Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

...As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.

Hoisted from Ten Years Ago: I recommend the archives of National Review: a gift that keeps on giving: As part of National Review's celebration of Martin Luther King day, we present William F. Buckley, from the February 22, 1956 issue:

Must-Read: Olivier Blanchard: The Price of Oil, China, and Stock Market Herding: "The main effect of a slowdown in China would be, through lower commodity prices...

Must-Read: Gavyn Davies: China devaluation – a necessary evil?: "The 9 percent drop in global equity prices in the first two weeks of 2016...

Must-Read: McKay Coppins: The Gospel According to Trump: "Trump’s religious posturing is not about theology... [but] about branding...

The Onion: Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over': "WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton...

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Farewell Address:

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Live from the Bitterly-Cold Prairie: Why do people I am not following and have muted still show up in my TweetBot mentions? What can I do about this?

Scott Lemieux: Today In Recycled Nutty Gender Politics Theater, With Maureen Dowd: "Shorter Verbatim MoDo:

AFTER running as a man last time around, Hillary Clinton is now running as a woman. Matthew Dowd, the former W. strategist who became an independent, says Hillary got it backward: She should have run as a woman in 2008, when she was beating back a feminized antiwar candidate. And she should have run as a man this time, when Americans feel beleaguered and scared and yearn for something ‘big and masculine and strong,’ as Dowd put it.

Note: as a first approximation, every Maureen Dowd column between now and Election Day will make this argument, the fact that no self-respecting editor should have let it appear in a newspaper of any quality once notwithstanding.

Friends really should not let friends pay money to the New York Times...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Bridget Ansel: Like grandmother, like granddaughter: Education doesn’t change
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: Wealth taxes, the State of the Union, engineers, and more
• David Hudson: New: Our third "History of Technology" report, and a testimony on paid family leave
• Olivier Blanchard: Ten Take Aways from the “Rethinking Macro Policy: Progress or Confusion?
• Harry Brighouse: Get your students to know each other and make them write for each other
• Paul Krugman: Oil Goes Nonlinear

Latest Must-Reads:

• Olivier Blanchard: Ten Take Aways from the “Rethinking Macro Policy: Progress or Confusion?
• Harry Brighouse: Get your students to know each other and make them write for each other
• Paul Krugman: Oil Goes Nonlinear /?p=21884)

Latest Links:

• Paul Krugman: "The reason... the repeal-and-replace crowd cannot come up with an alternative [to the Affordable Care Act] is because there isn’t one."
• Norman Ornstein: "More than 6 yrs ago, Majority Leader Cantor said O'Care alternative was 'weeks away' Could mean 1,000 wks!"
• Michael Geist: The Trouble with the TPP, Day 1: U.S. Blocks Balancing Objectives
• Cory Doctorow: TPP vs Canada: a parade of horribles
• Tsuyoshi Kawase: The TPP as a set of international economic rules

Must-Read: I think the extremely-sharp Olivier Blanchard misses an important part of my argument here. If g the rate of growth of a government's taxing capacity > r its cost of funds via borrowing and if the government is risk-neutral then obviously the government should issue more debt: the economy is then dynamically inefficient with respect to the investments taxpayers have made in their "ownership" of the government and its assets. Any argument that such a government should not be frantically running up its debt must hinge on aversion to interest-rate risk caused by fear of the consequences in the event of an interest-rate spike. But in the case of a reserve currency-issuing sovereign, what are those consequences? The consequences are merely that one must then balance the government's budget constraint, via some combination of higher taxes, inflation, and financial repression. And there is no reason to think that, for reserve currency-issuing sovereigns, the costs of such a balancing are unduly large.

Other policies to get rid of the distortions that produce g > r for government debt may well be better than running up the debt. But in the absence of those other policies, running up the debt is certainly better than the status quo unless the government is near the edge of its financial repression and taxing capacities and the costs of inflation are very large. And for reserve currency-issuing sovereigns those are none of them the case.

Olivier Blanchard: Ten Take Aways from the “Rethinking Macro Policy: Progress or Confusion?: "On the latter, perhaps the most provocative conclusion of the conference...

Live from Crow's Coffee: span class="author">Joanna Rothkopf: Ted, Just Say 'Jewish': "During Thursday evening’s Republican debate...

Must-Read: Harry Brighouse: Get your students to know each other and make them write for each other: "A brief conversation with 2 students crystallized for me why two things I have been doing in my classes for a while work well...

I think the two best picks of the litter are:

ObamaCare as Dire Infringement of Individual Liberty and in a "Death Spiral", and LADYPARTS

What Have We Unlearned from Our Great Recession?

