Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

"TOPEKA, Kansas - At 12:41 a.m., Topeka Police Department officers responded to the KWIK Shop at 4500 S. Topeka Blvd reference an armed robbery. An individual making a delivery to the business called 911 and reported the robbery. A description of the suspect and a vehicle involved was provided to the 911 operator. The vehicle involved in the robbery was described as white stretch Hummer Limousine last seen east bound on SE 45th Street. An officer traveling west bound on SE 45th prior to the robbery being dispatched past the vehicle at SE 45th and Adams. The vehicle was located in the area of SE 37th and California where the suspect was taken into custody without incident. The suspect was a white male who displayed a knife at the time of the robbery. The suspect took cash and items from the store and the clerk."

"Waterproofing, processor speed, touch-sensitivity, anti-glare screens, and dolphin-friendly software are essential..."

MT: "I don't get the claim that since the administration's economists are not pushing for a large, new stimulus package, it means they don't think it would work.... I don't even agree with the basic premise that they have been silent.... The mere fact that the administration... has decided that using political capital to push forcefully for more stimulus is tossing valuable political capital down a sinkhole does not imply that the administration's economic advisors see no large benefit from further stimulus.... I don't understand how making a political calculation that there is no chance Congress will sign on to a package providing significantly more help implies that "they're genuinely afraid ... that it would bring only marginal improvements," and I certainly don't see why it implies that it would come at "the cost of significant problems down the road.""

PK: "I don’t want to be too cranky here, but if you’re going to cite me in the title of an article, and accuse me of not having an answer to what someone else wrote, shouldn’t you do a search to see whether I have, in fact, said anything about it?"

TC: "France and China have one important feature in common: it's high status to be a ruler.... It's not enough to attract talented people... the Chinese government is (somewhat) dedicated to improving the nation. At least at a ten percent rate of growth, this political equilibrium works. And the state-controlled enterprises have to compete in a commercial environment.... The United States is far from having the right pieces to make public ownership work on a widespread basis.... I... prefer to live in a society where the public sector does not have so much prestige. Very often governmental prestige stifles innovation and implies a series of more general insider, elitist, and sometimes authoritarian attitudes.... We should recognize that the public ownership model has worked for China, but I don't want to see it widely copied"

JM: "House Republicans are re-rolling out their Health Care Reform repeal bill which not only reopens the "donut hole", un-insures 29 million people and adds almost $75 billion to the federal deficit"

L: "Sad, sad, sad. I understand that one deformation professionelle in the professariat is treating the Idea as a driver, but Krugman's column is just ridiculous.... In a different, better world, a liberal lion like Krugman would have used his bully pulpit on Izvestia to call out accounting control fraud -- which, by definition, happens at the elite, CEO level -- and call for the prosecution of those who brought down the financial system. I can't help but feel that if the country had seen a few CEOs in orange jumpsuits doing the perp walk, we'd be suffering less pain today, since the elite would have understood that they cannot act with impunity. Today... we see... acts of commission and omission by many... the elite are all too clear in their own minds that they have created the banana Republic they have long dreamed of; to them, their ability to act with impunity must seem complete. The strong do what they will; the weak suffer as they must. Or, possibly, not."

RA: "HEALTH care reform in Massachusetts was a template of sorts for the national reform bill recently enacted by Congress. Included in that reform was an individual mandate. New economic research from Jonathan Kolstad and Amanda Kowalski investigates the effect of the mandate in the context of reform on costs and treatment.... Obviously, there's more to America's health care crisis than coverage and more to reform than the mandate. But expanded coverage and reduced preventable hospitalisations with no increase in costs is pretty darn good."

JM: "People often forget that the blockade of Gaza is not maintained only by Israel but by Egypt too along the southern border. And I had seen that they were opening the border in response to the Flotilla incident. But TPM Reader KL just pointed out to me that an official told Reuters that the border was being opened for an "unlimited time." Now, a lot can get lost in translation. And talk, especially talk not on the record and in the face of hostile domestic public opinion, is cheap. But a commonsense interpretation of that would be that the opening of the Gaza/Egypt border is permanent. Or at least of indefinite duration. If that's the case, that's a very big deal."

DB: "Uh, TNR? You know what else Bobby Jindal did? He supported f---ing offshore drilling, that's what."

PK: "it’s hard to make monetary policy effective in a liquidity trap. There are some writers who suggest that all we need is more determination on the part of Bernanke et al; while I dearly wish the Fed would try harder, it’s not all that easy, because just pushing out money doesn’t do anything. You either have to buy lots of long-term assets — we’re talking multiple trillions here — or credibly commit not just the current FOMC, but future FOMCs, to pursuing higher inflation targets. Part of the argument for fiscal policy as a response to this crisis is precisely that it doesn’t pose the same kind of commitment problems — a point that Gauti Eggertssson has made at length, e.g. here (pdf). On the contrary, a surge in government purchases of goods and services is more, not less, effective if the public believes that it’s only temporary. Anyway, studying Japan remains very useful for understanding where all of us are these days."

PK: "Everyone’s looking back to the 1930s for policy guidance — and that’s a good thing. But we don’t have to go back that far to see how fiscal policy works in a liquidity trap; Japan was there only a little while ago. And Adam Posen’s book, especially Chapter 2, Fiscal Policy Works When It Is Tried, is must reading right now."