Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: I oscillate between thinking that this is a huge problem for America, and thinking that this is a good sign for America--that political prejudice is a product of the fact that racial prejudice is no longer assumed and presumed. But I do wonder if Sean Westwood and Shanto Iyengar understand the world in which they live, which does require that they spend at least some time watching Fox News:

Martin Longman: We’ve Grown Apart: "Shanto Iyengar... and... Sean Westwood...

Over at Equitable Growth: The answer to the last point Janet Yellen makes in her famous Footnote 14 is:

• If is indeed the case that targeting an inflation rate of 4%/year "stretch[es] the meaning of 'stable prices' in the Federal Reserve Act", then targeting an inflation rate of 2%/year does not stretch the meaning of but rather eliminates the "maximum employment" objective in the Federal Reserve Act. Congress has left the Federal Reserve freedom to deal as best as it can with an imperfect world in which all of the statutory objectives cannot be achieved perfectly. It is the Fed's choice how to balance. READ MOAR

Live from the Roasterie:

• Jeet Heer: On Twitter: "Shorter GOP: Just because killer believed in & repeated our lies about PP, doesn't mean we are responsible."
• Jeet Heer: On Twitter: "Incendiary lies about Planned Parenthood didn't have an obscure source. They were spread by GOP presidential candidates."

That was a refreshing chaser: watching Michael Duncan on the pseudo-intellectual pretensions of Niall Ferguson--does Ferguson believe that Gibbon would have seen any parallels between the massacre at Paris and the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410? No. Gibbon would have sent people not to chapter 31 but instead to chapter 64 of his history:

Edward Gibbon: History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Volume 6, chapter 64: "The conquest of Hindostan by the Moguls was reserved in a later period for the house of Timour...

Live from Evans Hall: Calendar: GEA December Student Seminar Series: "The following students will be presenting their work...

...in the Annual December Student Seminar Series, hosted by the Graduate Economics Association:

• December 7: 10:00 - 10:30 David Schoenholzer
• 10:30-11:00 Katja Mann
• 11:00-12:00 Michèle Müller-Itten
• 12:00-1:00 Wendy Jin
• 1:00-2:00 Tom Beckford

Michael Duncan: What the Paris Attacks and the Fall of Rome Have in Common: Nothing: "Ferguson begins... describing the sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths...

...then asks: ‘Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night?’ The answer is: No, it does not....

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Nick Bunker: Counterfactuals, quality, and the effects of prekindergarten
• Nick Bunker: Weekend Reading
• Ben Zipperer: What’s aging got to do with the U.S. labor market recovery?
• Nick Bunker: How much has the decline in the labor share affected income inequality?* Paul Krugman: The Not-So-Bad Economy: "I’m not sure why this [asymmetric risks] argument, which a number of economists are making, isn’t getting much traction at the Fed..." :: one chance in two that in June of 2018 the Federal Reserve will be wishing it had not raised interest rates in December 2015...
• Matthew Rognlie: What Lower Bound? Monetary Policy with Negative Interest Rates: ""The gains from negative rates depend inversely on the level and elasticity of currency demand..."
• Peter Beinart: Obama's Terrorism Speech: "Obama... believes that powerful, structural forces will lead liberal democracies to triumph..."
• AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity: Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring The American Dream | Matt Bruenig: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty | The Problem With Work-Focused Poverty Initiatives | Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty

Must-Read: Mark Thoma sends us to Paul Krugman on the Fed's forthcoming likely policy mistake with respect to this month's interest-rate liftoff. My take: there is one chance in two that in June of 2018 the Federal Reserve will be wishing it had not raised interest rates in December 2015--it is, of course, unable to effectively catch up in policy terms:

Paul Krugman: The Not-So-Bad Economy: "I believe that the Fed is making a mistake...

Must-Read: Peter Beinart: Obama's Terrorism Speech: "Obama... believes that powerful, structural forces will lead liberal democracies to triumph...

