I had received and not given the impulse which served to disturb the government, and that I did not believe it to be any thing more than the simultaneous effect of the honesty and up-rightness of the people. I protested what is entirely true: that I had been entirely amazed on reading in the public journals, certain articles which they attributed to me relative to his conduct towards France; but in which I had no participation; that my correspondence was indeed animated, but if he would condescend to put himself in my position, and consider that by his Proclamation of Neutrality, and the interpretation that had been given to it, he had annulled the most sacred treaties, deprived the French people, at a moment when they were in the greatest need of it for the defence of their colonies, of the alliance which they considered as property dearly bought, he would acknowledge that unless I was a traitor I could not act otherwise.

But that just as much as I had shown myself punctillious and inexorable on the strict execution of our old treaties, I would show myself quite as generous being well informed of the magnanimity of France, if he would trample under the feet of liberty, the old treaties, and form a new pact, which would only contain principles of eternal truth, and a basis founded in the nature of things; after which, having never despaired of the French people, I added with confidence, that the Republic would disembarrass itself with glory, from all her difficulties; that her armies repulsed at some points by the infamous manoeuvres of the hypocrites to whom the inexperience of the government had confided it, would soon under the orders of Commanders truly Republican, repair all its losses, multiply its victories, and force Europe to sue for peace on conditions that France herself should see proper to dictate, when she would not forget the United States.

The President listened to all I had said and simply told me that he did not read the papers, and that he did not care what they said concerning his administration. We left the room, he accompanied me as far as the staircase, took me by the hand and pressed it. This silent response filled me with flattering thoughts.

I hastened to your office the next morning; you blushed on hearing that I had had a private interview, and you were expressing your astonishment at it, when the door was opened. It was the President himself. I arose looked at you alternately to see if I could read in your looks an invitation to remain, for which I would have voluntarily given a part of my life, but a very imperative sign on your part obliged me to withdraw. I saw you afterwards and used every proper means to know whether the President had spoken to you respecting the step I had taken, but you maintained an imperturbable silence.

A short time afterwerds, the squadron of the Republic, proscribed and flying from the calamities of St. Domingo, came, of their own accord, to the United States to put themselves under my direction. I formed the design of making them serviceable to the cause of liberty in the new world and in formed you of it. I fixed upon New York as one of the most convenient and best supplied ports in the Union as the place of its rendezvous and reorganization. I embraced that opportunity of getting rid of all the Privateers, by attaching them as advice boats and tenders to the service of the squadron. I took leave of you and the President, who received me very politely, took wine with me, and a number of officers whom I presented to him, and came to New York, where the republicans of that city gave me a very honorable reception, and very useful in the circumstances in which I found myself placed face to face with a squadron in insurrection.

I learned a few minutes after my arrival that the emissaries of the government had neglected nothing to prevent that reception, by publishing that I had insulted the President, and that I had threatened to appeal from his decisions to the people. This was the first intelligence I had ever had of that fiction, certified to by Messrs. Jay and King. I laughed at it and thought it needed no answer.

Some true friends who had not put themselves forward as many had done, and whose attachment to me increased in proportion to my misfortunes, thought differently upon the subject. I reflected more upon it and perceived that such an imposture must have been fabricated with some deep design. I recollected a conversation that Mr. Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, had with me, in which after having told me that the United States would commit "an act of hostility" if they were to pay the whole of the debt due to France, endeavored to prove that the cassus foederis did not exist between France and the United States; and that the latter would give us no manner of assistance, because we had acted in a hostile manner to Great Britain, by our irruption into the low countries, by our projects upon Holland, by our correspondence with the popular societies of England: by the connections of M. Chauvelin and of his mentor, with the opposition party; and of the appeal to the people with which they threatened the cabinet of his Britainic Majesty in the National Convention.

I compared these observations which at least had the merit of candor, with what was going on with respect to myself, and suspecting that they were seeking for pretexts either to strengthen the arguments of Mr. Pitt, by corroborating them with the testimony of the United States or to give color to the ingratitude of the Federal Government to discard our alliance and to cement one with England, I wrote directly to the President, to know if it was true that I had threatened to appeal from his decisions to the people. You answered me in his name in an evasive manner.