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day:

LONDON, Tuesday—There is something that gives one a great sense of security in the way in which the British Dominions freely express their points of view even when they are in opposition to the United Kingdom. They remind me of some of our own states when they disagree with some measure that the government in Washington is putting through.

Armenian-genocide.org: Chronology: A second circular telegram is issued by the Interior Ministry to prevent photographing of the dead.

Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Oil Goes Nonlinear: "When oil prices began their big plunge...

Live from the Roasterie: This is so good:

Xeni Jardin: Alan Rickman as Severus Snape: his 'Harry Potter' scenes, in chronological order: sends us to http://journeytofantasticplaces.tumblr.com:

Munk School Trans-Pacific Partnership Conference: Geopolitics Panel

Revised and Extended: I could now talk about the risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. You have already heard a lot about the risks in the previous session here. You have heard about dispute resolution and about intellectual property. You have heard about instituting largely-untested dispute resolution procedures in such a way that they will be very difficult indeed to amend or suspend or replace or adjust in the future.

We all know very well the eurozone’s ongoing experience. We remember that the euro single currency is in its origins a geopolitical project. We remember the origins of the eurozone at Maastricht—the decision of the great and good of Europe that something needed to be done to bind Europe more closely together in the wake of the absorption into the Bundesrepublik of the German East and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The creation of a single currency was clearly something.

George Orwell: Review Of "Mein Kampf" by Adolf Hitler (March 1940):

The Stuntman: Peter O'Toole as Eli Cross

Letter of Introduction: By the start of your first section meeting during the week starting January 25, please write a 250-word essay--a “letter of introduction”--to your GSI. Provide your preferred name (and set your preferred name in BearFacts: http://registrar.berkeley.edu/preferred-name.html), include your email, and attach a picture. In this letter, discuss:

• the reasons why you are choosing to spend 3% of your scarce college curriculum time taking this course this year,
• what you hope to learn from this course,
• what you hope to do in the future as a result of this course, and
• whatever else about yourself that you would like to share with your GSI.

Required:

• Robert Frank, Ben Bernanke, Kate Antonovics, and Ori Heffetz: Principles of Economics http://amzn.to/1Zpuoj5 (New York: McGraw-Hill: 9781259897580) be sure to order and buy ISBN 9781259897580 from the Berkeley bookstore
• Partha Dasgupta (2007): Economics: A Very Short Introduction http://amzn.to/1ZpuFCQ (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 9780192853455)
• Milton Friedman and Rose Director Friedman (1970): Free to Choose: A Personal Statement http://amzn.to/1NbvEPU (New York: Mariner Books: 9780156334600)
• Tom Slee (2006): No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart: The Surprising Deceptions of Individual Choice http://amzn.to/234zCph (New York: Between the Lines: 9781897071069)
• i>Clicker+ Student Remote http://amzn.to/1ZpvkEe (New York: W.H. Freeman: 9781464120152)

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Heather Boushey: Paid leave is good for our families and our economy
• Bridget Ansel: Like grandmother, like granddaughter: Education doesn’t change
• Barry Eichengreen: Reforming or Deforming the Fed?
• Paul Krugman: Strangely Self-Confident Permahawks
• Janet Currie: The Great Recession and the Health of Mothers
• Łukasz Rachel and Thomas D. Smith: Towards a Global Narrative on Long-Term Real Interest Rates
• Narayana Kocherlakota: Information in Inflation Breakevens about Fed Credibility

Must-Read: Barry Eichengreen: Reforming or Deforming the Fed?: "Proposals for a ‘Taylor rule’ are... merely a formula purporting to explain...

Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Strangely Self-Confident Permahawks: "An odd thing about permahawks...

Must-Read: Janet Currie: The Great Recession and the Health of Mothers: "Studies of the effects of economic fluctuations on health have come to wildly different conclusions...

Nick Rowe: Interest Rate Pegs with a Finite Horizon Omega Point: "This is what I used to think about what would happen if the central bank tried to peg the nominal interest rate forever (and I'm pretty sure most macroeconomists thought the same):

Must-Read: Łukasz Rachel and Thomas D. Smith: Towards a Global Narrative on Long-Term Real Interest Rates: "Many candidate explanations for the low level of real interest rates have been put forward...