Woodrow Wilson: State of the Union Address:

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

Since I last had the privilege of addressing you on the state of the Union the war of nations on the other side of the sea, which had then only begun to disclose its portentous proportions, has extended its threatening and sinister scope until it has swept within its flame some portion of every quarter of the globe, not excepting our own hemisphere, has altered the whole face of international affairs, and now presents a prospect of reorganization and reconstruction such as statesmen and peoples have never been called upon to attempt before.

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day

NEW YORK, Wednesday—of course, the most interesting news yesterday was President Truman's request to Congress for the appointment of a fact-finding group to look into the difficulties as they arise between management and labor. He added the request that no strike be permitted for a period of thirty days while this group is at work. Most of the papers seem to hail some such legislation as being the solution for future labor troubles, but I am not quite sure, since it is not really very different from the type of thing which the War Labor Board has been trying to do.

Most-Recent Must-Reads:

• AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity: Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring The American Dream
• Matt Bruenig: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty | The Problem With Work-Focused Poverty Initiatives | Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty
• Paul Krugman: Anchors Away

Most-Recent Links:

• Ben Zipperer: What’s aging got to do with the U.S. labor market recovery?
• C.V. Wedgwood
• James Heckman: Early Childhood Education: Making Sense of All the Research

Must-Read: Matthew Rognlie: What Lower Bound? Monetary Policy with Negative Interest Rates: "Recently, several central banks have set interest rates as low as -0.75%... suggesting that, in practice...

Must-Read: Last summer it seemed to me a significant and serious failure of governance on the part of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC that they had approved the search committee's choice of its own chairman to replace Charles Plosser as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

It is, I think, almost universally agreed that Charles Plosser was a significant failure as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia: undistinguished as an administrator of the Bank, and a disaster as a member of the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee. From the transcripts of the FOMC we can see him in action: always wrong, never in doubt, intellectually uncurious, and completely unwilling either to even consider that those who disagreed with him had arguments on their side or to make even the smallest efforts to mark his own beliefs to market.

Now Duncan Black informs us that it does indeed look as though the appointment of Patrick Harker as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia was a considerable mistake.

Personnel is policy, people. One of the most elementary principles of successful bureaucracy tells us the frequency with which the chair of a search committee should be appointed to the job under consideration. It is easy to remember: it is never. Another of the most elementary principles of successful bureaucracy tells us the frequency with which the appointees to other positions of an unsuccessful previous incumbent should be appointed to the job under consideration. It is also easy to remember: never.

Duncan Black: Area Fed Chief Does Not Understand Monetary Policy: "Oh Jeebus...

...Accordingly, I would like to see rates raised sooner rather than later. With an early start, we can better ensure that monetary accommodation is removed gradually and that inflation returns to the Fed’s 2 percent target smoothly. My fear is that the Federal Reserve risks losing its credibility and only adds uncertainty to the economic landscape the longer the Committee waits to begin normalizing policy.

Raising rates is how we increase inflation now?

Live from the Roasterie: Robert Reich: "My friend, a former Republican member of Congress, phoned me this morning:

HE: We’re crumped.
ME: Crumped?
HE: Cruz and Trump. They’re in the lead. Worse yet, the crazies in the Party are now talking about putting them together on one ticket--a ‘super-conservative’ duo. My god. Trump is a bigoted moron. Cruz is almost as nuts.
ME: Can they be stopped?
HE: Been on the phone for days with folk who are going to run ads against each of them. But it maybe too late. Everyone I know is apoplectic. Lots of are talking about voting for Hillary. Even Bernie would have a chance against these bozos.
ME: You think they'd affect congressional races?
HE: Sure. Put an asshole at the head of the ticket and the shit falls everywhere.
ME: This isn’t bad news for the Democrats.
HE: It will be if one of these jerks becomes president. Then we’re all crumped.

The very sharp Mike Konczal marvels at the idiocy of George F. Will and the Washington Post that publishes him:

Must-Read: The "Report" of the AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity does not have a chair or a lead author--just fifteen names listed in alphabetical order: Lawrence Aber (Brookings), Sheldon Danziger (Russell Sage), Robert Doar (AEI), David T. Ellwood (Harvard), Judith M. Gueron (MDRC), Jonathan Haidt (New York University), Ron Haskins (Brookings), Harry J. Holzer (Georgetown), Kay Hymowitz (Manhattan Institute), Lawrence Mead (New York University), Ronald Mincy (Columbia), Richard V. Reeves (Brookings), Michael R. Strain (American Enterprise Institute), Jane Waldfogel (Columbia).

