Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Comments of the Day: Tim Duy: What Is the Federal Reserve Thinking?: Tim Duy rounds up the most interesting tweets he finds...

The Federal Reserve is right now at the zero lower bound. That means that if it wants to lower interest rates and so stimulate the economy, it can't. But if it wants to raise the interest rates and so cool-off the economy, it can.

Suppose the Federal Reserve were to raise interest rates over the next year--and decide a year and a half from now that it had made a mistake. It then could end the additional damage from inappropriate monetary policy by returning interest rates to zero. But it could not repair the damage by pushing interest rates down any further in order to offset the needless contraction it would have forced on the economy.

Live from (Outside of) New York ComicCon: We Have (Close to the Equivalent of) Replicators: So Why Do We (Still) Have Non Personal-Service Jobs?

We grow things--but fewer and fewer of us do. We make things--but fewer and fewer of us do. We provide personal services--non-information and information. What else do we do?

It strikes me that a huge proportion of jobs these days are really "your mom isn't here!" jobs.

What proportion of jobs wouldn't it be necessary if people would only behave--if people would reliably and properly drop the money they owe into the jar, would clean up if they spilled something, leave the place in the clean state it was when they arrived, would not break machines by trying to operate them when they do not understand them, and so on?

Must- and Should-Reads:

• Matthew Yglesias: "Conor Friedersdorf... from some alternate universe in which the House Republican caucus hasn't just thrown itself into a tailspin over a few dozen nutters' insistence that the entire fabric of the American economy must collapse unless Barack Obama agrees to implement the entire Republican Party platform.... The idea that Democrats should play a game of 'heads the GOP wins, tails the Democrats lose' may make for a fun holier than thou hot take, but it's also ridiculous..."
• Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (2012): Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem
• Jeffrey Frankel: Why Support the TPP?
• Jason Furman: Next Steps for Health Care Reform
• Martin Wolf: Alphachatterbox
• Kevin O'Rourke: Economic Impossibilities for Our Grandchildren?

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• In Which I Call for a More Optimistic Martin Wolf... - Equitable Growth

Plus:

Somehow his colleagues have not managed to convince Ted Cruz that the negotiating strategy of "we will blow up the country unless you change the laws in ways we like" is a losing strategy in a country in which it is considered a bad thing to give in to blackmail...

The curious thing is that there are Senators Cruz and Lee--and fifty Republicans in the House--who think that their constituents care so little about the well-being of the country that they applaud threats of “we will damage the country unless you change the laws in ways we like”…

Ted Cruz: The Real Story of What Is Happening in Washington: "Mr. President, there is a reason the American people are fed up with Washington...

...There is a reason the American people are frustrated. The frustration is not simply mild or passing or ephemeral. It is volcanic. Over and over again, the American people go to the ballot box, over and over again, the American people rise up and say the direction we're going doesn't make sense. We want change. Over and over again, the American people win elections. In 2010, a tidal wave election. In 2014, a tidal wave election. And yet, nothing changes in Washington. 

Live from the royal palms of the Plaza des Armes in Lima, Peru: Once again thoroughly depressed by Martin Wolf, I turn my mind to...

Paul Krugman: Warp Drive Economics:

What happens to economics in a world where replicators make your tea? Panel at Comic Con, tomorrow at 1:15.

Are we really supposed to believe that no better tea preparation has been developed by the day of ST:TNG than: "Tea, Earl Grey, hot"?

Even now, when given the choice, I find myself ordering: "Tea, Stash Earl Grey Double-Bergamot, hot, double strength"...

Live from New York ComicCon: io9: Come See io9 Editors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders at New York Comic Con!: "Tomorrow at 1:15 PM, io9 Founding Editor (and Gizmodo Editor in Chief)...

...Annalee Newitz is on a panel called ‘The Amazing Economics of Star Trek.’ Also featuring Paul Krugman, Felix Salmon[, Manu Saadia,] and Brad DeLong. This is in Room 1A24.

Live from Lima, Peru: Martin Wolf, can I get you to say something optimistic?

The last four times I have been in the same room with Martin Wolf, he has left me profoundly depressed. He has just done it again--by reminding me how many of the lessons of the 1930s have been lost, and how much the Federal Reserve needs to assume the role of global Kindlebergian hegemon that it is currently refusing. So I had a question to ask that I hoped would elicit an optimistic answer...