Not being able through this channel to obtain satisfaction, I addressed myself to the Attorney General of the United States the famous Randolph. He made a dilatory reply and dragged the matter along, until the arrival of my successor, who, in compliance with his orders enjoined me from pursuing the matter further, and from continuing the proceedings I had taken in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

My successors, Fauchet, was rendered impotent, by the organization which had been given to his mission, by disguised royalists, who served by their talents the stupid ambition, the political ferocity of Robespierre, to re-establish despotism upon the sullied and disgusting ruins of liberty, after they should have accomplished the ruin of that wicked man. He was obliged, therefore, to throw himself into the arms of the enemies of his country, to disavow all I had done and to demand my arrest before he had seen me, so that I might be executed on board the fleet at Brest.

Robespierre on your sole denunciation, having given the order not to let me arrive alive at Paris; although he had not read my reports nor awaited my defence as citizen Adet has since officially informed me. This, sanguinary requisition was rejected by Washington, who declared that he had demanded my recall and not my punishment. But Randolph, your friend, the man of precious confessions, added in confidence that I had still many friends. That it was necessary to wait, but that if France insisted, they would examine if the power of the President, which on this point was questionable, might not still afford some expedient to do what France desired.

All these infamies have fully justified in the tribunal of my conscience the course I have taken, not being recalled, to remain in America after rendering my accounts and placing my papers in the hands of my successor in an honorable manner; and although with little fortune, to bury myself in retirement and silence; to meditate upon the great revolutions of the world; to try to penetrate the secrets of nature, and above all, to isolate myself from the detestable intrigues of courts and the discouraging cabals of the people.

I would to God, sir, that doing more justice to your talents you had likewise consecrated to the cultivation of the sciences the balance of your life, after having labored in establishing the independence of the United States. I wish that all the other envoys of the Federal Government had done the same. France would then perhaps have passed without any suspended motion from one energetic government to another.

The blood of the Bourbons, banished like that of the Tarquins, would not have flowed upon the scaffold. The French people, powerful and formidable, would have restrained Europe and found allies; millions of men would still be living for agriculture and the arts; Poland would not be destroyed, and the United States having conducted themselves strictly as an association of industrious merchants and peaceable farmers, who prefer the horn of plenty to the trumpet of fame, would not have drawn upon themselves the resentment of all parties who have succeeded each other in France, and who have been all equally deceived���of Spain, which the late retrocession to Great Britain of a favor granted to the United Slates must have singularly alarmed; also of some of the neutral northern powers, who neither, like your commentaries on Vattel, nor the refusal made in line with those principles to the Court of Denmark, to co-operate to maintain the principles of the armed neutrality, that solid basis of the freedom of the seas laid down at St. Petersburg, through the intervention of France and Spain.

Finally, of that man whose name to-day represents the collective idea of all perfidy, I mean Pitt, who discontented, as is always the case, with tergiversation and half measures, seems to have approximated himself to the United States only to spit upon them his last venom, to punish them for having first raised the standard of liberty which crushed him, to set them on tire, tear them to pieces and make their blindness serve for the destruction of the treaties which guarantee their independence.

#weekendreading

Ten Years Ago on Grasping Reality: July 8, 2008

Perry Bacon, Jr., is a bad human being: Marcus Brauchli Has, I Think, Made a Big Mistake (Washington Post Death Spiral Watch): Former WSJ executive Marcus Brauchli has agreed to take over the Washington Post.... This is, I think, a huge mistake for him and his reputation.... All you have to look at is page A1 of this morning's paper--at the article by Perry Bacon, Jr., who has already written what the Columbia Journalism Review judged the worst article of the 2008 campaign. The headline of the article is: "Candidates Diverge on How to Save Social Security". The echo of Paul Krugman's 2000 joke: "If Bush said that the world was flat, the headline on the news analysis [the next day] would read 'Shape of Earth: Views Differ'" is clear. But nobody at the Washington Post gets the joke. And the substance of the article is as bad as the headline...

Wise: Ben Bernanke Is Right: If we were back in the late nineteenth century, there would be no question--back then, banks were banks. Anything that promised liquidity, borrowed short, and invested long was a bank. And central banks existed to watch over them. It's only in our more legalistic age that we have non-banks that aren't shepherded by the central bank...