I have read through the report.

My first reaction is that Brookings (and Russell Sage, NYU, Georgetown, Columbia, and MRDC) would have done much, much better from an intellectual-technocratic point of view to partner for their working group not with AEI but with something like Demos or Roosevelt.

I really don't see what any of the AEI/Manhattan people brought to the table that was useful--i.e., both true and relevant to policy. But the Report would, I think have been much strengthened by stronger and more thoughtful engagement with things like:

• Matt Bruenig: Why Education Does Not Fix Poverty
• Matt Bruenig: The Problem With Work-Focused Poverty Initiatives
• Matt Bruenig: Promoting Marriage Has Failed and Is Unnecessary to Cut Poverty

The only justification I can think of for the form this has taken is that partnering with AEI is bringing substantial political benefits--i.e., explicit endorsement of the Report by current Republican office-holders with the power to move things through the House and the Senate, to be followed by commitments and action on their part to actually move policies based on the report through the Congress. And I see none of that here.

Thus I find myself, at first reading, relatively disappointed with:

AEI/Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity: Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring The American Dream

Live from Crow's Coffee: Corey Robin: "Loyola University, a [Jesuit] Catholic university in Chicago, is opposing a union drive among its contingent academic workers...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• A snapshot of the long-term impacts of universal prekindergarten
• Marshall Steinbaum and Kavya Vaghul: An introduction to the geography of student debt
• Nick Bunker: Weekend Reading
• Ben Zipperer: What’s aging got to do with the U.S. labor market recovery?
• Nick Bunker: How much has the decline in the labor share affected income inequality?
• Paul Krugman: Anchors Away: "Getting [Europe] back to 2[%/year inflation] should require a 4 percentage point fall in unemployment. That’s a lot!..." :: With well-anchored inflation expectations there is a substantial amount of slack somewhere in the policy-optimization problem...
• Robert Lynch and Kavya Vaghul: Benefits and Costs of Investing in Early Childhood Education: "A case for public investment in either a targeted or a universal prekindergarten program can be made..."
• Camilla Toulmin: Time [for Bjorn Lomborg] to Walk Away from Once Credible Theories Now Shown to Be Untrue: "it is now time for [Bjorn Lomborg] to walk away and admit that he was wrong, because reality has now demonstrably left him behind"
• Ben Thompson: Google and the Shift From Web to Apps, Indexing App-Only Content, Streaming Apps: "The core reality that drove Google’s dominance, the public availability of linked information... [is] at least weakening..." :: The walled gardens of the pre-1995 .net strike back. I am left curious: why are browsers good enough on the desktop and the laptop to wipe the floor with walled gardens, but not so on smart phones?

Must-Read: The answer, presumably, is the same as it was in the 1960s and 1970s: that "too big" a deviation from the anchored level of inflation for "too long" will de-anchor inflation, for weasel parameters "too big" and "too long".

It has always seemed to me that if inflation expectations are "well anchored", then monetary policy is obviously too tight. There are very powerful upsides from a higher-pressure economy. There are no downsides unless inflation expectations are barely-anchored--in which case a higher-pressure economy runs the risk of de-anchoring them, with associated costs. But with well-anchored inflation expectations there is a substantial amount of slack somewhere in the policy-optimization problem. And no professional economist should be happy or comfortable with such an outcome.

Paul Krugman: Anchors Away: "Since 2008... demand-side events have been very much what people using IS-LM would have predicted (and did)...

Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861): "If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withholding our recognition of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, I am unable to discern it..."

Abraham Lincoln: First Annual Message:

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

In the midst of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great gratitude to God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests.

You will not be surprised to learn that in the peculiar exigencies of the times our intercourse with foreign nations has been attended with profound solicitude, chiefly turning upon our own domestic affairs.