Must- and Should-Reads:

• Robert Reich: Why Capitalism Needs Saving
• Bryann DaSilva: 10 Things You Should Know About Disability Insurance | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Heather Stewart: Next financial crash is coming--and before we've fixed flaws from last one
• Ben Casselman: It’s Getting Harder To Move Beyond a Minimum-Wage Job
• Daniel Kahneman (2012): Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Dani Rodrik: The Mirage of Structural Reform
• Bruce Bartlett: The Fed: Being Goaded into Raising too Soon?

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Very Sorry That I Missed: Charles C. Mann and Annalee Newitz: From the Neolithic Era to the Apocalypse: How to Prepare for the Future by Studying the Past
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading
• I Really Really Do Not Understand the Mental Universe of Today's Federal Reserve
• Health Policy: The Intellectual Collapse of the Right Continues...
• Dysfunctional Debate Over Medicaid Expansion in Kansas City

Plus:

Must-Read: I see three things going on in Federal Reserve desire to raise interest rates once there is even half an excuse to do so:

1. A desire to placate members of the FOMC who believe that what is good for commercial bankers must be good for America, and who see higher interest rates now as good for commercial bankers.
2. A belief that the normalization of the unemployment rate ought to carry with it a normalization of interest rates.
3. Excessive trust in models with shaky empirical foundations that predict rising inflation in 2017 and beyond. As I have said, for too many members of the FOMC rising inflation is as tangible and visible and real as the peanuts handed out in small 70-calorie packages by Southwest Airlines pursers.

My suggestion: the Federal Reserve should invite Lars E.O. Svennson to come to every FOMC meeting and speak first. And the Federal Reserve should listen to him:

Bruce Bartlett: The Fed: Being Goaded into Raising too Soon?: "All year... markets have been expecting the... Federal Reserve to begin... normalising interest rates...

In my inbox right now, from... one of the people who saw the U.S. government's reaction to the financial crisis from the inside and would have been a much better reviewer for Bernanke's book than the underpowered Michael Kinsley:

I'm steaming about that wretched review in the Times of Ben's book by, of all people, Michael Kinsley--he's reading it as some sort of coded DC getting back at folks scribble. Just completely incredible. Couldn't they get, for instance, Alan Blinder? Maybe Alan is doing it for the NY Review of Books. Just to go to the edge, Greg Mankiw would have had at least shown some competence in discussing the economic and financial issues...

Very Sorry That I Missed: Charles C. Mann and Annalee Newitz: From the Neolithic Era to the Apocalypse: How to Prepare for the Future by Studying the Past: "Thursday, October 8, 2015 5:00 - 7:00 pm 3-270...

Must-Read: David Autor: The Limits Of The Digital Revolution: Why Our Washing Machines Won't Go To The Moon: "Much of what can be readily automated as repetitive information and tasks has been done...

Live from Crow's Coffee: Oliver Willis: GOP Quietly Admits The Truth About Their Attacks On Planned Parenthood: "Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who was otherwise busy this week attempting to become Speaker of the House, admitted it on Thursday:

Paul Kedrosky: On Twitter

Why the hell would NYT have the economically clueless Michael Kinsley review Ben Bernanke’s new book? Ho-ho, wait, that’s irony, right?

— Paul Kedrosky (@pkedrosky) October 9, 2015

I suppose my big problem is I keep getting hung up on the following optimal control principle: If you know in which direction your next turn of the wheel is going to be, then either you are steering around an immediate obstacle, or you are headed in the wrong direction. And if you are headed in the wrong direction, you should already have turned your wheel so that you are headed in the right direction.

Live from Crow's Coffee: A correspondent emails:

You apparently didn't arrive at the Kansas City Medicaid expansion event last night in time to hear:

(1) Cato's Michael F. Cannon denounce ObamaCare for not eliminating employer-sponsored insurance, and thus getting people the kind of insurance that vanishes when they get sick and lose their job.

(2) Cato's Michael F. Cannon denouncing Medicaid expansion for giving insurance to people even when they are not employed, and so eliminating the necessity to find and keep a job if you want health insurance.

You see what he did there? You are right about Think Tanks staffed by those more desperate to please ideologically-rigid billionaires than to actually think about the issues.

