Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Thhis sort of thing is positively dangerous. It’s one thing to make up fairy tales to amuse the children, but the danger the United States keeps stumbling into is a tendency among our elite to start believing the fairy tales. So before the invasion of Iraq we had people like Thomas Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg assuring us that not only was invading a great idea but that invading would have a beneficial impact on Muslims’ assessment of the United States. Now we have Friedman stumbling around, baffled, as to why Muslims don’t see our policy as primarily driven by an effort to help them out. This kind of self-deception leads to very, very bad judgment.

Willem Buiter is joining Citigroup as its chief economist. It’s an important role — so important, in fact, that Buiter should be able to demand that he be allowed to continue to write his rather fabulous blog, either in its current location at the FT or else somewhere on citigroup.com. A widely-read and widely-respected blog is a useful tool for any economist to have, and Citi should be encouraging Buiter to keep his.