Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

I Tend to Describe this as "Unwarranted Optimism"

The Shrill One (tm – Brad DeLong) as Optimist: The result, then, will be high unemployment leading into the 2010 elections, and corresponding Democratic losses. These losses will be worse because Obama, by pursuing a uniformly pro-banker policy without even a gesture to popular anger over the bailouts, has ceded populist energy to the right […]

Simple Answers to Simple Questions, Floyd Norris/GS Edition

Floyd Norris is Shocked! Shocked! to Find Goldman Sachs controls Congress as well as the Treasury. Where has he been for the past three years? Imagine the reaction if, perhaps during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, a group of Republican legislators had threatened to block legislation unless a contributor to their campaigns received special treatment. […]

Seasonal Posting: NYTFail, Part 2

First, David Leonhardt argued that this recession was good for workers. Now, Floyd Norris apparently has decided to mix and match data. (I wonder if the fact many NYT employees who are looking at their 45-day severance offers is having an effect on its economic coverage.) One of the standard “economist jokes” is about the […]

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

I try to like the NYTimes Economics Reporting. I really do. Heck, any place that publishes Uwe Reinhardt can’t be all bad. But David Leonhardt, as he does often enough that I hesitate to read his work, again goes beyond the pale today, and clearly does so deliberately. The offending paragraph: Twenty-two months after the […]

D-Squared Provokes a Call to Action

The close: [W]hen the New York Times came and offered [Ross Douhat] a column, he did not turn it down saying “no, I clearly do not deserve this honour, others are far more qualified for it that me”. The NYT thinks Douhat’s important because people link to him. They neither realize—nor care—that you’re laughing at […]

Maybe There IS a Reason Ross Douthat Exists

I have generally decided that the NYT’s attempt at becoming the WSJ on its editorial page is not worth the trouble of discussing. An editorial staph that replaces the despicable but somewhat coherent Bill Kristol with the execrable incoherence of Ross Douthat is clearly suffering a fatal infection, and therefore not deserving of support. But […]

Current Recession vs the 1980-82 Recession

By Spencer. We are getting an interesting debate between different economic bloggers today and I thought I would put in my two cents worth. Casey Mulligan at economix began it with an argument that the current recession is not as severe as the 1981-82 recession because that recession was really two recessions and if you […]

I Remember When Mankiw was still a Neo-Keynesian

Cassander, writing at Steve Keen’s Debtwatch,* puts the hammer to those arguing that the death of the patient had nothing to do with the doctor: What a load of bollocks. The “principles of economics” that [N. Gregory] Mankiw champions, and the “More economic research (and teaching)” that [Doug] McTaggart et al are calling for, are […]

Reads of the Day for the start of 2009

All (somewhat***) via Mark Thoma: Thomas Frank in the WSJ tells me why I always disagree with Robert (and the Other Economists) on the role of rating agencies: And who makes sure that Moody’s and its competitors downgrade what deserves to be downgraded? In 1999 the obvious answer would have been: the market, with its […]