Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

I have long thought somebody should go through and annotate the 2012 Mitt Romney: Full Transcript of the 47% Secret Video. So I will now do it.:

Part I: Warmup: Family Man, and America on the Wrong Track:

Romney starts with his warmup: he seeks to identify himself to this very friendly and enthusiastic audience of big donors as a trustable family fan, and then to segue from that into concern for the long-run future of America--and into concern for the track America is on, which he sees as one of decline.

He doesn't want to make any enemies here.

Mitt Romney (2012): Secret 47% Video:

Romney: ...And I guess everybody here is a dignitary, and I appreciate your help. And by the way, I am serious about the food. Bring that... clear the place, but Hilary has to eat her beets... [Audience laughs.]

Must-Read: I used to tell people that the United States did not have a long-run exploding deficit problem or an exploding debt problem or a sustainability-of-the-social-insurance system problem. I used to tell people that the United States had a dysfunctional health care finance regulatory system problem.

And, lo and behold, we pass ObamaCare and make health care finance regulation somewhat less dysfunctional:

Has the CRFB noticed this? Do they highlight this in any of their reports?

Paul Krugman: Debt, Diversion, Distraction: "There was a time... when deficit scolds were actively dangerous...

This is remarkable: Since the inauguration of Brownback, One out of every 17 nonfarm jobs that we would have expected to see in Kansas are simply not there. Call it 100,000 missing Kansas jobs now:

Must-Read: Simon Wren-Lewis: Neoliberalism and Austerity: "Austerity could [not] have happened on the scale that it did without this dominance of this neoliberal ethos...

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

• Barry Ritholtz: This Needs Saying. Helping Retirement Savers Isn't Like Slavery: I happened to overhear a broker from one of the country’s largest firms try to explain to his client why the U.S. Department of Labor’s new fiduciary rule was so terrible...
• Antonio Fatas: The Stock Market Looks Cheap: "I constructed the difference between RF - E/P...
• Vitor Gaspar, Maurice Obstfeld, Ratna Sahay, et al.: Macroeconomic Management When Policy Space Is Constrained: A Comprehensive, Consistent, and Coordinated Approach to Economic Policy: "Global output remains below potential, unemployment above its natural rate, and inflation below target...
• Philip T. Hoffman: Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World?: "By the eighteenth century, Europeans dominated the military technology of gunpowder weapons...
• Dietz Vollrath: Dumb Luck in Historical Development: "Philip Hoffman’s Why Did Europe Conquer the World?...
• Dani Rodrik: A War of Ideas, Not of Interests: "Mike Konczal has an interesting piece...
• Noah Smith: Do Economists Have Physics Envy?: "Philip Mirowski... is not too happy with my post. In a recent interview, he explains why... *Cardiff Garcia: Bengt Holmstrom: Money Markets and Opacity: "Stock markets are about price discovery for the purpose of allocating risk efficiently...
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Supply and demand aggregated together” edition - Equitable Growth

Daily Telegraph: "The return of the Duke of Connaught from his five-year stint as Governor-General of Canada...

George Marshall: To Mrs. Joseph W. Stilwell: "October 20, 1946 Nanking, China

Dear Mrs. Stilwell:

George Washington: To James Clinton: "To BRIGADIER GENERAL JAMES CLINTON. Head Quarters, Fredericksburg, October 18, 1778. Sir:

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day: "NEW YORK, Wednesday—I am glad to report that some one has taken the trouble to write me about those idle ships tied up in the Hudson River—which I mentioned in a recent column...

History.com: British soldier Henry Farr executed for cowardice: "At dawn on October 16, 1916, Private Henry Farr of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) is executed...

Eleanor Roosevelt: My Day: "NEW YORK, Monday—Some time this week, I am going to speak at a meeting concerned with recreation in the city of New York...

Josh Barro: Why I left Republican Party to register as a Democrat: "The most important thing we have learned this year...

...is that when the Republican Party was hijacked by a dangerous fascist who threatens to destroy the institutions that make America great and free, most Republicans up and down the organizational chart stood behind him and insisted he ought to be president.

Must-Read: Cardiff Garcia: Bengt Holmstrom: Money Markets and Opacity: "Stock markets are about price discovery for the purpose of allocating risk efficiently...

Must-Read: Dani Rodrik: A War of Ideas, Not of Interests: "Mike Konczal has an interesting piece...

Must-Read: I am starting to think Phil Mirowski has lost what he needs to play the game:

Noah Smith: Do Economists Have Physics Envy?: "Philip Mirowski... is not too happy with my post. In a recent interview, he explains why...

Nate Silver: Hillary Clinton’s 3 Debates Left Trump in Ruins: "Writing after the third debate--a debate in which Trump said he would keep the nation "in suspense" about whether there would be a peaceful transition of power...

The job of being an executive consists of five parts... (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)

Must-Read: Dietz Vollrath: Dumb Luck in Historical Development: "Philip Hoffman’s Why Did Europe Conquer the World?...

Must-Read: Philip T. Hoffman: Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World?: "By the eighteenth century, Europeans dominated the military technology of gunpowder weapons...

...which had enormous advantages for fighting war at a distance and conquering other parts of the world. Their dominance, however, was surprising, because the technology had originated in China and been used with expertise in Asia and the Middle East. To account for their prowess with gunpowder weapons, historians have often invoked competition, but it cannot explain why they pushed this technology further than anyone else. The answer lies in the peculiar form that military competition took in western Europe: it was a winner take all tournament, and a simple model of the tournament shows why it led European rulers to spend heavily on the gunpowder technology, why the technology was advanced as a result, and why political incentives and military conditions made the rest of Eurasia fall behind.

Must-Read: Vitor Gaspar, Maurice Obstfeld, Ratna Sahay, et al.: Macroeconomic Management When Policy Space Is Constrained: A Comprehensive, Consistent, and Coordinated Approach to Economic Policy: "Global output remains below potential, unemployment above its natural rate, and inflation below target...

Must-Read: Antonio Fatas: The Stock Market Looks Cheap: "I constructed the difference between RF - E/P...

Must-Read: Thomas E. Patterson: Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race: "During... 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers...

Must-Read: Barry Ritholtz: This Needs Saying. Helping Retirement Savers Isn't Like Slavery: I happened to overhear a broker from one of the country’s largest firms try to explain to his client why the U.S. Department of Labor’s new fiduciary rule was so terrible...

Randall Munroe: University Website (Live from the Dysfunctional Side of the Internet):

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

• Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto, and Andrei Shleifer: Securing Property Rights: "A central challenge in securing property rights is the subversion of justice...
• Elizabeth Catte: There Is No Neutral There: "Historically, cultural elites — writers, academics, politicians, journalists, and so on...
• Brown University Janus Forum: Inequality: Is America Becoming a Two-Tiered Society?: Monday, October 17 @ 5:30pm :: Brown Faculty Club Hunter Room...
• Mohamed A. El-Erian: Toxic Politics Versus Better Economics: "Advanced-country politicians are locked in bizarre, often toxic, conflicts...
• Jason Furman: Five Fiscal Policy Principles: "Nowhere is... recovery complete...
• Patrick Iber: How Academics Can Use Twitter: "Two of the most important debates we have been having in academe in the last few years center on the issues of contingent labor and public engagement...
• Nick Bunker: What are the effects of cash transfers on U.S. workers across generations? - Equitable Growth
• Nick Bunker: Yellen poses important post-Great Recession macroeconomic questions - Equitable Growth
• Bridget Ansel: Are employees willing to forgo pay for better work schedules? - Equitable Growth

Olivia Nuzzi: Kathleen Willey Is #ForeverTrump: "Of all of Clinton’s accusers, Willey has the distinction of making the most outlandish claims... (Live from the Republicans Self-Made Gehenna)

• In "Eisenhower" episodes, the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates slowly and shallowly as the unemployment rises, trusting to the equilibrium-restoring self-stabilizing forces of the economy. It then raises interest rates as the economy recovers.

William Muss-Arnolt, trans.: The Man Who Has Seen All Things:

Around the enclosed space that is Uruk he walks, mighty like the wild bull, head raised high. None with weapon might challenge him as rival.

His men stand at attention, longing for his orders; but the old men of Uruk grouse that Gilgamesh has left no son to his father, for his arrogance has grown boundless. He has taken all their children, for is Gilgamesh not the shepherd of his people?

Matt Bevin: From the Governor of Kentucky: "I did an interview recently and they said... (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)

I wish Paul Krugman wouldn't say "white working class" here. It's not so much white as southern and rural. And it's not so much working class--it's people who hoped to wind up higher in the income distribution than they have (Live from American's Not-Better Self)

Paul Krugman: On Twitter: "Terrific piece by Mike Konczal...

Must-Read: Patrick Iber: How Academics Can Use Twitter: "Two of the most important debates we have been having in academe in the last few years center on the issues of contingent labor and public engagement...

Must-Read: Jason Furman: Five Fiscal Policy Principles: "Nowhere is... recovery complete...

Kurt Eichenwald: A People’s History of Donald Trump: "He’d have done better if he’d never gone into business... (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)

Note to Self: The iron law of websites:

All websites, sooner or later, no matter how good intentioned the authors or how much advance planning of information architecture was conducted, evolve to mimic the bureaucratic structure of the organization that maintains it. This makes them much less uselful for everybody else...

Must-Read: More and more, it is sounding as though we are all Polanyiists now...

Mohamed A. El-Erian: Toxic Politics Versus Better Economics: "Advanced-country politicians are locked in bizarre, often toxic, conflicts...

Duncan Black: You F--ked Up, You Trusted Them: "It's a bit confused, much like Americans wanting the government to get out of their Medicare... (Live from the British Conservatives' Self-Made Gehenna)

Must-Watch: Well, I thought that went very well...

Brown University Janus Forum: Inequality: Is America Becoming a Two-Tiered Society?: Monday, October 17 @ 5:30pm :: Brown Faculty Club Hunter Room...

Must-Read: Elizabeth Catte: There Is No Neutral There: "Historically, cultural elites — writers, academics, politicians, journalists, and so on...

Must-Read: Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A.M. Ponzetto, and Andrei Shleifer: Securing Property Rights: "A central challenge in securing property rights is the subversion of justice...

Over at Equitable Growth: Must-Reads:

• James Stock and Mark Watson: Why Has GDP Growth Been So Slow to Recover?:
• Vitor Gaspar, Maurice Obstfeld, Ratna Sahay, et al.: Macroeconomic Management When Policy Space Is Constrained: A Comprehensive, Consistent, and Coordinated Approach to Economic Policy: "Global output remains below potential, unemployment above its natural rate, and inflation below target...
• DRAFT: Did Macroeconomic Policy Play a Different Role in the (Post-2009) Recovery? - Equitable Growth
• CAPE, Future Expected Equity Returns, the Equity Premium, and Market Timing - Equitable Growth
• The Prime-Age Men Missing from the Labor Force... - Equitable Growth
• Did the Pace at Which We Lose Males 25-54 Accelerate? - Equitable Growth
• (Early) Monday DeLong Smackdown: Labor Force Participation Trends - Equitable Growth
• Kavya Vaghul & Austin Clemens: Economic insecurity rises around childbirth, explained in four charts - Equitable Growth
• Inequality: Brown University Janus Forum - Equitable Growth:
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “You’ve contracted out your reading links” edition - Equitable Growth