A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union. A nation which endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect abroad, and one party, if not both, is sure sooner or later to invoke foreign intervention.

I think the very sharp Richard J. Evans is wrong here. We do need, yet again, to be told the facts about the genocides of the twentieth century. And so Tim Snyder's Bloodlands is a useful book.

Richard J. Evans (2010): Review of ‘Bloodlands’ by Timothy Snyder: "‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’...

...Adolf Hitler asked his generals... to ‘close your hearts to pity,’ ‘act brutally’ and behave ‘with the greatest harshness’ in the coming war in the East. It’s often assumed that in reminding them of the genocide of at least a million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks... Hitler was referring to what he intended to do to Europe’s Jews. But he was not referring to the Jews: he was referring to the Poles. ‘I have sent my Death’s Head units to the East,’ he told the generals:

Wikipedia: Battle of White Marsh:

By early December, Howe decided, despite having written to Colonial Secretary Lord George Germain requesting to be relieved of his command, that he was in a position to make one last attempt to destroy Washington's army before the onset of winter, and he began preparations for an attack on the American forces.] Washington's intelligence network in Philadelphia, led by Maj. John Clark, became aware of British plans to surprise the Americans.

Live from Lake Como: Adam Ozimek**: The Lesson Of Trump Is You Should Argue With Your Own Team: "Breitbart news, Sarah Palin, and other Trump defenders are not a new phenomenon...

...Rush Limbaugh has long been a popular source of misinformation, foolishness, and insanity on the right. And let’s not forget Glenn Beck. But it does represent the continued growth of a know-nothing right-wing media and subculture. Until the rise of Trump though, it was too rare that smart conservatives would argue against this with the fervor, effort, and rhetorical seriousness that they reserve for Democrats.

Live from "I Frati": As Jonathan Chait points out, the Republican establishment today is not just pandering to kooky climate- and other -deniers, more than half of what passes for the Republican establishment today are kooky climate- and other -deniers:

Jonathan Chait: How GOP ‘Thought Police’ Enforce Science Denial: "Though it was surely not his intention...

...David Brooks... made an airtight case for why no sane person would support any Republican.... Brooks begins... by conceding that climate-science deniers have a hammerlock on public discourse within the party....

Must-Read: Robert Lynch and Kavya Vaghul: Benefits and Costs of Investing in Early Childhood Education: "A case for public investment in either a targeted or a universal prekindergarten program...

Must-Read: Camilla Toulmin: Time [for Bjorn Lomborg] to Walk Away from Once Credible Theories Now Shown to Be Untrue: "Sir, Bjorn Lomborg’s analysis of emission-cutting pledges made by rich and poor countries...

Must-Read: The walled gardens of the pre-1995 .net strike back. I am left curious: why are browsers good enough on the desktop and the laptop to wipe the floor with walled gardens, but not so on smart phones?

Ben Thompson: Google and the Shift From Web to Apps, Indexing App-Only Content, Streaming Apps: "The core reality that drove Google’s dominance...

History.com: Senate approves U.S. participation in United Nations:

In an overwhelming vote of 65 to 7, the U.S. Senate approves full U.S. participation in the United Nations. The United Nations had officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, when its charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and a majority of other signatories. Senate approval meant the U.S. could join most of the world’s nations in the international organization, which aimed to arbitrate differences between countries and stem military aggression.

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Nick Bunker: How Do You Solve a Problem like Profit Shifting?
• Stephen S. Roach: China’s Macro Disconnect: "Speedy implementation of the shift from production to consumption will be vital if the country is to remain on course and avoid the middle-income trap..." :: I really wish that I thought I understood China. Strike that: I really wish that I actually understood China.
• Gauti Eggertson and Michael Woodford (2003): The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy: "any failure of... credib[ility] will not be due to skepticism about whether the central bank is able to follow through on its commitment..." :: [Are] those who think (1) that Bernanke shot himself in the foot... correct[?]
• Izabella Kaminska: Welcome to Your Simulacrum Future--A $674bn Opportunity!
• Jan Mohlmann and Wim Suyker: Blanchard and Leigh’s Fiscal Multipliers Revisited: "[We] do not find convincing evidence for stronger-than-expected fiscal multipliers... during the sovereign debt crisis (2012-2013) or during the tepid recovery thereafter..." :: Seizing the high ground of the null hypothesis for oneself, and then running tests with no power, is undignified...

