Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

JS: "Like the Mac, the iPhone debuted with a huge technical lead over its competitors. But this time, Apple is determined not to squander its advantage... it's front-running as hard as it possibly can. Anything that has any chance of slowing down "the progress of the platform" has simply got to go... controlling its own destiny... no middleware vendors, no encouragement of cross-platform development... complete, arbitrary control over every application's presence.... It's Apple's contention that other mobile platforms that allow these things... do so at the cost of slowing the speed with which they advance upon their competitors. In Apple's case, it's trying to put as much distance between itself and the guys it sees in its rear-view mirror... the only way to keep developers around while you do things that annoy them... is to provide so much upside—customers, sales and marketing support, new revenue models—that they're willing to choke down the bad stuff."

Baumol on Say on the liquidity trap: "Say himself did not always agree. In the Letters to Mr. Malthus, Say (1820 [1821], p. 36n) calls attention to the failure of demand during '. . . what happened to us in 1813 . . . . when interest of money fell so low, for want of good opportunities of employing it and by what is happening to us at this moment in which the capitals sleep at the bottom of the coffers of the capitalists.'"

JBS: "Without having recourse to local or temporary restrictions on the use of new methods or machinery, which are invasions of the property of the inventors or fabricators, a benevolent administration can make provision for the employment of supplanted or inactive labour in the construction of works of public utility at the public expense, as of canals, roads, churches, or the like..."

WB: "A panic, in a word, is a species of neuralgia, and according to the rules of science you must not starve it. The holders of the cash reserve must be ready not only to keep it for their own liabilities, but to advance it most freely for the liabilities of others. They must lend to merchants, to minor bankers, to 'this man and that man,' whenever the security is good. In wild periods of alarm, one failure makes many, and the best way to prevent the derivative failures is to arrest the primary failure which causes them. The way in which the panic of 1825 was stopped by advancing money has been described in so broad and graphic a way that the passage has become classical"

AA&BG: "We provide new estimates of the federal budget outlook.... Under either the extended policy or the Obama policy scenarios, deficits are high and rising over the second half of the decade.... In 2020, the deficit is projected to be between 5 and 7 percent of GDP and the debt/GDP ratio is projected to exceed 90 percent. These figures only deteriorate with the passage of time. The long-term fiscal gap – the size of the immediate and permanent change in spending or taxes needed to keep the long-term debt/GDP ratio at its current level – is in the range of 6-9 percent of GDP. Further health care reform can be an important part of reducing the fiscal gap, but the problem is far too large to be solved by plausible reductions in health care spending alone. Postponing the onset of a fiscal package will make the problem even harder: even just a 5-year delay in implementation would raise the required fiscal adjustment by about 0.4 percent of GDP, or almost $60 billion per year."

Engadget: "So, plenty of Dell goodies to choose from right now, but if you're a die hard Dell-making-mobiles follower, you've probably been pining for the Streak (previously known as the Mini 5) for much longer than is strictly healthy. What news for you? Well, the mini tablet is apparently supposed to be getting Android 2.1 in September. Unfortunately, there's no update on that vague "summer" launch window we have for the actual device, so who knows how much time you'll actually get to suffer without 2.1 holding you and telling you everything's alright. Oh, and were you concerned for some reason that you wouldn't be able to kit this thing out with accessories galore? We're pretty sure the collection you'll find in the gallery will alleviate all fears. You could do worse than a $55 spare battery, and the standard accessories are even pretty legit."

JY: "I’m honored that President Obama has asked me to serve in that capacity. If confirmed by the Senate, I am looking forward to working even more closely with Chairman Bernanke and the other governors, and continuing to collaborate with my colleagues throughout the Federal Reserve System to conduct policies that foster economic prosperity and ensure a stable financial system. I am strongly committed to pursuing the dual goals that Congress has assigned us: maximum employment and price stability and, if confirmed, I will work to ensure that policy promotes job creation and keeps inflation in check."

MP: "Mario Rizzo missed the point yesterday when he wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that the government is trying to regulate how much salt we eat. Obviously, that's not what it's doing with this new FDA initiative. What it is trying to do is regulate the amount of salt companies put in a serving of food. People are as free to buy salt and add it to meals as they ever were.... The idea that that's somehow bad for our ability to operate freely in the world is ridiculous."

EA: ""We know that bureaucrats and, even more, Fedzilla, are not the solution; they are the problem. I'd be proud to share a moose-barbecue campfire with the Palin family anytime, so long as I can shoot the moose." That's Ted Nugent on Sarah Palin... [in] Time.... [H]as any other allegedly reputable magazine ever published a stupider article... Nugent also provides a stirring character reference for the quitter of the Alaska governorship: "The tsunami of support proves that Sarah, 46, represents what many Americans know to be common and sensible.... We...e assets to our families, communities and our beloved country connect with the principles that Sarah Palin embodies."... man who terms Hillary Clinton "a worthless bitch," believes "Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail," and... once attempt[ed] to become the legal guardian of a minor in order to have a romantic relationship with her... has been ordered... to pay child support to... his illegitimate son whom he has never met..."

AM&AS: "US Congressional committees are now grilling bankers on the complex instruments that provided subprime mortgages with a veil of security. This column presents new evidence that subprime mortgages had more serious consequences – they were a key factor in the US housing-price boom. When house prices faltered, subprime mortgage holders defaulted en masse, eventually leading to the global crisis."

CS: "Apple are trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem... to maturity in five years flat... the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed... suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget.... Signs of the Macpocalypse abound. This year, for the first time, the Apple Design Awards at WWDC’10 are only open to iPhone and iPad.... Mac apps need not apply... don't contribute to Apple’s new walled garden.... Any threat to the growth of the app store software platform is going to be resisted.... "It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps.” And he really does not want cross-platform apps..... The long term goal is... from being a hardware company with a software arm into being a cloud computing company with a hardware subsidiary."