Matthew Yglesias: On Twitter: "Trump launched his political career with birther conspiracies. Everything since has also been ridiculous and awful, but there's no descent. This is why I poke fun at the economic anxiety stuff. Trump became a conservative icon by saying Obama is a fake American, plain and simple. Why would you listen to the next thing a guy says when he starts out talking about a secret Kenyan president? It's anxiety about something..." (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Hell)

Must-Read: Jeet Heer: On Twitter: "Ted Cruz deleted this tweet. Original tweet & deletion show how awkward his political position is":

John McCain: United Republicans Will Block Every Clinton Supreme Court Nominee: "The strongest argument I can make [is to] ensure that there is not three places on the United States Supreme Court that will change this country for decades.... I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.... This is why we need the majority..." (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Hell)

Amy Zimmerman: Conspiracy Theorists: Pamela Anderson Poisoned Julian Assange With a Vegan Sandwich: "According to The Daily Mail, WikiLeaks founder Assange 'says his internet link was "severed" by state agents hours after claims he was poisoned by a Pret vegan sandwich brought to him by Pamela Anderson.' We might be less than a month away from a post-apocalyptic hell of our own creation, but no one can ever take that lede away from us..." (Herbal Teabaggers!)

Most-Recent Must-Reads:

• James Stock and Mark Watson: Why Has GDP Growth Been So Slow to Recover?:
• Vitor Gaspar, Maurice Obstfeld, Ratna Sahay, et al.: Macroeconomic Management When Policy Space Is Constrained: A Comprehensive, Consistent, and Coordinated Approach to Economic Policy: "Global output remains below potential, unemployment above its natural rate, and inflation below target...
• Andrew Gelman (2013): That controversial claim that high genetic diversity, or low genetic diversity, is bad for the economy: "Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, wrote a paper... [that] is pretty silly and I’m surprised it was accepted in such a top journal...

Most-Recent Links:

• Sarah Posner and David Neiwert: How Trump Took Hate Groups Mainstream
• Matt Taibbi: The Fury and Failure of Donald Trump: Win, lose or drop out, the Republican nominee has laid waste to the American political system. On the trail for the last gasp of the ugliest campaign in our nation's history...
• Ben Bernanke: Modifying the Fed’s policy framework: Does a higher inflation target beat negative interest rates?:
• Brad Setser: Splitting out Emerging Economies Changes the Picture on Global Trade
• McKay Coppins: Republican Women Blast Trump For Mocking Accusers' Looks: “If [Trump] is not discredited, in a full-throated way, by every Republican with credibility, it will send the party into a tailspin for decades...”

Donald Trump has no working relationship with any Republicans currently in office, does he? (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Hell)

Donald Trump: On Twitter:

Paul Ryan, a man who doesn't know how to win (including failed run four years ago), must start focusing on the budget, military, vets etc. The Democrats have a corrupt political machine pushing crooked Hillary Clinton. We have Paul Ryan, always fighting the Republican nominee!...

Has the Longer Depression accelerated the trend of "losing" prime-age males, crowding what would have been a generation of the trend into a decade, as I suggested at the FRBB Conference and here in contradiction to what Alan Krueger and Gabriel Chodorow-Reich were saying? No. Or, rather, you could say it looked like that as of 2013 if you thought recovery was then substantially complete. You really cannot say that anymore.

The extremely sharp Gabriel Chodorow-Reich in Email:

Gabriel Chodorow-Reich: Prime age male by 5 year age bin: "Here is a figure and a table related to our back-and-forth...

Dylan Matthews: Taking Trump voters’ concerns seriously means listening to what they’re actually saying:

The government should help people who are materially struggling. Globalization definitely left some segments of the population struggling, and they deserve help. White people, while still economically dominant over black and Latino Americans in basically every way possible, can suffer from poverty too. But there’s something striking about this line of commentary: It doesn’t take the stated concerns of Trump voters, and voters for similar far-right populists abroad, seriously in the slightest.

The press has gotten extremely comfortable with describing a Trump electorate that simply doesn’t exist.