Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Arthur Goldhammer: The Piketty Phenomenon: "I will discuss anticipations of the book’s reception... show that even the most optimistic forecasts failed to predict the extent of the Piketty phenomenon... http://amzn.to/2pynukp

Must-Read: Suresh Naidu: A Political Economy Take on W/Y: "The full political-economy equilibrium... lets us see the determinants of the wealth/income ratio... http://amzn.to/2pynukp

Must-Read: Jeremy Cliffe: On Twitter: Today's FAZ Report on May's Disastrous Dinner with Juncker https://twitter.com/JeremyCliffe/status/858810953353367552: "Today's FAZ report on May's disastrous dinner with Juncker...

Must-Read: Sarah Kliff: Trump doesn't know what's in his health bill: "Either the president doesn’t understand the proposal — or isn’t telling the truth about it... http://www.vox.com/2017/4/30/15492354/trump-ahca-interview

Should Read: UC Berkeley: Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society: Othering & Belonging: How Do We Think About, Talk About, and Give Birth to a World Where All Belong?: "The Othering & Belonging Conference is a dynamic gathering over 2.5 days... http://conference.otheringandbelonging.org/

Must-Reads:

• Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY: "The panelists seemed to agree... http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/04/el-super-clasico-trade-and-technology.html
• Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum: Equitable Growth in Conversation: Marshall Steinbaum: "I think the key question... in Piketty terms [is]... http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/equitable-growth-in-conversation-brad-delong-and-marshall-steinbaum/
• Gauti Eggertsson, Neil Mehrotra, and Jacob A. Robbins: To accommodate or not: The Federal Reserve’s new normal http://voxeu.org/article/accommodate-or-not-federal-reserve-s-new-normal: "Current [monetary] policy may be at or close to the natural rate...
• INET: Education Initiative: "We are thrilled that you are joining us at the Berkeley Spring 2017 Education Convening, Friday, April 28th 9am-5pm Blum Hall, B100 #5570, Berkeley, CA 94720-5570... https://www.ineteconomics.org/education/curricula-modules/education-initiative
• Matthew Yglesias: If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth: "A wave of recent columns argue that what Trump superfans... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/24/15375206/respect-trump-voters-truth
• Ezra Klein: The GOP’s biggest health care achievement has been making Obamacare more popular: "It is bizarre watching House Republicans persuade themselves that the problem they face on health care... https://www.vox.com/obamacare/2017/4/20/15373092/republicans-made-obamacare-more-popular

Must-Read: Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY: "The panelists seemed to agree... http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/04/el-super-clasico-trade-and-technology.html

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Adam Tooze: Reviewing ‘How Will Capitalism End?’ by Wolfgang Streeck: "Streeck draws urgent practical conclusions... https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n01/adam-tooze/a-general-logic-of-crisis
• Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum: Equitable Growth in Conversation: Marshall Steinbaum: "I think the key question... in Piketty terms [is]... http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/equitable-growth-in-conversation-brad-delong-and-marshall-steinbaum/
• Arindrajit Dube: Minimum wages and the distribution of family incomes in the United States: "I find robust evidence that higher minimum wages lead to increases... http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/minimum-wages-and-the-distribution-of-family-incomes-in-the-us/
• Greg Leiserson: A premature promise on tax rates could threaten tax reform http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/a-premature-promise-on-tax-rates-could-threaten-tax-reform/: "Mulvaney’s suggestion that the announcement may include an indication of the administration’s proposed rates and little else...
• Kavya Vaghul: How gig economy companies fit (or don’t fit) into the tax systemEquitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/how-gig-economy-companies-fit-or-dont-fit-into-the-tax-system/: "These companies and the people they hire via individual contracts may not yet be...
• Gauti Eggertsson, Neil Mehrotra, and Jacob A. Robbins: To accommodate or not: The Federal Reserve’s new normal http://voxeu.org/article/accommodate-or-not-federal-reserve-s-new-normal: "Current [monetary] policy may be at or close to the natural rate...
• George Callas: Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts can't pass Congress: "Here is a data point for folks... http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/04/25/donald_trump_s_corporate_tax_cuts_can_t_pass_congress.html
• Kavya Vaghul: The student loan crisis is fueled by a weak labor market: "Holger M. Mueller and Constantine Yannelis... investigate how massive declines in home prices during the Great Recession... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-student-loan-crisis-is-fueled-by-a-weak-labor-market/
• Sarah Kliff: Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal: "The new Republican amendment... would allow states to waive out of Obamacare’s ban on pre-existing conditions... https://www.vox.com/2017/4/25/15429982/gop-exemption-ahca-amendment

