J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 390

Should-Read: By and large a good statement. However, whil...

Should-Read: By and large a good statement. However, while free speech extends to statements made with "conscious indifference to their truth content", I do not believe that academic freedom does. Professors who make and reiterate and decide to die on the hill that is statements made with "conscious indifference to their truth content" are violating the norms of academic responsibility as much as those who commit plagiarism or falsify experimental results. I do not believe that the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania should continue to employ Professor Wax: Ted Ruger (Dean): Lawyers, Guns & Money: "Dear members of the Penn Law community...

...I write to share with you information about a development of great concern to our intellectual and professional community. In the past two weeks, students and alumni have brought to my attention a number of public claims made last fall by one of our tenured faculty, Amy Wax, during a video interview. Specifically, Professor Wax stated that, ���I don���t think I���ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely in the top half.�����Moreover, she claimed that the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, a prestigious law journal whose editorial board is composed of Penn Law students, has a racial diversity mandate, suggesting that black students on Law Review had not earned their place. Speaking about black law students at Penn and peer schools, she went on to say that ���some of them shouldn���t��� even go to college.���

It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false: black students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate. Rather, its editors are selected based on a competitive process. And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers.

I want to make absolutely clear that Professor Wax, like every member of the faculty and the student body, is protected by Penn���s policies of free and open expression as well as academic freedom, and I will steadfastly defend the rights of Law School community members to openly express their views. This has been the position of the Law School throughout my tenure as dean, and before, and it is the consistent message I have articulated in handling protests involving provocative figures speaking on campus, student-led panels on controversial topics, and other free speech debates including those involving Professor Wax. I will maintain this position moving forward. Professor Wax enjoys the same status as every other tenured colleague here: her job, salary, seniority, and opportunity to teach a full load of courses remains secure. She is scheduled to teach a full course load in the next academic year....

Law schools are not free-standing debating societies or think tanks; we are also demanding professional schools dedicated to training hundreds of students each year.... Professor Wax has chosen to speak publicly, disparagingly, and inaccurately about the performance of these students, some of whom she has taught and graded confidentially at Penn Law. As a scholar she is free to advocate her views, no matter how dramatically those views diverge from our institutional ethos and our considered practices.��As a teacher, however, she is not free to transgress the policy that student grades are confidential, or to use her access to those Penn Law students who are required to be in her class to further her scholarly ends without students��� permission. Penn Law does not permit the public disclosure of grades or class rankings, and we do not collect, sort, or publicize grade performance by racial group. The existence of these policies and practices, while constraining this response, is not an invitation to statements made with conscious indifference to their truth content...

Should-Read: Iason Gabriel: The case for fairer algorithm...

Should-Read: Iason Gabriel: The case for fairer algorithms: "Software used to make decisions and allocate opportunities has often tended to mirror the biases of its creators, extending discrimination into new domains...

...Job search tools have been shown to offer higher paid jobs to men, a programme used for parole decisions mistakenly identified more black defendants as ���high risk��� than other racial categories, and image recognition software has been shown to work less-well for minorities and disadvantaged groups.... A better understanding is needed of how bias enters algorithmic decisions.... The data used to train machine learning models is often incomplete or skewed.... Data... frequently contains the imprint of historical and structural patterns of discrimination.... Statistically unbiased and properly coded datasets... may still contain correlations between gender and pay, or race and incarceration, which stem from entrenched patterns of historical discrimination... Against this backdrop, it would be a serious mistake to think that technologists are not responsible for algorithmic bias or to conclude that technology itself is neutral....

Even when explicit information about race, gender, age and socioeconomic status is withheld from models, part of the remaining data often continues to correlate with these categories, serving as a proxy for them.... Patterns of discrimination intersect with each other, placing particular burdens on groups such as immigrants or single-parent families who conventionally fall outside the ���protected category��� framework....

Be transparent about the limitations of datasets.... Conduct research and develop techniques to mitigate bias.... Deploy responsibly.... Increase awareness.... Research will contribute to our understanding of problem and potential solutions, but certain principles are already clear. We need new standards of public accountability.... And we need technologists to take responsibility for the impact of their work...

Should-Read: This is not an economist's forecast. This is...

Should-Read: This is not an economist's forecast. This is affinity fraud. Directed against Trump? Against Kudlow's Fox News viewers? Against some group of right-wing investors? In all cases, the hope is that the marks have short memories���or that something else will turn up. Paul Bedard: Larry Kudlow predicts 4%-5% growth, 'investment boom': "Larry Kudlow, picked to be President Trump���s new economic adviser...

...has privately told the White House that the nation���s economy is on the verge of 4 percent to 5 percent growth, or more than double the last decade. In a recent gathering with Trump, he said that many firms held back investing until the tax reform package passed and ���some of that is already showing up.��� What���s more, he told the president, ���We���re on the front end of the biggest investment boom in probably 30 to 40 years.��� The president responded, ���Well, I couldn���t have said it any better���...

The rule-of-thumb is that each 1% point rise in investment as a share of national product adds 0.1% point to the annual growth rate. To get from a growth rate of 2.5% up to 4.5% would thus require a 20% point jump in the investment share of national product���if you were to get it from investment.

If you were to get it from employment growth, with Okun's Law, you would need the unemployment rate to fall by 1% point per year���which means the unemployment rate would hit zero by the start of 2022. And there are no signs of a productivity growth recovery: given demography, labor productivity growth would have to consistently hit 3.75% per year in order to get to 4.5% per year real GDP growth. And that is something that the U.S. economy simply does not do:

It just does not add up.