Rare among veterans, John McCain is a big fan of 'preemptive war': Jed Lewison on Why America Cannot Afford to Elect John McCain: My line used to be that John McCain was the best possible Republican candidate--he was, after all, the only one not enthusiastically in favor of torture. But Jed Lewison has now convinced me that McCain is worse than I could previously have imagined. How has he done this. By firing up the Wayback Machine and taking us back to 2002 to listen to John McCain on the virtues of preemptive wars...

Republican Economists Who Aren't Supporting McCain's Economic Plan: A lot of economists who you would expect to have signed on--subcabinet appointees in past Republican administrations, et cetera���have not. One would expect, based on political loyalties and willingness to serve in Republican administrations, to see Greg Mankiw, Paul Wonnacott, Dick Schmalensee, Michael Mussa, Thomas Moore, Gary Seevers, Marina von Neumann Whitman, Kristin J. Forbes, Katherine Baicker, Matthew J. Slaughter, Andrew Samwick, and others on the list. They are not there. That is good news...

John McCain's Budget Policy: Government by the Underpants Gnomes!: Cr--! Robert Pear of the New York Times called, looking for a soundbite on McCain's budget policy. I blathered on, while the perfect soundbite was waiting in my email inbox, unread. It was: "Underpants Gnomes"...

Jim Hamiton Listens to Janet Yellen of the SF Fed on Risks for the U.S. Economy: I still think that my best moment in the Clinton administration was passing out individual sheets of paper to individual members of the House estimating how many of their constituents would benefit from expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. But I now think doing the staffwork for getting Janet Yellen into the Federal Reserve was almost as positive a public service...

Hilzoy Speaks Ill of the Living: of all those conservatives who praise Jesse Helms, that is...

Let Us Now Speak Ill of the Living...: "Let us speak ill of the editors of National Review, who write.... "It is easy to rattle off a long list of what Senator No opposed. First and foremost was Communism.... He was against many other things as well: federal funding of obscene art, ineffective aid to foreign governments, and the continual encroachments of Big Government on everyday life. One of the things he was against in the 1960s was, alas, civil rights. His defense of segregation was of course deeply misguided. But is it fair for this error to have been placed in the first sentence of the New York Times���s obituary of him?..."

John McCain Leaves Budget Reality Far Behind...: To John McCain's promises to (a) wage more wars abroad and (b) cut taxes for the rich while (c) limiting domestic spending cuts to waste, fraud, and abuse he has now added a promise to balance the budget by 2013--a promise that his substantive policy advisorrs had been trying to keep him from making all winter and spring...

Trade around the Indian Ocean before 1500 was a largely p...

Trade around the Indian Ocean before 1500 was a largely peaceful, stable process. Empires, kingdoms, sultanates, and emirates ruled the lands around the ocean, but they did not have the naval strength or the orientation to even think of trying to control the ocean's trade. Pirates were pirates���but only attacked weak targets, and needed bases, and for the land-based kingdoms providing bases for pirates disrupted their own trade. Then came 1500, and a new entity appeared in the Indian Ocean: the Portuguese seaborne empire: [Non-Market Actors in a Market Economy: A Historical Parable): From David Abernethy (2000), The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415-1980 (New Haven: Yale), p. 242 ff: "Malacca... located on the Malayan side of the narrow strait... the principal center for maritime trade among Indian Ocean emporia, the Spice Islands, and China...

...Because of monsoonal winds, vessels sailing from the Indian Ocean to China (and vice versa) had to lay over for a few months before continuing the journey. An alternative was for ships to unload their wares in Malacca, returning to their respective home ports with goods from the others' ships as well as gold, spices, and precious woods from the offshore islands. The city and strait of Malacca were extraordinarily cosmopolitan places....

The Chinese government's impact on Malacca was far more limited in scope and duration than might be expected given the country's wealth and size. Zheng He's armada of huge junks, with thousands of well-armed soldiers aboard, was designed to ensure attention and respectful deference to China's rulers from elites elsewhere.... But the admiral was unwilling to use the military might at his disposal to conquer Malacca, there being no plans to administer distant lands.... The emperor politely received the king of Malacca when the king later journeyed to Beijing, bearing tribute. But assertion of China's superior political status was made by the inferior party visiting the Celestial Court, not by the latter reaching out aggressively beyond its borders....

