Robert Waldmann Matthew Yglesias has a new argument for encouraging exports of manufactures. I am not at all convinced. He seems to be asserting that employment in wholesaling and transportation follows production not sales and so is increased by manufacturing for export. I really doubt that. Yglesias wrote (click to see his graph). I saw […]
Robert Waldmann This will be a long post as it is not easy to explain how Italian politics got this way to foreigners. First I will discuss recent developments. Later I will discuss the characters in the commedia and history. Until this week, Silvio Berlusconi was, on paper, a very powerful Prime minister with a […]
This column is excellent. I can’t decide what to quote, so I suggest you just go read the whole thing.
Robert Waldmann David Stockman (yes Reagan’s OMB director David Stockman) denounces the Republican Party for its irresponsible love of tax cuts for the rich. This is wonderful. With such a large target, he manages many hits. He also manages to demonstrate that he is still intellectually dishonest, as is shown after the jump. Stockman argues […]
Robert Waldmann I thought the only thing she knew was that she is a libertarian. Now I realize she doesn’t even know what the word “libertarian” means. She wrote Will the new head of the CFPA crack down on mortgages that offer prepayment options? [skip] Of course not. There is no constituency for such a […]
Robert Waldmann Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman consider the increase in the number of job vacancies to be bad news — to be a sign that long term unemployment has made it hard to increase employment even if there are vacant jobs. The high vacancies are held to be a sign of a problem which […]
Robert Waldmann Oh good, Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias disagree. This is bound to be interesting. Drum remembers the good old days when liberals had less respect for the standard results of simple neoclassical economic models. The specific issue is that firms are using credit scores to decide who to hire. This can trap some […]
Robert Waldmann For decades, I have been advising Democrats to focus attention on the progressivity of the tax system. This is an issue where the vast majority of US adults totally disagree with the Republicans and which people care about. My policy proposal and political strategy is to increase progressivity increasing taxes on the rich […]
Robert Waldmann Atrios vs Bernanke. OK so I agreed with Atrios about Greenspan (just below). Now I disagree with him about Bernanke. He equates loans with gifts. He equates worse than optimal with worse than nothing (dealing with free market fanatics can cause one to overlook the difference). Bernanke could have sent money from the […]
CNBC reports Greenspan … added that the financial crisis could not have been foreseen. “It is just not feasible to forecast a financial crisis,” he said. “A financial crisis by definition is a sharp abrupt, unexpected decline in asset prices.” Notice that he says if it is unexpected, then it *can’t* be forecast. That is […]