Why There Is Something Very Wrong with the Washington Post... (with tweets) · delong · Storify:

Live from the Roasterie: I tell ya. My Richardson ancestors came down the Ohio River to here to build this civilization in the 1850s. They were believers in science, progress, knowledge, not conning people, giving fair value for weight. I really do not think they would be pleased at recent developments around here:

John Holbo: Conservatism!: "RUSH LIMBAUGH...

Live from the Roasterie: Surely there is someone among the 60 less-wingnut Republicans who would like to be Speaker, is willing to become Speaker with Pelosi's votes, and could persuade at least half of his less-wingnut friends to vote for him?

Stan Collender: McCarthy Withdrawal Shows House GOP Is Completely Failing Gov't 101: "Not counting Democrats, there are now three political parties...

Live from the Roasterie: as I already wrote this morning, at the state level Medicaid expansion is a total no-brainer: your citizens are already paying the taxes to pay for other states Medicaid expansion, and so the choice is either (i) pay the taxes and get none of the benefits, or (ii) pay the taxes and get your share of the benefits. Option (i) makes sense only if you can somehow convince people that Medicaid spending is evil. Since the claim that Medicaid is useless was never and is not credible, that leaves doubling-down on race and class hatred--of ghetto-dwellers, of the working poor, and of doctors and hospitals that treat Medicaid patients as part of their practice and would like to be paid something for it.

And, of course, in reality it is not big-city hospitals that treat Black people that are going to be the first to close without Medicaid expansion, it's rural hospitals that treat white people:

Jon Cohn: This GOP Governor [Sam Brownback]'s Comments About the Poor Are Incredibly Revealing: "The hospital industry has been begging lawmakers to take the federal dollars...

Over at Equitable Growth: I actually made it to the second half of the Medicaid expansion in Kansas/Missouri panel last night:

Brad DeLong: Must-See: UMKC Medicaid Panel, and Think-Tanks: "Must-See: Alas! I seem to be missing the Kathleen Sibelius panel...

...on Medicaid expansion this evening at UMKC American Public Square: Dinner at the Square A Dose of Reality: A Medicaid Status Report...

Reactions: READ MOAR

Must-Read: Looking back at my archives, I find that my own ratio of "Paul Krugman is right" to "Paul Krugman is wrong" posts is not in the rational range between 10-1 and 5-1, but is 15-1. So I am looking for an opportunity to rebalance. And I find one this morning: Here I think Paul Krugman is wrong. Why? Because of this:

READ MOAR

Must-Read: If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna. If you want to balance the foreign exchange account, give people incentives to boost exports and cut back imports. Any economy that might suddenly need to balance its foreign exchange account needs to have a flexible currency--or partners who are willing to take steps to do the job themselves. Greece lacks both.

Dani Rodrik: The Mirage of Structural Reform: "If structural reforms have not paid off in Greece...

Must-Read: Ben Casselman: It’s Getting Harder To Move Beyond a Minimum-Wage Job: "Minimum-wage jobs are meant to be the first rung on a career ladder...

Over at Equitable Growth: Kristi Culpepper: @munilass: "Best explanation of difference between people who believe Fed...

...should raise rates vs people who think Fed should hold tight.... People who think Fed should raise rates think Fed is only making things worse by encouraging misallocation of capital. People who think Fed should hold tight are obsessed with inflation measures, pressures from global economy. So Fed is caught between narratives of two groups that are essentially always going to be talking past each other.

That was the keen-eyed observer Kristi Culpepper tweeting a few days ago. It struck me as incisive and insightful both about those who do and about those who do not want the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. READ MOAR

Must-Read: Daniel Kahneman (2012): Thinking, Fast and Slow: "As interpreted by the important Chicago school of economics...

Must- and Should-Reads:

• Cathy O'Neil: The Fight for 15
• Mark Thoma: Economic Growth vs. Social Insurance—Why Can’t We Have Both?
• Paul Krugman: TPP Take Two
• Kenneth E. Thorpe, Lindsay Allen, and Peter Joski: Out-Of-Pocket Prescription Costs Under a Typical Silver Plan Are Twice as High as in the Average Employer Plan
• Ryan Avent: Ben Bernanke's big blunder: The Fed should have abandoned inflation targeting
• Peter Praet: Presentation at BVI Asset Management
• David Autor: The Limits Of The Digital Revolution: Why Our Washing Machines Won't Go To The Moon
• Weijia Li: Party-State Relationships in One-Party Regimes

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Nick Bunker: How delayed foreclosures can actually lead to higher wages
• Nick Bunker: What does and does not boost economic growth?