China's private sector had a more substantial and long-lasting impact on Malacca... the existence... of a separate section of the city reserved for Chinese merchants.... That many Chinese merchants in Malacca were long-term residents did not signify that they were overseas agents of Chinese power... they tried to avoid contact with Chinese officials rather than to work with them.... The Chinese did not carry a missionary religion to Malacca because they had none....

Arabs visited Malacca as long-distance merchants, staying in a quarter of the town set aside for Muslims.... [T]hey did bring a missionary religion.... Malacca's rulers had been Muslim for about a century before the Portuguese arrived. One may thus speak of an alliance between Arab mercantile and religious interests resembling the European pattern. But Arabs in the Indian Ocean basin were not like Europeans. First, they were not... agents of a polity eager to assert itself overseas.... Their prospects for profitable trade were most favorable if none of [the Arab city states] advanced political claims beyond its immediate domain. Traders and sailors moved on monsoonal winds from one trading center to another, intermediaries among several autonomous units rather than agents of any particular one....

The limited, functionally diffuse character of Chinese and Arab/Muslim relations with Malacca posed an insoluble dilemma for the city's sultan when he encountered Europeans.... The sultan faced toward Mecca when praying and toward Beijing when offering tribute. But for quite different reasons he could count on neither to help counter the new foe....

As Muslim merchants predicted, the Portuguese launched a triple assault on Malacca. The city was captured in 1511....

Fifteen hundred soldiers... Viceroy Afonso d'Alburquerque... permanent political control.... Construction of a stone fortress was begun as soon as the battle was won, and it was kept well supplied with soldiers and cannon. The city was a Portuguese possession until the Dutch took it in the seventeenth century... an integral part of a grand scheme to capture gains from Indian Ocean trade. Political control of enclaves throughout the ocean basin was considered a necessary as well as desirable mans to an economic end. Albuquerque appealed to the profit motive as explicitly as one could:

If we take this trade of Malacca out of [the Moors'] hands, Cairo and Mecca are entirely ruined, and to Venice will no spiceries go except that which her merchants go and buy in Portugal...

[The] religious dimension.... Albuquerque waited to launch his attack until the day of Saint James.... Non-Muslims were spared following the battle. But "of the Moors, [including] women and children, there died by the sword an infinite number, for no quarter was given to any of them."... The Portuguese were unlike the Chinese and Arabs in the number and variety of sectoral institutions at their disposal, in the stretch of these institutions far from their home base, and in the way agents of different sectors worked together....

Portugal's grand strategy in the Indian Ocean was to capture gains from a lucrative seaborne trade that had functioned for a long time. Malacca was valued as an enclave... profits literally floated past in the form of ships carrying spices, precious stones, textiles, chinaware, carvings, and so on through a narrow strait. There was no economic or strategic reason for Albuquerque to invade the Malayan interior....

Not until the nineteenth century did Europeans consider the Malayan interior worthy of their attention. Under British direction, exports from rich tin mines were increased and rubber plantations laid out... a plant Europeans had found in the New [World]... a mode of production perfected earlier in the Americas...

#shouldread
#globalization

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/06Kf1V-htZqjxLFeK941uBPDg

Ten Years Ago on Grasping Reality: July 1-7, 2008

My belief that DHE had any goals other than to suck up to Republican donors and politicians was wrong: Douglas Holtz-Eakin Burns His Credibility: "Holtz-Eakin said, ���Sen. Obama can say what he wants this week��� but this is about his record. It reveals what his true values are������that he voted for something that would raise taxes on low-income voters, Holtz-Eakin claimed.... This is, I think, a bad mistake for Doug Holtz-Eakin. If McCain wins in November, Holtz-Eakin will need credibility with Democratic as well as Republican senators. And if McCain doesn't win in November, Holtz-Eakin will need credibility with Democratic as well as Republican economists...

Lehman's Off Balance Sheet Entities News: They disturb Jonathan Weil quite a bit...

