by cactus Megan McArdle responds to a post I wrote: So Obama doesn’t count because he’s not really a Democrat. But Bill Clinton was. But Richard Nixon–the chap who implemented price controls and massively expanded Social Security and Medicare–was definitely a Republican. Jimmy Carter, who deregulated like mad: definitely a Democrat. What are these policies […]
Curv3ball at The Poor Man warms the cockles of this Northeast Philadelphia native’s heart. Go Read the Whole Thing. Gary Becker must be rolling over in his grave.
Andrew Samwick states the obvious, clearly and well: I think we are now 18 months behind where we should be in moving forward with sensible government spending plans. We should have pulled the fiscal policy ripcord in January 2008 with a public investment plan designed to repair our aging infrastructure. I’d rather have the 18 […]
Credit crunch, followed by asset deflation. See also Robert’s series of essays in December/January.
Gary Farber lays out the details of who the real “silent majority” were in the Nixon Administration’s approach to Viet Nam, using Nixon’s own words. Such as this, from 20 January 1973—two years and three months before the ultimate U.S. withdrawal: Nixon realized that the Communists were going to win in Vietnam. “I look at […]
From the coolest possibly-corporate-espionage story of the week: If only the FBI were to tackle cases of national security and loss of life with the same speed and precision as they confront presumed high-frequency program trading industrial espionage cases… especially those that allegedly involve Goldman Sachs. The original is from Reuters.
Given that Kajagoogoo is reforming this year, that is the only possible conclusion from this so far best reaction to the news out of Alaska.
After my previous posts on Georgia, it seems only fair to note the bank closings in Illinois today. There have been 13 bank closings posted (as of right now, about 6:50pm) in the state of Illinois since last March. That alone is significant—but, even more interesting, six of them occurred today. This exceeds the previous […]
John Quiggin makes the broad case (link fixed). If you are then stuck with trying to present a Grand Unified Field Theory, you will inevitably lose (or, at best, reduce) the importance of all the agglomerations that follow from the presumption that the Rational Actor is the mean performer—ignoring that no one, including the economists […]
should read Sensible Centrist J. Bradford DeLong on the difference in forecasting between the current Administration and the CEA under N. Gregory Mankiw. Romer/Bernstein/Kreuger et al., 2008-9 edition: As I understand matters, last December the median private-sector forecast had the unemployment rate topping out at 9% in the second half of 2009. The incoming Obama […]