Hoisted from One Year Ago: On Paul Krugman and His "Notes on the Floating Crap Game": Paul Krugman appears to be suffering a crisis of confidence with respect to the value of the academic economics 'meritocracy' he surveys from his position at its peak:

Paul Krugman: Notes on the Floating Crap Game (Economics Inside Baseball): 'Reading Fourcade et al....

...may explain one of the things that has puzzled me in the disputes over macro policy--namely, the seemingly unquenchable certainty among some of the freshwater guys that Keynesians are stupid. Again and again... freshwater macroeconomists declare that New [and old] Keynesians... don’t get some basic point... accounting identities [among others: Fama, Cochrane]... Ricardian equivalence [among others: Lucas, Cochrane, Lin, Prescott, Zingales, Boldrin]... the Euler condition [this seems to be Cochrane alone] (plus)... the Fisher equation [among others: Kocherlakota (but years ago), Williamson, Cochrane, Schmidt-Grohe, Uribe, Cowen, Andolfatto].

Must-Read: I really wish that I thought I understood China. Strike that: I really wish that I actually understood China.

Stephen S. Roach: China’s Macro Disconnect: "China has been highly successful in its initial efforts to shift the industrial structure of its economy from manufacturing to services...

Must-Read: The reality-based piece of the macroeconomic world is right now divided between those who think (1) that Bernanke shot himself in the foot and robbed himself of all traction by refusing to embrace monetary régime change and a higher inflation target, and thus neutered his own quantitative-easing policy; and (2) that at least under current conditions markets need to be shown the money in the form of higher spending right now before they will give any credit to factors that make suggest they should raise their expectation of future inflation. What pieces of information could we seek out that would help us decide whether (1) or (2) is correct?

Gauti Eggertson and Michael Woodford (2003): The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy: "Our dynamic analysis also allows us to further clarify the several ways...

American Memory Timeline: Continental Congress Addresses to the Six Nations:

Brothers, Sachems, and Warriors of the Six Nations!

The great council of the United States call now for your attention. Open your ears, that you may hear, and your hearts, that you may understand.

Comment of the Day: Charles Steindel: At What Time Scale, If Any, Does the Long Run Come?: "Yes, your point is well-taken...

• Tamim Ansary: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes: 1586488139
• Mary Beard: SPQR: 0871404230
• Benjamin Graham: The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel: 0060555665
• George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller: Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception: 0691168319
• Robert B. Reich: Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few: 0385350570

Must-Read: Izabella Kaminska: Welcome to Your Simulacrum Future--A $674bn Opportunity!: "The path to most of us being reduced to a ‘meatbag in a pod’ existence...

Must-Read: Naughty, naughty!

Jan Mohlmann and Wim Suyker: Blanchard and Leigh’s Fiscal Multipliers Revisited: "[We] do not find convincing evidence for stronger-than-expected fiscal multipliers for EU countries...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• At What Time Scale, If Any, Does the Long Run Come?
• Hoisted from the Archives from Five Years Ago: Department of "HUH?!?!?!?!?!?!
• : China's Market Crash Means Chinese Supergrowth Could Have only 5 More Years to Run
• Bridget Ansel: For Kids’ Future, Money Does Matter
• Today's Economic History: Steve Roth: Did Money Evolve? You Might (Not) Be Surprised
• Greg Ip: The False Promise of a Rules-Based Fed: "The Fed will repeatedly change the rule... [or] stick to the rule longer than it should..." :: It does boggle my mind that John Taylor and Paul Ryan would take the 2004-today experience as suggesting that the Federal Reserve should be even loosely bound by any sort of policy "rule"
• Branko Milanovic, Peter H. Lindert, and Jeffrey G. Williamson: Pre-Industrial Inequality: "Compare... inequality to the maximum feasible inequality that... might have been ‘extracted’ by those in power...' :: And the 'winner' for all time--in terms of success at extracting as much wealth from the workers as possible given resources, population, and technology--is Mughal India in 1750!

