Noted for December 1, 2012
Worth Noting:
- With a 2012:IV GDP growth rate now forecast at 1%/year, alarm bells ought to be ringing everywhere: more economic stimulus to boost demand is necessary--via monetary policy, via financial policy (especially housing finance), and via fiscal policy. The fuss over the "fiscal cliff" is crowding this out.
- Paul Ryan thinks the "urban vote" doesn't vote based on the issues.
- C.W. Anderson, Emily Bell and Clay Shirky: Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present
- Alberto Alesina continues to evade all the important issues: since 2008 the rebuttal to what he says has been: "yes, usually, but things are very different in a liquidity trap". He has never dealt with this argument. Because he has never dealt with this argument, he has had a baleful influence on public policy. And he continues to fail to deal with the "in a liquidity trap, things are different" argument. I am genuinely at my wit's end.
- David Dayen: White House Makes Aggressive Opening Bid in Fiscal Slope Negotiations
- David Beckworth continues his mission to the unwashed who do not understand what "debt monetization" is. The refusal to think in IS-LM terms continues to exact an extremely heavy price from the minds of the Austerians.
- Michael Grunwald: Fiscal Cliff Fictions: Let’s All Agree to Pretend the GOP Isn’t Full of It
- Lawyers, Guns, and Money vs. the Washington Post and Richard Cohen: We are all SPARTACUS!
- Jonathan Chait: George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush Become Non-People to the Republicans
Worth Looking at:
- Matt O'Brien: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-stunning-cost-of-bad-economic-ideas-in-the-1930s-and-today/265696/
- Paul Krugman: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/destructive-responsibility/: "Britain… practiced destructive orthodoxy in the 20s [but] floated the pound in 1931, while France clung to its restored gold standard and suffered accordingly…. [A]ppropriate macroeconomic policy depends on the situation. Rules designed to prevent irresponsible inflation and/or deficits may help when inflation is your problem; when you are instead a depressed economy in a liquidity trap, they become a lead-weighted straitjacket."