Jim Hamilton Assumes the Role of Dr. Doom: Time to start sending out more stimulus checks--advances on next April's refund checks...

The Singularity Is in Our Past...: Will McLean writes: "A Commonplace Book: Buying Power of 14th Century Money: In the second half of the 14th century, a pound sterling would: Support the lifestyle of a single peasant laborer for half a year, or that of a knight for a week. Or buy: Three changes of clothing for a teenage page (underclothes not included) or Twelve pounds of sugar or A carthorse or Two cows or An inexpensive bible or ten ordinary books or Rent a craftsman���s townhouse for a year or Hire a servant for six months... "Think of a world in which a pound of sugar costs two weeks' wages...

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (John F. Harris Edition): "John F. Harris of the Politico, formerly of the Washington Post, confesses that he doesn't even try to do his job of informing Americans about which politicians would make good presidents and legislators--furthest thing from his mind.... I do wonder how he can look at himself in the mirror in the morning. It is a mystery...

Atlantic Monthly Death Spiral Watch: Tim Burke reminds us of what may have been the worst article published by the Atlantic Monthly, ever: "Easily Distracted: Political Notes: I keep flashing back to Mark Bowden���s willingness to be a front man for security functionaries eager to normalize torture. Bowden���s article assured readers that 'harsh interrogation' had reached a point of trust-worthy technocratic professionalism in Israel and now potentially the United States. Don���t worry, he said: professionals only use it when they need to, only against those individuals who have knowledge that our trusted leaders must have. It���s won���t be as if some sweaty thug in a filthy gulag is ripping off fingernails just to intimidate a political dissident, that���s only a danger with unprofessional regimes that torture unnecessarily. I mean, it���s not as if we���d be doing something that an infamous authoritarian regime used extensively against dissidents. Besides, who needs moral capital when you���ve got stealth bombers, right?..."

Peter Beinart is weighed down under an enormous karmic burden for acts of intellectual evil in the past: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Peter Beinart Strikes Again Edition): "It is safe to say that Peter Beinart makes a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care: "Balancing Act: The Other Wilsonianism The contrast with the development of modern conservative foreign policy is instructive. When William F. Buckley, James Burnham, and the other founding editors of _National Review+ set out in the 1950s to devise a conservative approach to the Cold War, they did so in the full knowledge that their views were wildly outside the political mainstream. (In fact, Buckley and Burnham did not even live in Washington.) Yet they continued to elaborate and refine them, making few concessions to political necessity, until in 1976 and 1980, when Ronald Reagan brought first the Republican Party, and then the entire country, around to their worldview..." Burnham's and Buckley's foreign policy was "Rollback": a titanic Manichean struggle of total Cold War against a totalitarian adversary that could not be softened or negotiated with or contained���that was Buckley's and Burnham's critique of Harry S Truman, Dean Acheson, George F. Kennan, George Marshall, and the other graduates of what Nixon called "Acheson's Cowardly College of Communist Containment." What was Ronald Reagan's foreign policy?... Once George Shultz, Nancy Reagan, and Nancy Reagan's astrologer had wrested control of the Reagan administration foreign policy apparat from Alexander Haig and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Reagan (and even more so George H.W. Bush) was squarely in the "Containment"���not the "Rollback"���tradition. To Peter Beinart's claim that Reagan's foreign policy was "Buckley['s and] Burnham['s]... conservative approach to the Cold War," all I can do is laugh and say: "Klaatu Barada Nikto!!" Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Ulysses Simpson "Sam" Grant Blogging: "I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse..."

I would now revise this to say that "unskilled" occupations are, many of them, not that different from looking after children in that they both are (a) physically demanding, (b) emotionally wearing, (c) mentally challenging, (d) easy to do badly with small lapses of attention: "Skilled" Occupations: Very many people can do it well, not because it is easy to do but because it is one of our core human competences: we are driven to learn how to do it well at a deep, basic, powerful level to an even greater degree than we are driven to learn how to throw rocks to hit small moving animals. Thus looking after children is different from skilled occupations���it pays poorly because the supply of people who can do it is not small. And looking after children is different from unskilled occupations���it is hard to do because it is (a) physically demanding, (b) emotionally wearing, (c) mentally challenging, (d) easy to do badly with small lapses of attention...

