J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 64

Equitable Growth founder John Podesta says very wise thin...

Equitable Growth founder John Podesta says very wise things as he lays out the roadmap for repairing American democracy: Author: John Podesta: What House Democrats should do now - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/05/country-needs-houses-oversight-now-more-than-ever/: 'The House is the only governmental body with the power and will to expose Trump���s corruption. Unfortunately, the other institutions that were supposed to hold a corrupt president accountable have protected him instead. The attorney general, America���s chief law enforcement officer, has run an interference campaign to protect Trump from accountability. Lawyers at the White House and Office of Management and Budget have rendered legal opinions enabling presidential actions that the independent Government Accountability Office have found to be unlawful, and that constitutional scholars on the left and right have said are dangerous and unprecedented.... First, let the oversight committees get back to basics. During the impeachment process, a number of House committees went largely quiet. Now they should aggressively pursue unfinished business, including addressing Trump���s efforts to take away health-care protections for people with preexisting conditions and to raid the U.S. military budget to fund his useless wall at the southern border.... Second, complete the story that the Senate Republican leadership wanted to spike. The House majority should expose the Senate impeachment trial for what it was���a coverup���by subpoenaing witnesses such as Bolton, Mulvaney, Trump���s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman...

#noted #2020-02-29

Kim Clausing's Open is high on my list for very good poli...

Kim Clausing's Open is high on my list for very good policy books of the past year. Attempts to achieve social and egalitarian goals by closing off the international economy buy what they buy at an extremely heavy price, and Kim Clausing is very convincing that that price is rarely worth paying. And that leaves out all of the restrictions on openness that are not aimed at accomplishing egalitarian and social goals: Kimberly Clausing: Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital http://irle.berkeley.edu/event/open-the-progressive-case-for-free-trade-immigration-and-global-capital: "International trade brings countries together by raising living standards, benefiting consumers, and making countries richer. Global capital mobility helps both borrowers and lenders. International business improves efficiency and fosters innovation. And immigration remains one of America���s greatest strengths, as newcomers play an essential role in economic growth, innovation,��and��entrepreneurship. Closing the door to the benefits of the open economy would cause untold damage��for Americans. Instead, Clausing outlines a progressive agenda to manage globalization more effectively, presenting strategies to equip workers for a modern economy,��to modernize��tax policy��for a global economy, and��to��establish a better partnership between��society��and the business community...

#noted #2020-02-29

Claudia Sahm is making the podcast circuit. Definitely wo...

Claudia Sahm is making the podcast circuit. Definitely worth listening to: Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal: This Is How to Use Fiscal Stimulus to Stave Off The Next Recession https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-03/this-is-how-to-use-fiscal-stimulus-to-stave-off-the-next-recession: 'There's a growing consensus that governments need to act more aggressively in using fiscal policy to stave off the next recession, and that monetary policy simply isn't powerful enough. But how do you actually go about it? What do you spend the money on, and how do you get politicians to disburse it in a timely manner? On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist who is now at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, on ways to systematize and automate an early and aggressive fiscal response to economic weakness. Sahm has achieved fame for her so-called "Sahm Rule" which can provide policymakers with an early warning sign of when a recession might be brewing...

#noted #2020-02-29

Claudia Sahm's Sahm Rule for direct payments when unemplo...

Claudia Sahm's Sahm Rule for direct payments when unemployment rises is getting more airplay right now���and the unemployment rate is now likely to rise over the next six months. I first saw this proposal in a novel Robert Heinlein published in 1947, Beyond This Horizon about life in a future near utopia: Jeanna Smialek: ���Now Is the Time���: A Fed Official Urges Congress to Plan for Recessions https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/business/economy/fed-rate-recession-congress-stimulus.html: 'One such proposal is the so-called Sahm Rule. Created by Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist, it would use a pronounced jump in the unemployment rate to trigger a fiscal response such as stimulus payments to households. Ms. Brainard���s colleague Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, has also made a case for government spending policies that kick in immediately. Central bankers ���face greater uncertainty about the impact of our tools and their ability to achieve our goals,��� she said in a speech this month. ���Fiscal policy will need to play a larger role in smoothing through economic shocks,��� and ���expanding the array of automatic stabilizers that form part of the social safety net can help mitigate the depth and duration of economic downturns.���...

#noted #2020-02-28

Comment of the Day: Perhaps the greatest harm done by Rob...

Comment of the Day: Perhaps the greatest harm done by Robert Bork and Richard Posner to American well-being https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/02/perhaps-the-greatest-harm-done-by-robert-bork-and-richard-posner-to-american-well-being-was-their-extremely-aggressive-push-o.html#comment-6a00e551f0800388340240a4ec967e200d was their extremely aggressive push of the idea that vertical integration could never be bad.... pgl: 'How did Bork and Posner miss this excellent discussion? https://www.jstor.org/stable/1802783?seq=1 Fred M. Westfield: Vertical Integration: Does Product Price Rise or Fall?...

#commentoftheday #2020-02-28

Perhaps the greatest harm done by Robert Bork and Richard...

Perhaps the greatest harm done by Robert Bork and Richard Posner to American well-being was their extremely aggressive push of the idea that vertical integration could never be bad: Phil Weiser: Competitive Edge: The States��� View of Vertical Merger Guidelines in U.S. Antitrust Enforcement https://equitablegrowth.org/competitive-edge-the-states-view-of-vertical-merger-guidelines-in-u-s-antitrust-enforcement/: 'Vertical integration is not always benign and indeed has the potential to create significant anticompetitive harms.... Indeed, in some cases, a vertical merger may remove the most likely potential rival to an incumbent firm. Consider, for example, the case of Live Nation Entertainment Inc.���s merger with Ticketmaster in 2010. In that case, Live Nation���s concert promotion and venue business prepared Live Nation to enter into the ticketing platform business, but the merger with Ticketmaster undermined that nascent competition. Indeed, Live Nation had already begun that entry before the merger. This is why a vertically related firm in one market (say, wholesale distribution) might be the natural entity to sponsor entry against a dominant firm in a related market (say, retail sales), and that potential sponsorship could be undermined on account of the merger between the dominant firm and the vertically related one. That is particularly true in evolving or fast-growing sectors such as technology markets. Second, it is important to recognize how vertical mergers, once completed, can be used to undermine existing rivals or raise entry barriers that make future entry materially more difficult. Colorado, like other states, has addressed such dangers...

