Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

From One Year Ago:

• Ahem!: I Believe the London Economist Needs to Step Up Its Game...

From Two Years Ago:

• An Ongoing Pick-Up Internet Symposium on the 1%...
• Pre-Class Memo to Berkeley Econ 210a Students About January 22, 2014 Class: Pedagogy; Administrivia; Utility of Economic History; Bones, Heights, and Deaths; Malthus and Malthusianism; Pre-Industrial Technological Progress

From Five Years Ago:

• Econ 210a: Memo Question for January 26, 2011
• Assessing Structural Unemployment
• Back to Disagreeing with Scott Sumner...

From Ten Years Ago:

• Clay Chandler and What Is Wrong with the Culture of the Washington Post (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)
• Are Business Cycles Fluctuations Around Trend or Not?
• Good for Senator Leahy
• Deborah Howell Tells Us the Washington Post Should Fire Herself
• Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Fools? (Your President Speaks! Edition)
• A Good Story on Abramoff from Bloomberg
• Ex-Navy Secretary James Webb Is an Honorable Gentleman

Ahem!: I Believe the London Economist Needs to Step Up Its Game...: In its review of my next-door office neighbor, friend, and patron Barry Eichengreen's superb Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History, the London Economist writes things like:

Mr Eichengreen at times stretches the facts to fit his narrative. He accuses the Fed of keeping monetary policy too tight because of a preoccupation with inflation; but it enacted several rounds of unconventional stimulus...

This simply will not do.

Barry has substantial discussions of when, how, and why he thinks that the Federal Reserve kept monetary policy too tight because of a preoccupation with inflation.

You can disagree with the analytical framework he uses to make his assessment that monetary policy was 'too tight'--smart people like Jeremy Stein do.

But you cannot say that Barry's documented and well-supported analytical judgment 'stretches' the facts, without any further elaboratio--unless, of course, you want to get a reputation for being in the fact-stretching business yourself.

The London Economist is right now in a race to establish itself as a trusted information intermediary with entities like the Financial Times, Business Insider, and http://vox.com. Right now it appears to me at least to be well behind the leaders. Things like this really do not help it at all...