Berkeley Morning Coffeeshop Blogging: Sign in Brewed Awakening: "All Occupied Seats Must Be Justified by a Purchase." I have heard of Justification by faith, and Justification by works, but not of Justification by purchase...

John Yoo Lies Again: Spencer Ackerman: "In last week's interminable Yoo/Addington hearing, John Yoo accused Vanity Fair reporter and Torture Team author Philippe Sands of lying about interviewing him. Brian Beutler... tracked Sands down.... 'The idea, of course, is that someone who hates America so much that he's willing to fabricate all sorts of untrue allegations about Yoo (and, perhaps, other administration veterans) is not to be believed. When I heard this interchange, though, I emailed Sands and asked him to clear the air. He was fairly unambiguous: "I never claimed to have interviewed him! As set out in my book: we debated." So who's telling the truth? Well, Yoo's right about approximately one thing: Sands did testify before the very same House panel, on May 6 of this year. But that's about the extent of it. In his prepared remarks, Sands submits that, "[o]ver hundreds of hours I conversed or debated with many of those most deeply involved. They included... the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at DoJ (Mr Yoo)"...'"

Nurture vs. Nature in Math Skills: John Timmer: "Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Sweden score very high on gender equality measures; in these nations, the gender gap on math performance is extremely small. In contrast, nations at the other end of the spectrum, such as Turkey and Korea, had the largest gender gap.... The frightening thing, from a male perspective, is that a lack of gender equality also seems to be holding down girls' reading scores. Female superiority in reading tests is slightly lower than average in Turkey, but the gap is actually wider in countries with greater equality between the sexes. In Iceland, for example, girls outscore boys by well over 10 percent. The math gender gap thus joins a long list of differences in test scores that were once ascribed to biology, but now appear to be caused by social influences..."

Washington Post Death Spiral Watch (Yet Another David Broder Edition): Matt is (a) right to be worried [about 2008], but (b) wrong in thinking that things were very different back in 1974. His problem is that he assumes that David Broder does not casually lie���that back in 1974 David Broder really was pleased at the prospect of "the American people remind[ing] Richard Nixon... that in this country, no one, not even the president, is above the law..." and really was worried "about the fundamental commitment of the American people," but has not been worried since. Broder wasn't. He seems, instead, to have thought that it would be exciting if impeachment would fail, and looked forward to the prospect of Richard Nixon getting his political revenge...

Walter Jon Williams: Implied Spaces: Walter Jon Williams's sword-and-singularity novel ("which sense of singularity?" you ask; that would be telling) Implied Spaces is highly recommended...

New York Times Death Spiral Watch (David Brooks Edition): Jared Bernstein tells us that Mark Schmitt writes, apropos of the execrable David Brooks: "Brooks also completely mishandles the analysis of Obama's donors that is at the heart of the column. First, he makes it sound like Obama is lying: 'When he is swept up in rhetorical fervor, Obama occasionally says that his campaign is 90 percent funded by small donors. He has indeed had great success with small donors, but only about 45 percent of his money comes from donations of 200 dollars or less...' It's not that complicated: 90 percent of his donors are

Washington Post Death Spiral Watch: A Fred Hiatt Trifecta: Spencer Ackerman: "You Leave Me Breathless: How awesome it must be to be a Washington Post edit writer. First, enable Bush���s disastrous crusades. Then, when someone criticizes Bush from the left���particularly if that person stands a good chance at becoming president on a promise to roll back the Bush legacy���take Bush���s explanations for his policies at face value; formulate those policies at their most generic; and profess incredulity that anyone could disagree with with such sensible goals...

James Fallows Gets Shrill and Unbalanced on the Media: James Fallows calls out David Mark of the Politico as exhibiting "classic and depressing Beltway 'could be perceived as problematic' style.... Please. If someone thinks certain views are outrageous, then say so. Not that they could be misperceived that way if not fully explained, et cetera." I don't see why America needs journalists like David Mark, or organizations like the Politico. I really do not...

EconomistMom Talks About Barack Obama and Fiscal Responsibility: "It���s clear how little the advice from the outgoing Clinton Administration��was heeded by the incoming Bush Administration. Sigh..."