Plus:

Must-Read: Weijia Li: Party-State Relationships in One-Party Regimes: "Although China and Soviet Union are both Communist regimes...

Brad DeLong: Unleash Chiang Kai-Shek: I'm sorry, but this is just too weird:

Gainesville.com | The Gainesville Sun | Gainesville, Fla.: After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about 'unleashing Chang,' his 'mystical warrior' friend. Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:

John Burgoyne (1780): The State of the Expedition from Canada: October 8, 1777:

Live from Above the Sierra Nevada: Snow! The One Who Is be praised, snow!

Today's Economic History: Don Morgan and James Narron: Crisis Chronicles: The Panic of 1825 and the Most Fantastic Financial Swindle of All Time: "The banking panic of 1825 has been called the first modern financial crisis, the first Latin American crisis, and the first emerging market crisis...

...The panic displayed many of the key elements... we have covered--fluctuations in money growth, an investment bubble, a stock market crash, and bank runs--[but] this crisis had its own twists, including a Bank of England that hesitated before stepping in....

Live from Above the Sierra Nevada: The case for Neil as the smartest Bush son gets stronger every day:

You shall not crucify Jeb on a cross of economic competence https://t.co/FhXzCdbWWP

— Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) October 7, 2015

Translation: I know the overlap of lunatic gold fringe & GOP primary voters is huge. https://t.co/zUIP4byMpZ

— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) October 7, 2015

@WaPoSean this is sanity struggling with expediency: there are no votes to be gained by denying the barbarous relic

— Typhoon Jim (@typhoonjim) October 7, 2015

Must-Read: Harold Pollack: If you want mental health services to prevent violence, Medicaid expansion is critical: "Oregon’s mass homicide sparked the usual debate about whether guns or mental health is the best focus in preventing atrocities...

Live from South of Market: Ben Thompson: Twitter's Moment: "It’s essential, though, that Twitter not forget about those living mostly happily with the company’s core product...

Must-Read: I find myself thinking about six things:

1. The failure of the Bernanke Fed to focus on the unwinding housing bubble and learn about the outstanding sources of systemic risk in 2006 and 2007.
2. The decision by the Bernanke Fed in September 2008 that it was time to demonstrate that it did not guarantee the debt of money-center shadow banks, step aside, and allow the uncontrolled bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers.
3. In fact, the earlier decision by the Bernanke Fed to stand by rather than to handle the situation when, in the summer of 2008, Lehman Brothers crossed the line from solvent to insolvent and thus the Federal Reserve arguably lost the legal power to handle a Lehman-centered crisis.
4. The failure of the Bernanke Fed to commit to a policy of catching-up to 2%/year inflation should prices fall below its inflation target.
5. The failure of the Bernanke Fed to choose a more appropriate, higher inflation target than 2%/year.
6. The failure of the Bernanke Fed to admit that the 2%/year inflation target had proved to be a mistake, and shift to a more sensible nominal GDP target.

These are six major failures of technocratic rationality in monetary policy. Is there anything to offset them, other than "we stopped another Great Depression from happening"?

Ryan Avent: Ben Bernanke's big blunder: The Fed should have abandoned inflation targeting: "Two weeks ago, The Economist repeated its endorsement of a change in the Fed's monetary policy target...

...from an inflation rate to a growth rate for nominal GDP (NGDP): or total spending and income in an economy in dollar terms. In November of 2011, during Mr Bernanke's chairmanship of the Fed, the monetary-policy committee considered a change to an NGDP target, but opted to stay with the old, inflation-focused framework. Mr Bernanke writes:

For nominal GDP targeting to work, it had to be credible. That is, people would have to be convinced that the Fed, after spending most of the 1980s and 1990s trying to quash inflation, had suddenly decided it was willing to tolerate higher inflation, possibly for many years. And so in January of 2012 the Fed reiterated its inflation-targeting stance and officially designated a 2% rate of inflation, as measured by the price index for personal consumption expenditures, as the target.