Misapplied History...

I confess that I am a great fan of Applied History. Theoretical arguments and conceptual frameworks are, ultimately, nothing but distilled, crystalized, and chemically cooked history. After all, what else could they possibly be? And it is very important to know whether the distillation, crystallization, and chemical cooking processes that underpin the theory and made the conceptual frameworks were honest ones. And that can be done only by getting good historians into the mix���in a prominent and substantial way.

But if this is what "Applied History" is to be, AY-YI-YI-YI-YI-YI-YI!!!!

Niall Ferguson: Fetch the purple toga: Emperor Trump is here: "Think of Harvey Weinstein, the predator whose behaviour was for years an 'open secret' among precisely the Hollywood types who were so shrill last year in their condemnation of Donald Trump for his boasts about 'grabbing' women by the genitals...

...���Women should never be talked about in that way,��� declared the actor Ben Affleck a year ago, after the release of Trump���s ���locker room��� exchange with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in 2005. However, Affleck became ���angry and saddened��� about his mentor Weinstein���s record of assaulting and harassing women only after it was splashed all over The New Yorker. This was too much for Rose McGowan, apparently one of Weinstein���s many victims, who told Affleck to ���f--- off������whereupon other actresses claimed Affleck himself had groped them.

In my experience few things enrage ordinary Americans more than the hypocrisy of the liberal elites.... At least Trump does not pretend to be a feminist. Weinstein raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Clinton���s campaign. In January he joined the anti-Trump Women���s March in Park City, Utah. In May he sat next to Clinton at a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, America���s biggest provider of birth control products and procedures, including abortion....

The brilliant Tom Holland... his book Rubicon: _The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, ���censoriousness was the mirror image of a drooling appetite for lurid fantasy.��� Yes, that does sound familiar.... [In] Holland['s] telling, the [Roman] Republic dies too imperceptibly to be mourned. Superficially its decline was the result of recurrent civil war. But the underlying causes were the self-indulgence and social isolation of the Roman elite, the alienation of the plebeian masses, the political ascendancy of the generals and the opportunities all these trends created for demagogues. Reading Holland���s description of the libidinous orgies and extravagant cuisine of Baiae, the fabled Roman resort on the Gulf of Naples, it is impossible not to be reminded of present-day La La Land....

Congress was meant to be the dominant branch of government.... Progressives pressed for reform of what Woodrow Wilson disparagingly called ���congressional government���. The 1900s saw the first presidential programmes���the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal���sold to the public through newspapers and later radio and television. The 1960s brought presidential primaries and caucuses. With the advent of the internet the system took a further step down the road to direct plebiscitary presidential rule. The result was President Trump, king of the Twitter trolls....

Imperceptibly, the foundations of the republic have corroded. In Rome no one quite noticed that Octavian���or Augustus as he was renamed in 27BC���was becoming an emperor, for the outward forms of republican governance endured. Yet the symptoms of corrosion were all around, not least in the decadence of the Roman elite. I have never been persuaded by those who fear an American fascism in the style of Sinclair Lewis���s It Can���t Happen Here. None of the protagonists in today���s American drama would look well in a brown shirt, jackboots and tight breeches. But togas? I can���t imagine a garment better suited to Weinstein and the president-emperor he both reviles and resembles.

Back up. Even Ferguson admits that for the Roman Republic "its decline was the result of recurrent civil war". However this, he says, is only "superficially" the case. So let's look at the Roman Civil Wars.

According to Plutarch���who is appallingly close to being our only source for this stuff���they began in 133 BC when:

Blossius of Cumae... said it would be a shame and a great disgrace if [the Tribune] Tiberius [Sempronius Gracchus], a son of Gracchus, a grandson of [P. Cornelius] Scipio Africanus, and a champion of the Roman people, for fear of a raven should refuse to obey the summons of his fellow citizens; such shameful conduct, moreover, would not be made a mere matter of ridicule by his enemies.... Many of his friends on the Capitol came running to Tiberius with urgent appeals to hasten thither, since matters there were going well.... As soon as he came into view the crowd raised a friendly shout, and as he came up the hill they gave him a cordial welcome and ranged themselves about him, that no stranger might approach.

But after Mucius began once more to summon the [Assembly of the] Tribes to the vote, none of the customary forms could be observed because of the disturbance that arose on the outskirt of the throng, where there was crowding back and forth between the friends of Tiberius and their opponents.... Fulvius Flaccus, a senator... told him that at a session of the senate the party of the rich, since they could not prevail upon the consul to do so, were purposing to kill Tiberius themselves, and for this purpose had under arms a multitude of their friends and slaves. Tiberius, accordingly, reported this to those who stood about him, and they at once girded up their togas, and breaking in pieces the spear-shafts with which the officers keep back the crowd, distributed the fragments among themselves, that they might defend themselves against their assailants. Those who were farther off, however, wondered at what was going on and asked what it meant. Whereupon Tiberius put his hand to his head, making this visible sign that his life was in danger, since the questioners could not hear his voice.