Barry Eichengreen on Asian Macro Policy: "I am aware that what I am arguing Asia needs now ��� monetary tightening, currency appreciation and fiscal stimulus���is the same thing that the Bush Administration has been arguing for three years. But the fact that the advice is old hat and that it comes with unwelcome associations should not lead to its rejection..."

Sovereign Wealth Funds are Non-Market (or Quasi-Market) Actors in a Global Market Economy_: Non-market actors in a market economy: a historical parable: Trade around the Indian Ocean before 1500 was a largely peaceful, stable process. Empires, kingdoms, sultanates, and emirates ruled the lands around the ocean, but they did not have the naval strength or the orientation to even think of trying to control the ocean's trade. Pirates were pirates--but only attacked weak targets, and needed bases, and for the land-based kingdoms providing bases for pirates disrupted their own trade. Then came 1500, and a new entity appeared in the Indian Ocean: the Portuguese seaborne empire...

Transparency...: Deborah Solomon: "Paulson, at a meeting in the Kremlin that was open to reporters, told Putin his discussions with Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were productive, including their talks about Russia���s sovereign wealth fund. 'We don���t have a sovereign wealth fund', Putin interrupted, telling Paulson that he must be confusing Russia with someone else..."

The Abyss Has Drilled Fracking Laser Holes in Our Skulls with Its Stare...: Gary Farber: "We've always known that our current torture regime came from back-engineering the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) training given some U.S. military personnel intended to enable them to resist the horrible tortures used by the KGB, Chinese Communists.... 'The only change made in the chart presented at Guant��namo was to drop its original title: ���Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance���...' How evil have we become? The abyss has drilled fracking laser holes through us with its stare. Remind me why we were the good guys in the Cold War, and WWII, again? The guys who wrote the Nuremberg Principles? Please tell me; I really could use a reminder now. And I'd like to know how we can regard ourselves as the same people any more. I'd really, really, like to know..."

Now That's What I Call a Comment Policy!: Troll Threat Condition Red: "Making Light: Got it in one: #1 ::: Teresa Nielsen Hayden ::: (view all by) ::: July 01, 2008, 10:51 AM: I'm hereby declaring open season on anything unfamiliar that comes through the door. Newbies: behave or die..."

DeLong: Why We Should Presume Free Trade Is Win-Win: A Multisector Stolper-Samuelson Finger Exercise

China and Walmart: Champions of Equality?: We need to remind politicians and the public that the gains from trade are broadly shared. Every time the discussion over trade is diverted towards the problems facing specific producers, be they farmers in France or textile workers in the U.S., we miss the central point. Trading allows everyone, and especially the poor, to buy things that they could not otherwise afford...

The HRC Campaign: I don't know what a staff that becomes "consumed with trading personal invective, hurling expletives, and trashing one another in print" is called, but I would not call them "loyalists." HRC was badly served...

Distributed Co-Creation

New York Times Death Spiral Watch (Energy/Speculation/Journalism/Internet Timothy Egan Edition): Back in 2001, Paul Krugman hit the point that deliberate and illegal market manipulation���artificial supply restrictions���were the principal factor driving California's energy crisis no less than seven times in less than five months. As he deservedly patted himself on the back last month: "Various notes on speculation: During that whole period, I was pretty much the only voice in a major news outlet even suggesting that market manipulation might be a central factor..." And indeed, market manipulation somehow escaped mention in the very same section of the very same paper he was writing for--in articles written by news-division reporters like Joseph Kahn and Tim Egan that I can find. Maybe it's the fault of the NYTimes search engine, but all it finds is reporters like Kahn and Egan giving "he said-she said" accounts--charges of market manipulation by PUC Chairs balanced by claims from energy companies that they simply "played by the rules" with no way for non-expert readers to evaluate them...

Yes, It Is Donald Luskin Time...: If you understand that real wages and nominal wages are two different things, you don't get confused. Does Luskin understand this? I think not. I remember a similar mistake from the past: Luskin's attempt to compute the real exchange rate...