Over at Equitable Growth: Every once in a while I think that our austerian intellectual adversaries could not have been as clueless in the aftermath of 2008 as I remember them being. But then I go back through my archives, and find things like this:

Department of "HUH?!?!?!?!?!?!": Does David Andolfatto really think that the speed with which unemployed workers found jobs sped up as the recession hit?

Apparently so: READ MOAR

Over at Equitable Growth: Paul Krugman: Is The Economy Self-Correcting?: "Brad DeLong... has this wrong...

...The proposition of a long-run tendency toward full employment isn’t a primitive axiom in IS-LM. It’s derived... under certain assumptions... [with] good reason to believe that even under ‘normal’ conditions it’s... very weak.... And under liquidity-trap conditions it’s not a process we expect to see operate at all.... READ MOAR

Live from "I Frati": The policy staff vs. the political staff:

Benjamin H. Newcomb: Washington’s Generals and the Decision to Quarter at Valley Forge:

THE CONTINENTAL ARMY’S ENCAMPMENT at Valley Forge in the winter and spring of 1777-78, enshrined in the popular mind as the epitome of suffering borne by dedicated Revolutionary soldiers and officers, has been thoroughly studied as a problem of supply, morale, discipline, and sacrifice. Surprisingly, explanations of how the army came to encamp there are not so thorough....

R.I. Moore: The First Great Divergence?: "The subordination of local [fief- and kin-based] hegemony to larger [ecclesiastical and royal] political and ideological structures...

...thus forms the central, and revolutionary, theme of western European history in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was just such a hegemony that Sima Guang and his followers defended successfully against the claims of imperial government in China.... The question, ultimately, was whether the dominance of and loyalty to the kin could or should be subordinated to a ›higher‹ or transcendent ideal or institution--Church, Empire or State. Sima Guang was perfectly clear that it should not....

Live from "I Frati" at Villa Serbolloni: No, Harold Pollack. They are not better than this. At least not any more. And not for a long time:

Harold Pollack: Coarsening the Culture: Republicans Need to Do Some Housecleaning: "The problem is not that Trump is a lying buffoon, either...

Now that 90 days have passed, from the Huffington Post from Last August: China's Market Crash Means Chinese Supergrowth Could Have Only 5 More Years to Run

Ever since I became an adult in 1980, I have been a stopped clock with respect to the Chinese economy. I have said--always--that Chinese supergrowth has at most ten more years to run, and more probably five or less. There will then, I have said, come a crash--in asset values and expectations if not in production and employment. After the crash, China will revert to the standard pattern of an emerging market economy without successful institutions that duplicate or somehow mimic those of the North Atlantic: its productivity rate will be little more than the 2%/year of emerging markets as a whole, catch-up and convergence to the North Atlantic growth-path norm will be slow if at all, and political risks that cause war, revolution, or merely economic stagnation rather than unexpected but very welcome booms will become the most likely sources of surprises.

Must-Read: It does boggle my mind that John Taylor and Paul Ryan would take the 2004-today experience as suggesting that the Federal Reserve should be even loosely bound by any sort of policy "rule":

Greg Ip: The False Promise of a Rules-Based Fed: "That suggests two possible outcomes...

Must-Read: And the 'winner' for all time--in terms of success at extracting as much wealth from the workers as possible given resources, population, and technology--is Mughal India in 1750!

Branko Milanovic, Peter H. Lindert, and Jeffrey G. Williamson: Pre-Industrial Inequality: "Is inequality largely the result of the Industrial Revolution?...

"Supposing, therefore, that you have duly prepared yourself for the worst by all these reflections; I proceed to tell you the melancholy news, that your book has been very unfortunate: for the public seem disposed to applaud it extremely..."

David Hume: To Adam Smith: Some Bad News About the Reception of Smith's First Book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments": Hoisted from the Archives from 1759 Wednesday Weblogging: "From pages 33-36 of Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross, eds., The Correspondence of Adam Smith 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987):