Live from Merrie Olde England: Paul Bronks @virtuallydeadhttps://twitter.com/virtuallydead/status/857834735170723840:

Weekend Reading: Daniel Davies: Why a speech from Barack Obama is worth $400,000: "What do you get when you pay $400,000 to Barack Obama for a speech?... https://www.ft.com/content/35802190-2c06-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c

...Or if you recruit George Osborne, former UK chancellor, to a four-days-a-month advisory role at a salary of £650,000 a year? In a former job at an investment bank, I occasionally produced write-ups of meetings at which “global advisers” and “senior fellows” mingled with the corporate finance crowd, and often speculated on why we were spending so much money on the retired political upperworld when it could otherwise have gone into the bonus pool.

American Pessimism: Q: What is the single most important thing that makes you pessimistic for the United States?

The chances of some kind of disaster are high.

We gotta pray for lots of luck.

And then there are the unknown unknowns.

Global Optimism: Q: What is the single most important thing that makes you optimistic for the world?

A: Our enormous technological powers and our rapid rate of technological progress.

Couple that with the fact that since 1945 the world has been relatively peaceful, and how can you not be optimistic?

Should-Read: Adam Tooze: Reviewing ‘How Will Capitalism End?’ by Wolfgang Streeck: "Streeck draws urgent practical conclusions... https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n01/adam-tooze/a-general-logic-of-crisis

Folk Alley Sessions: Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer: Tam Lin:

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• Trade, Jobs, and Inequality | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/trade-jobs-and-inequality/
• What Can Be Done to Improve the Episteme of Economics? | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/what-can-be-done-to-improve-the-episteme-of-economics/
• Branko Milanovic: El Super Clasico: Trade and Technology Duke It Out at CUNY: "The panelists seemed to agree... http://glineq.blogspot.com/2017/04/el-super-clasico-trade-and-technology.html
• Trade, Jobs, and Inequality http://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/Calendar/Detail?id=38997: "CUNY :: The Graduate Center :: 365 Fifth Avenue :: C200: Proshansky Auditorium :: April 26, 2017: 6:30 PM http://www.gc.cuny.edu/publicprograms...
• INET: Education Initiative: "We are thrilled that you are joining us at the Berkeley Spring 2017 Education Convening, Friday, April 28th 9am-5pm Blum Hall, B100 #5570, Berkeley, CA 94720-5570... https://www.ineteconomics.org/education/curricula-modules/education-initiative
• Peter Ganong and Pascal Noel: Consumer spending during unemployment: Positive and normative implications: "We study... unemployment insurance... using de-identified data from nearly 200,000 bank accounts... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/consumer-spending-during-unemployment/
• Nisha Chikhale: The importance of unemployment benefits for protecting against income drops: "Jesse Rothstein... and Robert Valletta... the role that unemployment insurance plays in supporting family incomes... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-importance-of-unemployment-benefits-for-protecting-against-income-drops/
• Dietrich Vollrath: Topics in Economic Growth: "I just created some new pages... https://growthecon.com/blog/Topics-Pages/
• Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Link pass-through entity” edition | Equitable Growth: "Arindarjit Dube summarizes his recent research on the effect of minimum wage hikes on family incomes... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-link-pass-through-entity-edition/

Should-Read: Nick Bunker: Weekend reading: “Link pass-through entity” edition | Equitable Growth: "Arindarjit Dube summarizes his recent research on the effect of minimum wage hikes on family incomes... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-link-pass-through-entity-edition/

http://videostreaming.gc.cuny.edu/videos/video/4983/embed/?access_token=shr00000049839204943398151315087172252494609

Eduardo Porter: Good evening. Thanks for coming. There has been a lot of sturm and drang over the last—what?—98 days. Today I read that the administration is preparing an executive order to start the process for the U.S. to leave NAFTA, which was one of Mr. Trump's campaign promises. However, over the past 98 days I have come to realize that perhaps President Trump did not really mean all of the things he said on the campaign trail.

Via Tracy Lightcap: Weekend Reading: Wolfgang Streeck: Trump and the Trumpists http://inference-review.com/article/trump-and-the-trumpists: "STRANGE PERSONALITIES arise in the cracks of disintegrating institutions...

...They are often marked by extravagant dress, inflated rhetoric, and a show of sexual power. The first Trumper of the postwar era was the Danish tax rebel, Mogens Glistrup, the founder of the nationalist Progress Party, who, having put his principles into practice, went to prison for tax evasion. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Boris Johnson in England are hairstyle Trumpers. Pim Fortuyn and Jörg Haider were both dandies. They died in their finery. Beppe Grillo, Nigel Farage, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, are each one third of a full Trump.

Courtesy of Mark Thoma: Trade, Jobs, and Inequality Video http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/04/trade-jobs-and-inequality-video.html

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/Calendar/Detail?id=38997

People: Eduardo Porter, David Autor, Brad DeLong, Ann Harrison, Paul Krugman

Live from Microsoft Office Hell: Swift on Security: How to figure out why the Excel file on the network share is locked https://twitter.com/Abzol/status/857251772078968832

(Early) Weekend Reading: Franz von Papen (June 17, 1934): Marburger Rede http://www.regin-verlag.de/index.php?id=4,82,0,0,1,0: "An unknown soldier of the World War, who conquered the hearts of his countrymen with contagious energy and unshakable faith...

...with his Field Marshal... has placed himself at the head of the nation... to turn a new page in the book of German destiny and to restore spiritual unity. We have experienced this unity of spirit in the exhilaration of a thousand rallies, flags, and celebrations of a nation that has rediscovered itself. But... a reform process of such historical proportions also produces slag... which... must be cleaned.... The function of the press should be to inform the government where deficiencies have crept in, where corruption has settled, where serious mistakes are being made, where unsuitable men are in the wrong positions, and where transgressions are committed against the spirit of the German revolution. An anonymous or secret news service, no matter how well organized, can never be a substitute for this responsibility of the press.... If other countries claim that freedom has died in Germany, then the openness of my remarks should instruct them that the German government can afford to allow a discussion of the burning questions of the nation....

2017-04-26 CUNY Event: Trade, Jobs, and Inequality: Notes

https://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/Calendar/Detail?id=38997

People: David Autor, Brad DeLong, Ann Harrison, Eduardo Porter, Paul Krugman

Things we could have talked about:

Live from KKK Cross-Burning Central: Alex Parent politely addresses Jonathan Chait with respect to Charles Murray:

Alex Pareene: The Marketplace of Ideas Could Use a Few Product Recalls: "It has been a bit less than a quarter-century since the publication of Murray’s The Bell Curve... http://fusion.net/the-marketplace-of-ideas-could-use-a-few-product-recall-1794665496

Must-Read:: Buy our After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality http://amzn.to/2oPZMwu:

Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum: Equitable Growth in Conversation: Marshall Steinbaum: "I think the key question... in Piketty terms [is]... http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/equitable-growth-in-conversation-brad-delong-and-marshall-steinbaum/

Equitable Growth in Conversation: A recurring series where we talk with economists and other social scientists to help us better understand whether and how economic inequality affects economic growth and stability. Buy After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality

Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/equitable-growth-in-conversation-brad-delong-and-marshall-steinbaum/: After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality: Heather Boushey: I am so excited that we are here finally to discuss After Piketty. Many of the people who may be reading this column may not actually have kept a copy of Piketty on their night stand and may not remember all the ins and outs, so I want to start off our conversation by asking you, first, what are the key takeaways from Piketty about the effects of inequality on our economy and our society, and second, how does the election of Donald Trump strengthen or weaken Piketty’s analytical, political, economic case? Read MOAR at Equitable Growth

Must-Read: At least as I read the FOMC these days, they are passive because they are uncertain. "What can we do?" they ask. "Given the likelihood that we will break things when we do things we do not fully understand, what benefit-cost analysis suggests a positive expected outcome from doing things that would have been regarded as... highly unusual... even a decade ago?" It is an argument that gives one powerful pause. It leads, I think, to the conclusion that we need to rely on fiscal policy. And it leads, I think, to the conclusion that we need to think much harder about fiscal policy: fiscal policy needs to become more sophisticated: we need to set out:

1. a long-run "normal" value for the annual debt-to-GDP ratio,
2. a short-run currently-desirable value for the annual debt-to-GDP ratio,
3. a plan to get from where we are now to where we should be in the short run, and
4. a plan for (after we get there) starting from the short-run optimal value how to get to the long-run "normal" value...

Gauti Eggertsson, Neil Mehrotra, and Jacob A. Robbins: To accommodate or not: The Federal Reserve’s new normal http://voxeu.org/article/accommodate-or-not-federal-reserve-s-new-normal: "Current [monetary] policy may be at or close to the natural rate...

Should-Read: Kavya Vaghul: How gig economy companies fit (or don’t fit) into the tax systemEquitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/how-gig-economy-companies-fit-or-dont-fit-into-the-tax-system/: "These companies and the people they hire via individual contracts may not yet be...

Should-Read: Greg Leiserson: A premature promise on tax rates could threaten tax reform http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/a-premature-promise-on-tax-rates-could-threaten-tax-reform/: "Mulvaney’s suggestion that the announcement may include an indication of the administration’s proposed rates and little else...

Should-Read: Arindrajit Dube: Minimum wages and the distribution of family incomes in the United States: "I find robust evidence that higher minimum wages lead to increases... http://equitablegrowth.org/research-analysis/minimum-wages-and-the-distribution-of-family-incomes-in-the-us/

...in incomes among families at the bottom of the income distribution and that these wages reduce the poverty rate. A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage reduces the nonelderly poverty rate by about 5 percent. At the same time, I find evidence for some substitution of government transfers with earnings, as evidenced by the somewhat smaller income increases after accounting for tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and noncash transfers such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The overall increase in post-tax income is about 70 percent as large as the increase in pretax income...

(Late) Monday Smackdown: This, from eight years ago, still seems to me to be highly, highly unprofessional:

Robert Lucas (2009): In defence of the dismal science http://www.economist.com/node/14165405: "Fama tested the predictions of the EMH.... These tests could have come out either way...

...but they came out very favourably. His empirical work was novel and carefully executed.... [The] flood of criticism which has served mainly to confirm the accuracy of the hypothesis.... Exceptions and “anomalies”... for the purposes of macroeconomic analysis and forecasting... are too small to matter.

The main lesson we should take away from the EMH for policymaking purposes is the futility of trying to deal with crises and recessions by finding central bankers and regulators who can identify and puncture bubbles. If these people exist, we will not be able to afford them...

Should-Read: George Callas: Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts can't pass Congress: "Here is a data point for folks... http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/04/25/donald_trump_s_corporate_tax_cuts_can_t_pass_congress.html

Should-Read: Kavya Vaghul: The student loan crisis is fueled by a weak labor market: "Holger M. Mueller and Constantine Yannelis... investigate how massive declines in home prices during the Great Recession... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-student-loan-crisis-is-fueled-by-a-weak-labor-market/

Should-Read: Sarah Kliff: Republicans exempt their own insurance from their latest health care proposal: "The new Republican amendment... would allow states to waive out of Obamacare’s ban on pre-existing conditions... https://www.vox.com/2017/4/25/15429982/gop-exemption-ahca-amendment

Must-Watch: Trade, Jobs, and Inequality http://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/Calendar/Detail?id=38997: "CUNY :: The Graduate Center :: 365 Fifth Avenue :: C200: Proshansky Auditorium :: April 26, 2017: 6:30 PM http://www.gc.cuny.edu/publicprograms...

Live from the Ghost of Internet Past: Tim Carmody: Pour some out for the sites that aren’t here: Suck.com: "So many people, after this story went live, answered... http://kottke.org/17/04/pour-some-out-for-the-sites-that-arent-here

Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Dan Drezner: Six different ways of looking at a Trump tweet: "Many people are saying that Trump's tweets do not matter. I say they contain some very interesting insights... https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/24/six-different-ways-of-looking-at-a-trump-tweet/

I think this is needed:

INET: Education Initiative: "We are thrilled that you are joining us at the Berkeley Spring 2017 Education Convening, Friday, April 28th 9am-5pm Blum Hall, B100 #5570, Berkeley, CA 94720-5570... https://www.ineteconomics.org/education/curricula-modules/education-initiative

...Sign up here: https://fs24.formsite.com/inet/form97/index.html or email [email protected]...

I strongly share INET's view that things have gone horribly wrong, and that it is important to listen, learn, and brainstorm about how to improve economics education.

Let me just note six straws in the wind:

Must-Read: Friday 9-5 pm: Blum Center: U.C. Berkeley: INET says: learn, share, and brainstorm about concrete future endeavors in broad-church post-secondary economics education. I strongly share INET's view that things are seriously wrong...

Sign up here: https://fs24.formsite.com/inet/form97/index.html or email [email protected]...

INET: Education Initiative: "We are thrilled that you are joining us at the Berkeley Spring 2017 Education Convening, Friday, April 28th 9am-5pm Blum Hall, B100 #5570, Berkeley, CA 94720-5570... https://www.ineteconomics.org/education/curricula-modules/education-initiative

Should Read: Peter Ganong and Pascal Noel: Consumer spending during unemployment: Positive and normative implications: "We study... unemployment insurance... using de-identified data from nearly 200,000 bank accounts... http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/consumer-spending-during-unemployment/

Should-Read: Nisha Chikhale: The importance of unemployment benefits for protecting against income drops: "Jesse Rothstein... and Robert Valletta... the role that unemployment insurance plays in supporting family incomes... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/the-importance-of-unemployment-benefits-for-protecting-against-income-drops/

Should-Read: Once upon a time I thought that Google Search and the links graph of the web would make my website self-organizing. Hasn't happened. I do have to do something about that failure—someday. But here we have the smarter-than-me Dietrich Vollrath trying to get a jump on the problem:

Dietrich Vollrath: Topics in Economic Growth: "I just created some new pages... https://growthecon.com/blog/Topics-Pages/

Should-Read: Willa Friedman et al. (2011): Education as Liberation?: "We assess the political and social impacts of a randomized girls' merit scholarship incentive program in Kenya that raised test scores and secondary schooling... http://www.nber.org/papers/w16939

Over at Equitable Growth: Must- and Should-Reads:

• A Low-Pressure Economy Is Not Only Dark But Invisible in the Horserace Noah Smith is Running… | Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/a-low-pressure-economy-is-not-only-dark-but-invisible-in-the-horserace-noah-smith-is-running/
• Bridget Ansel: Weekend reading: “This post is tax-ing” edition | Equitable Growthhttp://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/weekend-reading-this-post-is-tax-ing-edition/
• Matthew Yglesias: If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth: "A wave of recent columns argue that what Trump superfans... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/24/15375206/respect-trump-voters-truth
• Ezra Klein: The GOP’s biggest health care achievement has been making Obamacare more popular: "It is bizarre watching House Republicans persuade themselves that the problem they face on health care... https://www.vox.com/obamacare/2017/4/20/15373092/republicans-made-obamacare-more-popular
• Fatih Guvenen and Greg Kaplan: Top Income Inequality in the 21st Century: Some Cautionary Notes: "IRS and SSA data reveal diverging patterns in top income shares... http://papers.nber.org/w23321.pdf
• Kevin Drum: We're Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time: "The most remarkable feature of this chart... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/were-now-second-biggest-housing-boom-all-time
• Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor: Monetary Policy Medicine: Large Effects from Small Doses?: "How do we know that higher interest rates will bring prices under control?... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/april/monetary-policy-medicine-using-quasi-random-experiments/
• Chris Hayes: On escaping the “doom loop” of Trump's presidency: "I tend to think of it in terms of my own behavior... https://www.vox.com/2017/4/19/15356534/chris-hayes-donald-trump-media-elections-2016-criminal-justice
• Hyun Song Shin: Accounting for global liquidity: reloading the matrix: "In emerging market economies especially, a weakening of the domestic currency against the dollar saps both cross-border bank lending and investment... http://www.bis.org/speeches/sp170419.htm

Must-Read: Matthew Yglesias: If you really respect Trump voters, tell them the truth: "A wave of recent columns argue that what Trump superfans... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/24/15375206/respect-trump-voters-truth

I think the estimable Noah Smith gets this one wrong. He writes:

Noah Smith: Cracking the Mystery of Labor's Falling Share of GDP: "Economists are very worried about the decline in labor’s share of U.S. national income... https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-24/cracking-the-mystery-of-labor-s-falling-share-of-gdp

...For decades, macroeconomic models assumed that labor and capital took home roughly constant portions of output—labor got just a bit less than two-thirds of the pie, capital slightly more than one-third. Nowadays it’s more like 60-40. Economists are therefore scrambling to explain the change. There are, by my count, now four main potential explanations for the mysterious slide in labor's share. These are: 1) China, 2) robots, 3) monopolies and 4) landlords..."

There is, in my view, a fifth—and a much more likely—possibility: the low-pressure economy.

Weekend Reading: Henry Farrell: Fourteen Years of Krauthammer Days: "Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the day when Charles Krauthammer announced to the world... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/04/22/fourteen-years-of-krauthammer-days/

...Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.

It’s now been 168 months since that confident pronouncement–or, put differently, we’ve seen 33.6 Krauthammer Credibility Intervals come, and then go, without any sign of self-assessment, let alone personal acceptance of responsibility for his prominent cheerleading for a war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Still out there opining.

Hoisted from Mike Konczal's Archives:Mike Konczal (2013): Reinhart-Rogoff A Week Later: Why Does This Matter?: "Well this is progress...

...We are seeing subtle distancing by conservative writers on the Reinhart/Rogoff thesis. In Feburary, Douglas Holtz-Eakin wrote:

The debt hurts the economy already. The canonical work of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff and its successors carry a clear message: countries that have gross government debt in excess of 90% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are in the debt danger zone. Entering the zone means slower economic growth. Granted, the research is not yet robust enough to say exactly when and how a crisis will engulf the US, but there is no reason to believe that America is somehow immune.' (h/t QZ.)

Must-Read: Ezra Klein: The GOP’s biggest health care achievement has been making Obamacare more popular: "It is bizarre watching House Republicans persuade themselves that the problem they face on health care... https://www.vox.com/obamacare/2017/4/20/15373092/republicans-made-obamacare-more-popular

Must-Reads:

1. Kevin Drum: We're Now In the Second Biggest Housing Boom of All Time: "The most remarkable feature of this chart... http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/04/were-now-second-biggest-housing-boom-all-time
2. Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor: Monetary Policy Medicine: Large Effects from Small Doses?: "How do we know that higher interest rates will bring prices under control?... http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/april/monetary-policy-medicine-using-quasi-random-experiments/
3. Rick Perlstein: I Thought I Understood the American Right. Trump Proved Me Wrongs: "Direct-mail pioneers like Richard Viguerie created hair-on-fire campaign-fund-raising letters... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html
4. Financial Times: Donald Trump Beats a Retreat: "Another week, another series of flip-flops by America’s president... https://www.ft.com/content/039d80ae-21cb-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16
5. Ezra Klein: The GOP’s problem on health reform is they’ve spent years hiding their real position: "The most interesting policy argument... is the debate between conservatives’ real position on health care and their fake position... http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15325366/gop-problem-on-health-reform