#noted #2020-02-28

If we do not remember our history, we are condemned to re...

If we do not remember our history, we are condemned to repeat it:Robynn Cox and Dania Francis: Improved public School Teaching of Racial Oppression Could Enable U.S. society to Grasp the Roots and Effects of Racial and Economic Inequality https://equitablegrowth.org/improved-public-school-teaching-of-racial-oppression-could-enable-u-s-society-to-grasp-the-roots-and-effects-of-racial-and-economic-inequality/: 'There is a lot more to black history than what our schools showcase during the shortest month of the year. Many Americans don���t ever truly discover the depths of the African American experience in ways that fully convey the harm inflicted upon those enslaved before the Civil War and the generations of blacks who continued to suffer from blatant and pervasive racial discrimination over the next 150-odd years. Public schools tend to gloss over the details of enslavement. And most teachers are not properly equipped to handle discussions of this sordid past in their classrooms or to teach their students about the violent resubjugation of blacks in the South after the Civil War via race riots, lynchings, mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, and segregation���actions that spread across the nation as African Americans embarked on the Great Migration out of the South beginning in the late 19th century and continuing well into the post-WWII era...

#noted #2020-02-28

This is an excellent not-podcast from Kate Bahn and Adia ...

This is an excellent not-podcast from Kate Bahn and Adia Harvey Wingfield. Why the Equitable Growth muck-a-mucks don't make this into an explicit podcast series is beyond me: Kate Bahn**: In Conversation with Adia Harvey Wingfield https://equitablegrowth.org/in-conversation-with-adia-harvey-wingfield/: 'Director of Labor Market Policy and economist Kate Bahn talks with sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield, Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Arts & Sciences and associate dean for faculty development at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research examines how and why racial and gender inequality persists in professional occupations. She is the author of several books, most recently Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy.... Bahn and Wingfield explore: Racial and gender inequality and U.S. labor market outcomes. Race, gender, and occupational status. Lack of diversity and representation in U.S. services industries. The consequences of lack of diversity for black professionals in the healthcare industry. Policies to improve racial and gender inequality in U.S. labor market outcomes. How sociologists can elevate their findings and solutions in economic policymaking. Lack of racial diversity in scholarly research. Diversity itself as a research topic...

#noted #2020-02-28

As of the end of February the stock market is forecasting...

As of the end of February the stock market is forecasting a very sharp, sudden recession in the probability of a recession from near zero a week ago to better-than-even today: that is the only way to make sense of the S&P 500 over the past week. Thus it is not too late to plan. It is, rather, time to act to offset the likely spending contraction we now see much closer than the horizon. Here are the plans we should have made: Alyssa Fisher: Planning for the Next Recession by Reforming U.S. Automatic Stabilizers https://equitablegrowth.org/planning-for-the-next-recession-by-reforming-u-s-macroeconomic-policy-automatic-stabilizers/: 'Equitable Growth has joined forces with The Hamilton Project to advance a set of specific, evidence-based policy ideas for shortening and easing the impacts of the next recession... _Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy.... Six concrete ideas... expand eligibility for Unemployment Insurance and encourage take-up of its regular benefits... reduce state budget shortfalls during recessions by... increasing the federal matching rate for Medicaid and the Children���s Health Insurance Program... eliminate work requirements for supplemental nutrition assistance during recessions... expand federal support for basic assistance during recessions... an automatic infrastructure investment program... boost consumer spending during recessions by creating a system of direct stimulus payments to individuals that would be automatically triggered when rising unemployment signaled a coming recession.... Congress should consider them now, because when the next recession appears on the horizon, it may be too late...

#noted #2020-02-28

A very nice broadside from the highly intelligent Dan Nex...

A very nice broadside from the highly intelligent Dan Nexon against one of the many "Popular Front of Judaea" movements that afflict our online left today: Dan Nexon: Grifters and Useful Idiots http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/02/grifters-and-useful-idiots: 'Sanders is unusual in that he���s, in multiple senses of the term, an "old leftist" who has nonetheless updated his views in light of the significant changes in world politics since the collapse of the Soviet Union.... While American dark money supports the reactionary right abroad, Russia has become a state sponsor of anti-progressive forces; mutual empowerment among authoritarian, often kleptocratic, regimes blurs ideological lines. It is easier than ever to oppose American-sponsored regime change without actively embracing the corrupt and autocratic government in Venezuela or the corrupt, autocratic, and mass-murdering government of Syria. The pursuit of global social justice neither demands nor benefits from the idea that ���the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and my enemy is American foreign policy���. Unfortunately, there are plenty of grifters and useful idiots selling that line in defense of corrupt, repressive, and mass-murdering regimes. Charles Davis has written a number of scathing assessments of these self-styled anti-imperialists. Now Joshua Collins has begun a three-part series on their major personalities.... As far as I���m concerned, this version of the ���anti-imperialist��� left is our alt-right, and they���ve grown in a parallel way: by bootstrapping onto the rest of the progressive left, taking positions that make them appear as credible allies, and then inserting their propaganda...

#noted #2020-02-28