Must-Read: Narayana Kocherlakota: Information in Inflation Breakevens about Fed Credibility: "The ten-year breakeven refers to the difference in yields between a standard (nominal) 10-year Treasury and an inflation-protected 10-year Treasury (called TIPS)...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Heather Boushey: [Paid leave is good for our families and our economy](http://equitablegrowth.org/paid-lea
• Adelheid Voskuhl: Engineering, industrialism, and socioeconomic orders in the Second Industrial Revolution
• Bridget Ansel: Like grandmother, like granddaughter: Education doesn’t change
• Dani Rodrik: The Evolution of Work
• Tim Worstall: The Average American Today Is 90 Times Richer Than The Average Historical Human Being
• Joe Stiglitz: Why the Great Malaise of the World Economy Continues in 2016
• Izabella Kaminska: Bob Gordon’s Not Getting in Your Driverless Car

Must-Read: Dani Rodrik: The Evolution of Work: "Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, new technologies in cotton textiles, iron and steel, and transportation delivered steadily rising levels of labor productivity for the first time in history....

Must-Read: Tim Worstall: The Average American Today Is 90 Times Richer Than The Average Historical Human Being: "I have regularly tried to get over the idea that there is just no such thing as real poverty in the United States today...

Must-Read: Dan Wang: Why Should Dole Own Container Ships?: "Meet Dole, the World’s Full-Stack Banana Company...

Today's Economic History: Wikipedia: Takahashi Korekiyo: "Viscount Takahashi Korekiyo (高橋 是清?, 27 July 1854 – 26 February 1936)...

...was a Japanese politician who served as a member of the House of Peers, as the 20th Prime Minister of Japan from 13 November 1921 to 12 June 1922, and as the head of the Bank of Japan and Ministry of Finance.

Live from Over Grand Junction: Greg Sargent is flummoxed as he watches Paul Ryan complain that Barack Obama degrades the presidency by standing up for Truth, Justice, and the American Way:

Greg Sargent: Paul Ryan Attacks Barack Obama for Agreeing with Paul Ryan: "Don’t you go agreeing with me, Mr. President. That’s not helpful at all!...

Harry S Truman: State of the Union Message, January 14, 1946:

We have won a great war- we, the nations of plain people who hate war. In the test of that war we found a strength of unity that brought us through - a strength that crushed the power of those who sought by force to deny our faith in the dignity of man.

Must-Read: Joe Stiglitz: Why the Great Malaise of the World Economy Continues in 2016: "In early 2010, I warned... that... the world risked sliding into what I called a 'Great Malaise'...

Live from Iowa City: Benjy Sarlin: When 2016 Reporters Swapped Beats: "It felt weird to follow Hillary Clinton after spending more than a year...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Heather Boushey: The State of the Union: a Rorschach Test* Barry Eichengreen: Reforming or Deforming the Fed?
• Paul Krugman: Bully for Neurotoxins
• Chris Dillow: Innovation and Well-Being

Must-Read: Barry Eichengreen: Reforming or Deforming the Fed?: "We have proposals by Republican candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee...

Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Bully for Neurotoxins: "The Wall Street Journal has a remarkable editorial titled "The Carnage in Coal Country"...

History.com: Battle of Wadi:

In an attempt to relieve their compatriots under heavy siege by Turkish forces at Kut-al Amara in Mesopotamia, British forces under the command of Lieutenant General Fenton Aylmer launch an attack against Turkish defensive positions on the banks of the Wadi River.

82nd Airborne Victory Parade:

Partha Dasgupta (2007): Economics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 0192853457).

Becky's world

Becky, who is 10 years old, lives with her parents and an older brother Sam in a suburban town in America's Midwest. Becky's father works in a firm specializing in property law. Depending on the firm's profits, his annual income varies somewhat, but is rarely below 145,000 US dollars ($145,000). Becky's parents met at college. For a few years her mother worked in publishing, but when Sam was born she decided to concentrate on raising a family. Now that both Becky and Sam attend school, she does voluntary work in local education. The family live in a two-storey house. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms upstairs and a toilet downstairs, a large drawing-cum-dining room, a modern kitchen, and a family room in the basement. There is a plot of land at the rear - the backyard - which the family use for leisure activities.

Must-Read: Chris Dillow: Innovation and Well-Being: "Diane Coyle and Emily Skarbeck point out that...

Must-Read: Izabella Kaminska: Bob Gordon’s Not Getting in Your Driverless Car: "Reading Coyle’s review it’s clear Gordon uses the book to expand in more detail...

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Nick Bunker: How minimum-wage increases affect the flow of firms
• Trying to think about the Trans-Pacific Partnership* Simon Wren-Lewis: Confidence as a Political Device
• Adam Ozimek: Can Economics Change Your Mind?
• Wolfgang Münchau: Free Capital Flows Can Put Economies in a Bind
• Adair Turner: Facing Up to Climate Reality
• Dani Rodrik: From Welfare State to Innovation State
• Robert Greenstein: Jeb Bush, Please Talk to Bob Dole About Food Stamps