We all know what happened next. Since then, the Fed has spectacularly undershot its inflation target.... Markets suspect rates might not rise to 0.5% until well into 2016, and most Fed members think rates will never get any higher than 3.5%. Treasury prices suggest that inflation will be closer to 1% than 2% over the next five years. There is good reason to believe that Mr Bernanke's Fed made a big mistake, in other words. An NGDP target would have worked out better... helped the Fed choose policy more appropriately at a tricky time in the recovery. In 2011 high oil prices drove headline inflation above 2%... the central bank sensibly shrugged aside calls to raise rates in response to rising prices. Yet it also took no additional action to boost the economy. The recovery subsequently lost pace, inflation fell, and by the end of 2012 the Fed was forced to restart QE. Had the Fed instead focused its attention on NGDP, it would have been forced to react to an economy that was well below an appropriate level of output and which was growing too slowly.... Instead it took the costly choice to dither.

Just as importantly, a switch to an NGDP target would have sent a strong signal about Fed priorities.... Mr Bernanke notes that the Fed spent the 1980s and 1990s trying to quash inflation. It did not arrive at that policy strategy passively.... Paul Volcker... [did not say] that the Fed couldn't possibly rein in double-digit inflation because it lacked credibility as an inflation-fighter after a decade of neglecting the problem. Instead, he used the tools available to him to demonstrate the Fed's credibility. Mr Bernanke's Fed could have, and should have, taken similarly bold action....

Instead, it made itself a prisoner of its own complacency. As a result, inflation and interest rates will spend most of the 2010s at dangerously low levels, leaving the American economy disconcertingly vulnerable to new economic shocks. The book, by the way, is titled The Courage to Act.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/10/ben-bernankes-big-blunder

John Burgoyne (1780): The State of the Expedition from Canada: October 7, 1777:

Marc Morris: The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England:

Our sources leave no room for doubt that the Normans were also engaged in deliberate and indiscriminate destruction. In the Carmen, Harold is informed that William ‘has invaded the land, wastes it and sets it on fire’. The Tapestry famously shows two Norman soldiers torching a house from which a woman and a child are seen trying to flee. Indiscriminate it may have been, but this was devastation with a purpose. William, for the first time in his career, was engaged in a battle-seeking strategy.

James Byrnes: First Meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, London:

The first session of the Council of Foreign Ministers closed in a stalemate. But that need not, and should not, deprive us of a second and better chance to get on with the peace.

In the past I have been criticized and commended for being a compromiser. I confess that I do believe that peace and political progress in international affairs as in domestic affairs depend upon intelligent compromise. The United States Delegation acted in that spirit at Berlin. We acted in that spirit at London. And we shall continue to act in that spirit at future conferences.

That spirit is essential in international conferences where action can be taken only by unanimous agreement. When any one member can prevent agreement, compromise is. a necessity. Men and women who have served on a jury can appreciate that.

Wikipedia: Battle of Germantown:

Howe then split his army, keeping the bulk of it near Germantown while occupying Philadelphia with over 3,000 troops. Learning of the division of the British army, Washington was determined to attack it. The American plan called for four columns to converge on the British position at Germantown. The right and left flank columns were composed of 3,000 militia, while John Sullivan's center-right column, Nathanael Greene's center-left column, and William Alexander, Lord Stirling's reserve were made up of American continentals (regulars). Howe spread out his light infantry and the 40th Foot as pickets. In the main camp, Wilhelm von Knyphausen led the British left wing while Howe personally commanded the right wing.

ELVIS ARON PRESLEY:

On October 3, 1945, 10 year old Elvis sang ‘Old Shep’ – his first public performance – for a singing contest at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show. He came in fifth place, winning $5 and a free ticket to the fair rides.

‘I wore glasses, no music, and I won – I think it was – fifth place. I got a whipping the same day. My mother whipped me for something. Destroyed my ego completely.'

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day:

NEW YORK, Sunday—October 1 through October 8 has been chosen as the Sixth Annual National Newspaper Week. During the war years, we have been particularly conscious of the contribution made by war correspondents to the knowledge and understanding of the war by the people of the United States. Without the risks which they ran, we would have known little of what our men were accomplishing. They shared in the landings on foreign shores, they jumped with the airborne troops, they covered the seven seas, and many of them paid the same price that our servicemen paid and lie buried in foreign soil.