But his opponents, on seeing this, ran to the senate and told that body that Tiberius was asking for a crown; and that his putting his hand to his head was a sign having that meaning. All the senators, of course, were greatly disturbed, and [Publius Cornelius Scipio] Nasica demanded that the consul should come to the rescue of the state and put down the tyrant. The consul replied with mildness that he would resort to no violence and would put no citizen to death without a trial; if, however, the people, under persuasion or compulsion from Tiberius, should vote anything that was unlawful, he would not regard this vote as binding.

Thereupon Nasica sprang to his feet and said: "Since, then, the chief magistrate betrays the state, do ye who wish to succour the laws follow me." With these words he covered his head with the skirt of his toga and set out for the Capitol. All the senators who followed him wrapped their togas about their left arms and pushed aside those who stood in their path, no man opposing them, in view of their dignity, but all taking to flight and trampling upon one another.... The attendants of the senators carried clubs and staves which they had brought from home; but the senators themselves seized the fragments and legs of the benches that were shattered by the crowd in its flight, and went up against Tiberius, at the same time smiting those who were drawn up to protect him.

Of these there was a rout and a slaughter, and as Tiberius himself turned to fly, someone laid hold of his garments. So he let his toga go and fled in his tunic. But he stumbled and fell to the ground among some bodies that lay in front of him. As he strove to rise to his feet, he received his first blow, as everybody admits, from Publius Satyreius, one of his [Tribunal] colleagues, who smote him on the head with the leg of a bench; to the second blow claim was made by Lucius Rufus, who plumed himself upon it as upon some noble deed. And of the rest more than three hundred were slain by blows from sticks and stones, but not one by the sword.

This is said to have been the first sedition at Rome, since the abolition of royal power, to end in bloodshed and the death of citizens; the rest though neither trifling nor raised for trifling objects, were settled by mutual concessions, the nobles yielding from fear of the multitude, and the people out of respect for the senate. And it was thought that even on this occasion Tiberius would have given way without difficulty had persuasion been brought to bear upon him, and would have yielded still more easily if his assailants had not resorted to wounds and bloodshed; for his adherents numbered not more than three thousand.

But the combination against him would seem to have arisen from the hatred and anger of the rich rather than from the pretexts which they alleged; and there is strong proof of this in their lawless and savage treatment of his dead body...

A decade later, in 121 B.C., the consul Lucius Opimius would seize upon the murder of his attendant Quintus Antyllius by partisans of Tiberius's brother Gaius Tiberius Gracchus as a pretext for the Senate's passage of the Senatus Consultum Ultimum���"consules darent operam ne quid detrimenti res publica caperet" ("let the consuls see to it that the Republic suffer no harm") and then murder Gaius. Afterwards politicians who thought Rome should do more to subdivide public land engrossed by rich senators either thought better of proposing agrarian reform laws or recognized that they needed an army. And it turned out that they could raise armies that would be loyal to them rather than the constitution of the Republic. And so we have those twenty who raised and commanded armies loyal to themselves sometimes within but often outside the Republic's legal framework:

Gaius Marius (cos. 107, 104, 102, 102, 101, 100, 86)
Lucius Cornelius Sulla (cos. 88, 80; dic. 82-81)
Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo (cos. 89)
Gnaeus Papirius Carbo (cos. 85, 84, 82)
Quintus Sertorius
Marcus Licinius Crassus (cos. 69, 54)
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (cos. 69, 54, 51)
Lucius Sergius Catilina
Gaius Julius Caesar (cos. 59, 48, 47, 46, 45, 44; dic. 49-44)
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (cos. 46, 42)
Sextus Pompeius
Gaius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus (cos. 43)
Aulus Hirtius (cos. 43)
Marcus Junius Brutus
Gaius Cassius Longinus
Quintus Caecilius Fabius Metellus Scipio
Marcus Porcius Cato
Marcus Antonius (cos. 44, 34),
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (cos. 37, 28, 27)
And, of course, the man named at birth Gaius Octavius Thurinus (cos. 43, 33, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 5, 2)

All of these commanded armies loyal to themselves and not to the Senate (or to whatever rump of the Senate was sitting in Rome and issuing Senatus Consulta). None of these were both (a) victorious and (b) willing after victory to do what was necessary to make future armies loyal to the Senate rather than to their commanders in the future (although Sulla did try).

Thus it is no accident that the style of post-Republican rulers became Imperator���victorious commander���rather than king or dictator or something else.

Plutarch saw it as a chain of norm-breaking.

And I think he was right.

First, Scipio Nasica's faction broke the norm that the prosperity from conquest was to be widely shared, not least through ample and lavish land distribution and colonization. Second, Scipio Nasica's and then Opimium's Optimates broke the norm that Roman magistrates not be murdered in the streets. Third, Gaius Marius broke the norm that soldiers be recruited only from those whose household and kin had something of property to lose. Fourth, Gaius Marius broke the norm that magistracies be short-term and temporary. Fifth, Sulla broke the norm that commanders obeyed the Senate and people rather than marching on Rome to cow them with their soldiers. Sixth, Pompey broke the norm that commanders disband their armies after campaigns rather than hold them in reserve, even if demobilized. Sixth, Bibulus broke the norm that magistrates not filibuster���not declare that every day was inauspicious for public legislation. Seventh, Caesar broke the norm that magistrates respect the vetoes of their colleagues. Eighth, Pompey broke the norm that Roman politicians respect their peers as equals. Ninth, Caesar broke the norm that Roman politicians respect their superiors and the Senate, and crossed the Rubicon.

Why were these norm-breakings successful? Why did they proceed? Plutarch says it was out of the "hatred and anger of the rich" that led them to react to discontent at the distribution of land and spoils in a new way. Before, he said, there had always been compromise and adjustment and incremental change, "the nobles yielding from the fear of the multitude, and the people out of respect for the senate..." But Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica's generation changed that, both in their unwillingness to share the profits of imperial conquest and in their willingness to kill opposing political leaders.

Why did the ball keep rolling? Because increased maldistribution opened up further opportunities for norm-breaking. Male Roman citizens from 450 B.C. to 150 B.C. joined the legions, and got victory, loot, land, and honor at the hands of the Senate. It was a profitable and respected thing to do with your life. Afterwards, starting with the political ascendancy of Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica and his faction, while service in the legions would still get you victory and booty, it would not get the distribution of land to farm to you and your kinfolk���not unless your general kept his hands firmly on the reins of power, and for that to happen you needed to be willing to come back to the standards and fight against your fellow citizens, if necessary.

Theoretical approaches and conceptual frameworks to be derived from this historical episode? Many and important. Applications to today? No direct applications, but a lot of thoughtful ideas and questions raised, for history does rhyme.

But this questions, ideas, approaches, frameworks, and possible applications are not those that Niall Ferguson wants to draw. His version of "history" is not wie es eigentlich gewesen in the least.

At a rhetorical level, Fergusons' piece is something that will be, as Jacob T. Levy likes to say, an interesting piece for far-future historians at Radioactive Liebowitz Morlock University to decode. The villains are Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump���sorta, because at least he is not a hypocrite pretending to be a feminist, and hypocrisy is the big sin of the "Hollywood types who were so shrill last year in their condemnation of Donald Trump for his boasts about 'grabbing' women by the genitals"���Ben Affleck, Hilary Rodham Clinton, hypocritical "liberal elites", the celebrities of Los Angeles, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and the Internet.

This is a strange list of villains indeed.

And on an application level���Ferguson's reading of Holland's history of Rome sees the causes of the possible imminent fall of the American Republic and America as: "the self-indulgence and social isolation of the Roman elite, the alienation of the plebeian masses, the political ascendancy of the generals and the opportunities all these trends created for demagogues... the libidinous orgies and extravagant cuisine of Baiae, the fabled Roman resort... [that] remind[s me of] La La Land..."

Is this well-founded in the Roman experience? No. Ten thousand times, no. NO!!

Were the military-political powerful ones of the late Roman Republic able to raise and command armies loyal to themselves because of Ferguson's list of causes? Let's run through it:

"the self-indulgence... of the Roman elite..."? Nope. An addiction to "Eastern", "Greek", or "Egyptian" vices was a propaganda accusation that members hurled against each other: self-control was a principal Roman virtue, and to be ridden by your vices and your addictions showed that you were unfit to hold imperium. But Gaius Julius Caesar's being "every woman's husband and very man's wife" did not seem to harm the loyalty of his soldiers or his political and military skill.

"the libidinous orgies and extravagant cuisine of Baiae..."? Nope. See above.

"the... social isolation of the Roman elite..."? Nope. Roman society was patterned in a strong patron-client network. You could not be socially isolated and remain part of the elite. And the fact that all elite factions had powerful social-network hooks into a population with lots of soldiers and ex-soldiers in it was what made the civil wars possible.

"the opportunities... created for demagogues..."? Which demagogues? Gang leaders Titus Annius Milo and Publius Clodius Pulcher? But they were much more tools of broader political factions engaged in norm-breaking than independent actors. Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus? They had no armies. And so they were killed. So nope.

"the political ascendancy of the generals...". Well, this is not a cause but an effect. This is the thing to be explained. This is the series of civil wars that Ferguson dismisses as "superficial", right? But it is the key question: Why would Rome's citizens in the fourth, third, and second centuries B.C. fight for and be loyal to the Senate and the consuls, while in the first century B.C. they fought for and were loyal to their generals?

"the alienation of the plebeian masses..." Here we are indeed getting somewhere. But why were the plebeian masses alienated? Could it be that they thought they deserved... a fair share of imperial prosperity? A Square Deal, a New Deal, a Fair Deal? And did not the hubris of elites in seeking to engross the spoils of empire and stymie all reform call forth nemesis? That would be a better form of Applied History, I think, but it would not focus on hypocritical liberal elites, LA celebrity parties, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Theodore Roosevelt. It would focus on income and wealth inequality, and on those so eager to defend it.

Certainly Plutarch thought it was "the hatred and anger of the rich" which broke the probability of compromise "the nobles yielding from fear of the multitude, and the people out of respect for the senate" that started the ball rolling. And he was, if not there, our historian first responder able to talk to many and read much that is lost to us. Listen to him!

Applied History: "For some time, the majority of academic historians have tended to shy away from questions of contemporary interest, especially to policy-makers...

...but also of interest to students interested in policy issues.��Previous generations were less shy of such questions. Writing in 1939, the great Oxford philosopher of historian R. G. Collingwood made the case for applied history succinctly. ���True historical problems arise out of practical problems,��� he argued. ���We study history in order to see more clearly into the situation in which we are called upon to act. Hence the plane on which, ultimately, all problems arise is the plane of ���real��� life: that to which they are referred for their solution is history.���

If historians decline to address current issues, then those making policy will be denied the benefit of historical perspective. Writing in the Atlantic��in 2016, Graham Allison and Niall Ferguson made the case for establishing a White House council of historical advisers, analogous to the council of economic advisers. Their argument was that decision-making in Washington (and not only there) would be improved by a more systematic effort to take the lessons of history into account.��

In the hope that other historians share the view that there is more to be learned from history than merely ���how to make new mistakes��� (in A.J.P. Taylor���s phrase), we are holding what we hope will be a series of conferences devoted to applied history. What sort of questions will the conference address? The following are the ones to be addressed by speakers and commentators:

What lessons can a modern democracy learn from the fall of Roman Republic?
Are recent developments in American politics unprecedented, or is Trump merely populism revisited?
Is deep economic or political reform possible in the People's Republic of China?
Did the United States learn the right lessons from defeat in Vietnam?
How far are major historical discontinuities explicable in terms of climatic change?
Are cryptocurrencies likely to replace fiat currencies in the foreseeable future?
How much of a Potemkin superpower is Putin���s Russia?
What can we learn from past attempts to learn from the past?
Can we learn anything of the Cold War that is relevant to the world in 2018?
How might 20th-century globalization unfold?
Does rising inequality matter?
What does history suggest will come of the recent upsurge in Islamist-inspired violence?
How can a country fight an ideology?

In each case, the paper���s author will seek to answer the question with the help of historical evidence, and in particular the use of analogies and comparisons. The conference is a joint venture between the Hoover Institution, the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, and the Belfer Center at Harvard���s Kennedy School. The conference papers will subsequently be published in a book with the title Applied History.

Organizers

Hoover Institution, Stanford University: With its eminent scholars and world-renowned Library and Archives, the Hoover Institution seeks to improve the human condition by advancing ideas that promote economic opportunity and prosperity, while securing and safeguarding peace for America and all mankind.

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School: The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is the hub of Harvard Kennedy School's research, teaching, and training in international security and diplomacy, environmental and resource issues, and science and technology policy. In 2017, for the fourth year in a row, the Belfer Center was ranked the world's #1 University Affiliated Think Tank by University of Pennsylvania's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program.

Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation: The Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation is a private foundation whose principal objective is to facilitate scientific research in general. The foundation has in particular chosen to benefit the liberal arts and the social sciences. It was founded in 1947 by the late Consul General Axel Ax:son Johnson (1876-1958) together with his wife Margaret, owner of the Nordstjernan group.

Day One���Friday, March 2, 2018

9:00 AM Welcome and opening remarks: Niall Ferguson

9:15 ��� 10:00 AM Session 1: Undead Rome: the Decline, Fall and Afterlives of the Roman Empire?

Presenter: Tom Holland
Commentator: Peter Frankopan
Chair: Niall Ferguson

10:00 ��� 10:45 AM Session 2: Is Trumpism Merely Populism revisited?

Presenter: Eric Rauchway
Commentator: Daniel Sargent
Chair: Niall Ferguson

11:15 ��� 12:00 PM Session 3: The China Story

Presenter: Frank Dik��tter
Commentator: Arne Westad
Chair: Robert Zoellick

Discussion with Aaron O���Connell and Fredrik Logevall: D��j�� Vu All Over Again? Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Search for Lessons in History

Chair: Graham Allison

1:30 ��� 2:15 PM Session 4: The Ecological Origins of Economic and Political Systems

Presenter: Stephen Haber
Commentator: Ian Morris
Chair: Peter Frankopan

2:15 ��� 3:00 PM Session 5: Kicking Away the Ladder? Cryptocurrencies in Historical Perspective

Presenter: Tyler Goodspeed
Commentator: Barry Eichengreen
Chair: Michael Bordo

5:45 ��� 6:30 PM Session 6: Is Putin's Russia a Potemkin Power? Leadership, Succession and Russian Foreign Policy

Presenter: Christopher Miller
Commentator: Stephen Kotkin
Chair: Amir Weiner

Day Two���Saturday, March 3, 2018

9:00 ��� 9:45 AM Session 7: The History of the Future

Presenter: Matthew Connelly
Commentator: Christopher Clark
Chair: Mary Sarotte

9:45 ��� 10:30 AM Session 8: Thinking Historically: A Cold War Historian's Reflection on Policy

Presenter: Francis Gavin
Commentator: Marc Trachtenberg
Chair: Arne Westad

11:00 ��� 11:45 AM Session 9: How Might 21st-Century Deglobalization Unfold?

Presenter: Stefan Link
Commentator: Norman Naimark
Chair: Marc Trachtenberg

11:45 ��� 12:30 PM Session 10: Same As It Ever Was: The History of Inequality and Mobility
Presenter: Gregory Clark
Commentator: Glen O���Hara
Chair: Harold James

Discussion with Philip Zelikow and Robert Zoellick: Applied History in Washington since c. 2000

1:30 ��� 2:15 PM Session 11: Wine and Winning: From Muhammad to the Islamic State, a Tangled Relationship

Presenter: David Cook
Commentator: Emile Simpson
Chair: Sean McMeekin

2:15 ��� 3:00 PM Session 12: Defeating an Idea: What the Cold War Can Teach Us About How States Fight Ideologies

Presenter: Jeremy Friedman
Commentator: John Bew
Chair: Philip Zelikow

Ana Lucia Araujo: ALL-MALE HISTORY CONFERENCE: "ALL-MALE HISTORY CONFERENCE. This goes for the GUINNESS BOOK of the century! A team of 30 white male historians will discuss Applied History at @Stanford. What a shame..."

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Emptywheel: "Sho...

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Confused: Why isn't Donald violating the NDA by admitting he's David Dennison here?

Where does he pay the $1M? https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000162-3136-d513-a767-ffbf3e740000

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Should-Read: Jonathan Chait: New Trump Economist Kudlow H...

Should-Read: Jonathan Chait: New Trump Economist Kudlow Has Been Wrong About Everything: "The Republican Party... supply-side economics... not merely a generalized preference for small government with low taxes...

...but a commitment to the cause of low taxes, particularly for high earners, that borders on theological. In the time that has passed since then, that grip has not weakened.... The appointment of Lawrence Kudlow as head of the National Economic Council indicates how firmly supply-siders control Republican economic policy, and how little impact years of failed analysis have had.... They likewise believe tax cuts are the necessary tonic for every economic circumstance. The purest supply-siders, like Kudlow, go further and deeper in their commitment. Kudlow attributes every positive economic indicator to lower taxes, and every piece of negative news to higher taxes. While that sounds absurd, it is the consistent theme he has maintained throughout his career as a prognosticator. It���s not even a complex form of kookery, if you recognize the pattern. It���s a very simple and blunt kind of kookery...

The Question of Larry Kudlow...

There has long been discussion of whether Larry Kudlow believes what he says. (1) Is he one of the professional Republican commentators like Stephen Moore, James Glassman, and Kevin Hassett who knows that what he says is wrong, but says it because it is just a game���that feeding one's readers and viewers something that is not bullshit is simply not a goal, and telling the truth will serve when it does not conflict with one's goals? Or (2) is he just not aware of the world outside him, in the sense in which people are usually oriented toward reality?

Well, why not both? Being unaware both that FICA is not a household-level but an earner-level tax and of the approximate size of the federal workforce when there is no upside to the falsehood seems to me conclusive evidence that there is a good deal of (2) going on. And maybe that gives him the freedom to be a more effective version of (1) than people who are more often clued in to how what they are saying is simply not true.

I do see a sharp contrast between the Kudlow of the 1980s and the Kudlow I have run across since, say, 1992: the later Kudlow seems to know much less, and to have a much more difficult time figuring out that he needs to alter his range and rhythm whenever he is speaking to an audience that is neither Fox News viewers nor right-wing investors who are easy prey to affinity fraud...

Jonat.han Chait: New Trump Economist Kudlow Has Been Wrong About Everything: "The Republican Party... supply-side economics... not merely a generalized preference for small government with low taxes...

...but a commitment to the cause of low taxes, particularly for high earners, that borders on theological. In the time that has passed since then, that grip has not weakened.... The appointment of Lawrence Kudlow as head of the National Economic Council indicates how firmly supply-siders control Republican economic policy, and how little impact years of failed analysis have had.... They likewise believe tax cuts are the necessary tonic for every economic circumstance. The purest supply-siders, like Kudlow, go further and deeper in their commitment. Kudlow attributes every positive economic indicator to lower taxes, and every piece of negative news to higher taxes. While that sounds absurd, it is the consistent theme he has maintained throughout his career as a prognosticator. It���s not even a complex form of kookery, if you recognize the pattern. It���s a very simple and blunt kind of kookery.

In 1993, when Bill Clinton proposed an increase in the top tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent, Kudlow wrote:

There is no question that President Clinton���s across-the-board tax increases��� will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy���s long-run potential to grow...

This was wrong. Instead, a boom ensued. Rather than question his analysis, Kudlow switched to crediting the results to the great tax-cutter, Ronald Reagan:

The politician most responsible for laying the groundwork for this prosperous era is not Bill Clinton, but Ronald Reagan...

he argued in February, 2000. By December 2000, the expansion had begun to slow. What had happened? According to Kudlow, it meant Reagan���s tax-cutting genius was no longer responsible for the economy���s performance:

The Clinton policies of rising tax burdens, high interest rates and re-regulation is responsible for the sinking stock market and the slumping economy...

he mourned, though no taxes or re-regulation had taken place since he had credited Reagan for the boom earlier that same year. By the time George W. Bush took office, Kudlow was plumping for his tax-cut plan. Kudlow not only endorsed Bush���s argument that the budget surplus he inherited from Clinton���the one Kudlow and his allies had insisted in 1993 could never happen, because the tax hikes would strangle the economy���would turn out to be even larger than forecast:

Faster economic growth and more profitable productivity returns will generate higher tax revenues at the new lower tax-rate levels. Future budget surpluses will rise, not fall...

This was wrong, too.... Kudlow then began to relentlessly tout Bush���s economic program.... insist that the housing bubble that was forming was a hallucination.... He made this case over and over (���There���s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It���s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that���s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. (The Bush boom is alive and well.���) and over (���The Media Are Missing the Housing Bottom,��� he wrote in July 2008). All of this was wrong. It was historically, massively wrong.

When Obama took office, Kudlow was detecting an ���inflationary bubble.��� That was wrong. He warned in 2009 that the administration ���is waging war on investors. He���s waging war against businesses. He���s waging war against bondholders. These are very bad things.��� That was also wrong, and when the recovery proceeded, by 2011, he credited the Bush tax cuts for the recovery. (Kudlow, April 2011: ���March unemployment rate drop proof lower taxes work.���) By 2012, Kudlow found new grounds to test out his theories: Kansas, where he advised Republican governor Sam Brownback to implement a sweeping tax-cut plan that would produce faster growth. This was wrong. Alas, Brownback���s program has proven a comprehensive failure, falling short of all its promises and leaving the state in fiscal turmoil...

Belle Waring (2007): John & Belle Have A Blog: Shameless: "I know logically that Larry Kudlow has no shame, because... Larry Kudlow!...

...Nonetheless I can't help but wonder if he might feel a faint touch of a related emotion when he considers this 2005 offering, "The Housing Bears Are Wrong Again":

Homebuilders led the stock parade this week with a fantastic 11 percent gain. This is a group that hedge funds and bubbleheads love to hate. All the bond bears have been dead wrong in predicting sky-high mortgage rates. So have all the bubbleheads who expect housing-price crashes in Las Vegas or Naples, Florida, to bring down the consumer, the rest of the economy, and the entire stock market.

None of this has happened. The Federal Reserve has effectively mopped up excess cash and calmed inflation expectations. That���s why bond rates are hovering around 4 percent, with most mortgage rates about a point higher.

Meanwhile, the homebuilders index has increased 76 percent over the past year, with particularly well-run companies like Toll Brothers up about twice as much. The bubbleheads missed all this because they haven���t done their homework. If they had put a little elbow grease into their analysis, they would have learned that new-housing starts for private homes and apartments haven���t changed much during the past three and a half decades....

Since 1997 home prices have been increasing at a 6.5 percent pace on a yearly basis, with a 12 percent gain over the past year. In contrast, stock prices have gained only 3 percent yearly during the same period. Simply, real estate has had the tax-advantage over stocks as an investment vehicle. There is no $500,000 per family tax-free capital gain for shares, nor are the borrowing costs for the purchase of stocks tax-deductible....

Which leads to a final thought: Why not apply the same tax laws that have benefited home owners to stock market investors and home buyers? If this were to come about, even more wealth would be created in America, leading to even more new business and job creation.

Tax reform to create a level playing field could boost our economy���s potential to grow beyond almost anyone���s wildest dreams. Homeownership, stock ownership, and small business ownership should be taxed at the same minimal rates as they are all key components of economic growth and wealth creation.

Duncan Black (2008): Fixing the Internets: Larry Kudlow:

Uncapping the payroll tax reveals still another cultural misstep by Sen. Obama. He apparently has a difficult time understanding that nowadays, a veteran fireman or a veteran cop, married to a veteran schoolteacher, will make well over 100,000. In fact, they can make close to
200,000. Yet Obama still wants to go ahead and tax both the first and last payroll dollar of this group at a very high marginal tax rate by uncapping the Social Security (FICA) tax.

The FICA cap is an individual cap, unaffected by income earned/payroll taxes paid by your spouse.

David From: (2010)**: Simple Answers to Troubling Questions: "Kudlow���s Math...

...I appeared on Larry Kudlow���s show last night and we had a bit of a tussle about how much deficit reduction could be achieved by cutting federal salaries. Larry argued that a 5-10% pay cut for federal civilian employees like that imposed by Ireland could have a major impact on the federal budget deficit. (Larry was greatly influenced by this WSJ oped.) I had come prepared to talk about a different subject, and so didn���t have the relevant figures at hand, but I suggested that his math sounded incredible. Looking it up this morning, it IS incredible.... Even if we fired every single federal civil servant and shuttered the entire non-defense federal government, three-fourths of the budget deficit would still be with us. Does this really come as news to Larry Kudlow, a very smart man and a former deputy to David Stockman at the Office of Management and Budget?

Ezra Klein (2011): Inside the Mind of Larry Kudlow...: "I like going on ���The Kudlow Report.��� Larry Kudlow and I don���t agree about much...

...but I find him good-humored and courteous, and it���s always worth talking to people who aren���t already convinced of your point of view. And, to his credit, he makes it a point to have a lot of people who don���t agree with him on his show.

What I don���t understand is how, given all his exposure to sincere people who think differently than he does, Kudlow���s mental model for disagreement ends up being so ideologically skewed. I was on last night to talk about the Obama administration���s resistance to a tax holiday for the profits American corporations are holding overseas.... Michael Mundaca... [argues] our previous experiment with a corporate tax holiday didn���t pan out.... You can disagree with Mundaca���s take, but you don���t need to ask Dr. Strange to summon a demon in order to interpret it. Bloomberg Business Week ��� not exactly a publication known for its aggressively anti-business leanings���ran a cover story this week making almost exactly the same argument. In that cover story, a dozen respected tax economists provided support for the position. But that���s not how Kudlow saw it. ���I believe they want to punish international business,��� he said. A few minutes later: ���I���m suspecting that Team Obama just doesn���t want to help the foreign earnings of companies.��� And then: ���I think they do have an ideological bias against business.���...

[Y]ou see this a lot. Somehow, people find it preferable to think the president of the United States a socialist, Marxist or Kenyan anti-colonialist than a guy who agrees with Mitt Romney���s 2005 health-care opinions rather than Mitt Romney���s 2011 health-care opinions. I won���t even get into Glenn Beck���s take on the administration���s motivations, as even on the Internet, I don���t have the space. But you end up with these winding, esoteric theories to explain perfectly common policy preferences and political decisions. It���s really weird.

(2011): Inside the Mind of Larry Kudlow...: "
One oldtime Washington hand who has spent a lot of time working with James "Dow 36000" Glassman claims that for Glassman it is simply a game: Glassman thinks his job is not to say what he thinks is true but rather what the audience he is cultivating wants to hear from him. The two times I have been on the same stage as Kudlow have made me think that the same is true of Kudlow: he is too smart to have meant some of the things he said, or to have actually thought that the other people on the panel had said what Kudlow claimed they had said.

(2007): Anti-Discourse Situations...: "I can think of seven wedges between the national net savings-investment rate...

...as estimated by the National Income and Product Accounts and statistical estimates of the change in total measured household net worth:

There is a gap between the rate of return on the average investment made in a year and the cost of capital, which means that 1 dollar of savings on average produces more than 1 of value.

The NIPA may well understate corporate savings and investment by counting a bunch of investments in organizational form as corporate operating expenses.

All of us free-ride on technological research and development, reaping where we do not sow, gathering where we do not scatter, and profiting where we do not save and invest.

Shifts in the distribution of income away from labor and toward capital increase measured household net worth���which includes the increased expected future profits from capital���but not true household net worth���which also includes the decreased expected future wages of labor.

Declines in interest rates make the future more valuable relative to the present and so raise measured household net worth today���which is measured in today's dollars���without any outward shift in the true consumption-possibilities frontier.

Government deficits that raise the debt lower national savings but not measured household net worth.

Good news about the future produces windfall gains and bad news windfall losses which alter this year's household net worth without telling us much about over-all long-run accumulation trends.

I was sitting on the right end of an nine-person panel at the New School... http://www.cepa.newschool.edu/events/events_schwartz-lecture.htm#. Bob Solow was sitting on the left end���Solow, Shapiro, Schwartz, Rohatyn, Kudlow, Kerrey, Kosterlitz, Hormats, DeLong. Bob Solow expressed concern and worry over the declines in the U.S. savings rate over the past generation. Larry Kudlow, in the middle of the panel, aggressively launched into a rant���about how the NIPA savings rate was wrong, about how the right savings rate was the change in household net worth, about how there was no potential problem with America saving too little, that the economy was strong, and that that day's employment report had been wonderful, and that Paul Krugman had predicted nine out of the last zero recessions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

What is one to do? You watch a guy���Bob Solow���one of the smartest and most thoughtful people I know, having his intellectual impact neutralized by a guy���Kudlow���who really isn't in the intellectual inquiry business anymore. Kudlow clearly has not thought through the biases and gaps in the household net worth number: if he had, there is no way he could say what he is saying.

On paper, in print, on the screen, one can point out that the employment report was anemic���it was not a bloodletting by any means, but it was a bit disappointing.

On paper, in print, on the screen, one can say that there is reason to worry about the decline in housing demand and the possibility that it might trigger a recession.

On paper, in print, on the screen one can say that reasons (4), (5), and (6) pushing up measured household net worth are reasons to discount that statistic as misleading because they do not reflect any true increase in appropriately-defined wealth, that any increase in household net worth caused by (7) is a transitory phenomenon that tells us little about permanent saving and accumulation patterns, that (1) and (2) affect the level but not the trends of saving, and do not speak to Solow's worry about the savings-investment rate's decline, and thus that only reason (3)���the effects of the now decade-long computer-and-communications real investment boom on our total wealth���provides a reason to even begin to think about whether Bob Solow's worries about declining savings as measured by the NIPA are at all overblown.

But there are ninety minutes for a panel with nine people on it. To the audience it looks like two cocksure economists who disagree for incomprehensible reasons. And my ten minute share will come too late to try to referee Solow-Kudlow in any fair, balanced, and effective way.

It's an anti-discourse situation: Kudlow doesn't acknowledge���may not know���the flaws in his chosen statistic. And I can't help wonder what Kudlow would be saying if a Democrat were president.

It's an intellectual Gresham's Law in action...

What can I do? I can blog about it.

Note to Self: Lars Peter Hansen: ���What rational expecta...

Note to Self: Lars Peter Hansen: ���What rational expectations as a modeling strategy did was it took off the table policies based on systematically fooling people. That is a positive achievement...���

Liveblogging World War I: March 14, 1918: Consequences of Brest-Litovsk

From Adam Tooze: The Deluge:

The climax of Lenin���s campaign came at the All Russian Congress of Soviets. Having abandoned Petrograd, the Congress met in Moscow ��� the 1,232 delegates, 795 Bolsheviks, 283 Left Socialist Revolutionaries, 25 Socialist Revolutionaries of the Centre and no more than 32 Mensheviks. On 14 March, Lenin delivered an impassioned oration in which he called upon Russia to:

size up in full, to the very bottom, the abyss of defeat, partition, enslavement, and humiliation into which we have been thrown���, all the better to steel the will for ���liberation...

He promised that if they could only gain time for reconstruction the Soviet regime would: ���arise anew from enslavement to independence������. The motion for ratification was carried by the huge Bolshevik majority. But the Left Socialist Revolutionaries voted solidly against it and then resigned from the Council of People���s Commissars in which they had shared power since the November revolution. Of the Left Communists, 115 abstained and refused any further participation in internal party business. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the negotiations for which had begun under the sign of the Petrograd Soviet���s democratic peace formula, had become the driving force behind Lenin���s one-party dictatorship...