New York Times Death Spiral Watch (Maureen Dowd Edition): "Can there be any conceivable, possible reason for a newspaper in good faith to publish this: "Maureen Dowd, July 2, 2008: [Barack Obama] would like to kid around with reporters for a minute, but knows he���s going to be peppered with on-the-record minutiae designed to feed the insatiable maw of blogs and Internet news.... He���s an American who has climbed to the most rarefied stratosphere of American life, only to find that he has to make a major speech arguing that he loves his country.... He���s a man happily married to a strong professional woman who has to defend his wife, as he says, for being ���feisty���..." and this: "Maureen Dowd, April 25, 2007: I love the dynamics of a cheeky woman puncturing the ego of a cocky guy.... So why don���t I like it with Michelle and Barack? I wince a bit when Michelle Obama chides her husband as a mere mortal.... Michelle came on strong.... "There���s Barack Obama the... amazing orator, Harvard Law Review, or whatever it was, law professor, best-selling author, Grammy winner. Pretty amazing, right? And then there���s the Barack Obama that lives with me in my house... his 5-year-old is still better at making the bed than he is.���... [P]eople I talked to afterward... worried that her chiding was emasculating, casting her husband ��� under fire for lacking experience ��� as an undisciplined child..."

Wimpy Ross Douthat Resorts to Half Measures Only!: The only proper way to watch Star Wars is this: "A New Hope" followed by "The Empire Strikes Back" and the first third of "Return of the Jedi." The saga properly ends with the death of Boba Fett and Jabba the Hut, and oru last image of our heroes should be them looking forward into their unknown future struggle with the empire...

Washington Post Death Spiral Watch (Joe Stephens Edition): Outsourced to Nate of FiveThirtyEight.com: "Something finally beat out the Vicki Iseman story for its sheer chutzpah and utter irresponsibility. The culprit is [Joe Stephens's] piece from the Washington Post, which alleges that Barack Obama received a "discount" on his 30-year home mortgage when he purchased his house in Hyde Park in 2005. Obama's mortgage rate was 5.625 percent; the Washington Post cites databases stating that the average rate on comparable properties was 5.93 percent. So Obama's rate was 30 basis points better than the average. However, the amount of the loan and the nature of the property are not the only factors that determine a mortgage rate..."

Ezra Klein on the New York Times on Rush Limbaugh: "If you happened to be unaware that there's a guy named Rush Limbaugh who hosts a popular program on AM radio, then this New York Times's profile will be an incredibly illuminating read. But if you happen to be aware of that guy already, and are wondering about the implications of the most popular radio host in America being a global warming denialist and self-described "defender of corporate America," then the piece stands as an extraordinary act of editorial cowardice. The profile reads a bit like Gadsby, the famed novel written entirely without the letter "e." Here, the Times appears to have challenged itself to write 8,000 words on Limbaugh without saying anything that could be even remotely interpreted as critical.... [T]hey wrote a puff piece. See? Liberals can be fair and balanced too!..."

Ross Douthat Says That He Is Not Now Nor Has He Ever Been a Jesse Helmsian: "The liberal blogosphere wants to know: Why have conservatives lined up to say kind things about the late Jesse Helms?... He simply was an awful bigot, and worse he was an awful bigot who never expressed a shred of remorse, so far as I know, for his toxic approach to issues ranging from civil rights to HIV to foreign affairs. Far from being the sort of politicians who conservatives ought to defend, out of a sense of issue-by-issue solidarity, he's the sort of politician conservatives ought to carefully distance themselves from, because his political style brought (and continues to bring) intellectual disrepute to almost every cause with which he was associated. Inherent to conservatism is the responsibility to stand up and say to bien-pensant opinion: Just because a bigot opposes something doesn't mean it's a good idea. But the necessity (and difficulty) of making that case, whether the issue is affirmative action or "comprehensive" immigration reform or the NEA and Piss Christ, is all the more reason for conservatives to keep their distance from actual bigots, even (or especially) when they're representing the great state of North Carolina in the U.S. Senate.... The man himself has no business in the right-wing pantheon, and the conservatives who have used his death as an occasion to argue that he does are doing their movement a grave disservice..."

David Leonhardt Has Been on Fire for the Past Couple of Months

#hoistedfromthearchives