Liveblogging World War I: March 24, 1927: John Maynard Keynes in 1927 Looking Back at Winston Churchill on "The Great War"

In Lieu of a Newsletter: A Baker's Dozen for March 23, 2015

  1. A long time ago, I read George Dangerfield's truly excellent Era of Good Feelings. Ever since then, claims that James Madison was a die-hard hard-money libertarian--that were he alive today he would have been strongly opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve, and to government management of the economy more generally--have bewildered me. James Madison enthusiastically promoted and signed the bill chartering the Second Bank of the United States, after all. His opposition to the First Bank was something he rethought and abandoned when he actually had to try to guide the destinies of the United States in the mercantile, commercial, and increasingly industrializing world of the nineteenth century. It is a fact that Madison's (and Jefferson's) view of federal power hinged on whether he thought (as he did in the early 1790s) that Hamilton and Adams would exercise it or that people like him would exercise it. And the other argument against a loose construction of the Constitution was John Taylor of Caroline's: "If Congress could incorporate a bank, it might emancipate a slave..."

  2. I stalled out on my overview of what "equitable growth" as a set of issue areas is. So as a down-payment on that, I produced a list of topics for the Equitable Growth Conference in a Box. Suggestions for readings to attach to the post are very welcome indeed...

  3. Weblogging in this Age of Social Media has been taking up a lot of my time. The only thing readable to emerge so, far, however, has been a Socratic Dialogue: The Future of Weblogging in the Medium Run...

  4. We have finally passed the milestone at which our cyclical unemployment problem ceases to be greater than our structural unemployment problem...

  5. David Frum triggered me to undertake a side-expedition into super-duper-grand-strategy, with: Thoughts on David Frum's Excellent Review of Adam Tooze's Superb "The Deluge" and "The Wages of Destruction"...

  6. And Mark Halperin grades Scott Walker thus: style A-, substance C+, overall A--thus demonstrating that he does not know the meaning of the concepts "overall" and "grade", or perhaps only that he presumes the audience of eyeballs he seeks to attract does not know or care about the meaning of those concepts. Then to add insult to injury he goes to see Scott Walker again. This time he thinks Walker is more impressive: the style grade stays the same, the substance grade rises from C+ to B... and the overall grade falls from A to A-. Ya think? Why journamalists like this, empty of substantive knowledge and emitting what can only be called "word salad", have jobs let alone high-paying jobs is completely beyond me...

  7. I signed up to write for Medium's Bull Market: https://medium.com/bull-market. Why: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/03/looking-for-the-shovel-why-stephen-moore-is-making-me-write-for-medium.html

  8. Sheryl Sandberg continues to get undeserved bullshit as someone who cares only about rich white women: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/03/evening-must-read-sheryl-sandberg-2011-barnard-college-commencementhttpequitablegrowthorgp9661-women-all.html

  9. The start of my three-week April Fools' Festival: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/03/sleeping-beauty-again-thirders-correct-double-halfers-confused-halfers-wrong-festival-of-fools-blogging.html

  10. An extraordinarily good quote from Richard Thaler: “An Infinite Regress. Of Dumb”: More Reflections on “Market Efficiency”

  11. Question of the Day: Should Quad Lattes Be a Thing?

  12. My Discussion of Matthew Rognlie's paper, "Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share", which is kinda-sorta about Thomas Piketty...

  13. One of my very favorite pieces: John Maynard Keynes's review of Winston Churchill's personal history of World War I: "The World Crisis" http://www.bradford-delong.com/2015/03/liveblogging-world-war-i-march-23-1927-john-maynard-keynes-in-1927-looking-back-at-winston-churchill-on-the-war.html

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