Must-See: Alas! I seem to be missing the Kathleen Sibelius panel on Medicaid expansion this evening at UMKC:

American Public Square: Dinner at the Square A Dose of Reality: A Medicaid Status Report

But I do have a question that I would like to ask panelist Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute. I would greatly appreciate it if somebody else would ask the question--and get an answer:

Mr. Cannon: You said that:

• RomneyCare had begun a process of adverse-selection meltdown in Massachusetts that was "well underway",
• people would not sign up for ObamaCare in large numbers,
• people who signed up for ObamaCare would not pay their premiums,
• ObamaCare would in fact reduce private insurance coverage by making it riskless for healthy people to drop insurance,
• a federal exchange was a profoundly different legal object than a state exchange, even though ObamaCare commanded Secretary Sibelius to establish "such exchange" when a state that did not establish one,
• states that did not expand Medicare Medicaid would have healthier state budgets than those who did, and
• I could go on for quite a while...

I have counted more than a dozen predictions you have made ever since, back in 2005, Mitt Romney set us on our current health-policy path. All of yours have gone wrong. None of yours have gone right.

How has the fact that you have been so wrong about so much over the past decade changed your thinking about how health insurance markets work, and about health policy?

What has this episode taught you about your milieu--about think-tanks controlled by billionaires with strong ideological commitments, and surrounded by flatterers who assure them they are right about everything? And what has this episode taught you about yourself and your peers who draw their paychecks from such think-tanks?

Must-Read: It seems to me that there are two questions: 1. Should the the aggregate of the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit add up to a living wage? Answer: yes. 2. what is the right mix and balance between raising the minimum wage (which will, if it is raised high enough, diminish the total number of jobs) and increasing the earned income tax credit (which will, once we are away from the zero lower bound in interest rates, require raising taxes somewhere in the system)? The minimum wage should not be considered in isolation.

Of course, minimum-wage advocates are fearful of the following: We say raise the minimum wage, they say increase the earned income tax credit instead. We say increase the earned income tax credit, they say it is more important to reduce the deficit. We say fund the earned income tax credit by raising taxes, they say lower taxes promote entrepreneurship. we say cut defense spending, they say ISIS and Iran. The shift of attention to the earned income tax credit is then seen as--which it often is--part of the game of political Three Card Monte to avoid doing anything while not admitting you are opposed to doing anything.

That is all very true.

So raise the minimum wage, and then bargain back to a lower minimum wage and a higher income tax credit if it turns out that there are significant disemployment affects.

Cathy O'Neil: The Fight for 15: "Whenever I hear an argument about the possibility of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour...

Must-Read: Kenneth E. Thorpe, Lindsay Allen, and Peter Joski: Out-Of-Pocket Prescription Costs Under a Typical Silver Plan Are Twice as High as in the Average Employer Plan: "The most popular Marketplace plan—the silver plan—has significantly higher cost sharing...

Must-Read: Paul Krugman: TPP Take Two: "What I know so far: pharma is mad because the extension of property rights in biologics is... shorter than it wanted...

Live from La Farine: People in Silicon Valley have extraordinarily little respect for Carly Fiorina--the judgment is that she is very good at selling herself to people who haven't been inoculated, but very bad at doing anything else. There are many, many stories like this:

Steven Levy: How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina: "Soon after HP began selling iPods...

...Apple came out with new, improved iPods — leaving HP to sell an obsolete device. Fiorina apparently did not secure the right to sell the most current iPods in a timely fashion, and was able to deliver newer models only months after the Apple versions were widely available. So it was no wonder that even at the program’s peak, it represented no more than about five percent of total iPod sales...

Must- and Should-Reads:

• Tim Wu: What Ever Happened to Google Books?
• Matthew Yglesias: "The valid point that people raise about new construction
• Nicholas Bagley, Amitabh Chandra, and Austin Frakt: Correcting Signals for Innovation in Health Care
• Marshall Steinbaum: How much would increasing top income tax rates reduce inequality?
• Costas Cavounidis and Kevin Lang: Discrimination and Worker Evaluation
• James Tobin (1963): Commercial Banks as Creators of "Money"
• Steven Pearlstein: The smartest economist you’ve never heard of
• Paul Krugman: The Investment Accelerator and the Woes of the World
• Paul Krugman: Puzzled By Peter Gourevitch
• Paul Krugman: Enemies of the Sun
• Kriston Capps: "Why Boulder is taking pre-emptive measures against density, zoning changes, and affordable housing. Bad ones..."

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog

• Nick Bunker: A tale of three U.S. employment-to-population ratios
• Nick Bunker: Untangling the sources of racial wealth inequality in the United States
• Macro Situation: Things Are Profoundly Different Today from What 10 Years Ago We Thought Would Be

Plus: