Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Should-Reads:

• B.G.: Because I said so: Why the Fed is likely to raise rates, despite low inflation: "Like a parent teaching a child it means business, the Fed may feel it must hike to preserve its credibility with financial markets... http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2017/06/because-i-said-so
• Cardiff Garcia: US capex, investment, and growth—re-re-upped: "Srinivas Thiruvadanthai... has passed along his interesting new note about capex... https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/06/06/2189480/us-capex-investment-and-growth/
• Dan Drezner: Why it is impossible for Donald Trump to rise to adequacy: "A few days ago I suggested that Trump’s NATO speech was a powerful signal that we had seen the limits of adult supervision at the White House... http://delong.typepad.com/drezner-chaos-muppet.zip
• Kavya Vaghul: Weekend reading: the “real-live experiment” edition: "Monetary policy can help increase consumption through redistributing income across households...
• Noah Smith: Actually good Silicon Valley critiques?: "Suppose we did want to criticize Silicon Valley and not end up looking foolish... http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/actually-good-silicon-valley-critiques.html
• Olivia P. Judson: The energy expansions of evolution: "The history of the life–Earth system can be divided into five ‘energetic’ epochs... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0138
• Henry Farrell: The Strange Death of Anglo-American Liberalism: "The Financial Times... committed to free markets, but with a undertone that they had to have decent outcomes... http://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/31/the-strange-death-of-anglo-american-liberalism/
• Laura Panza and Jeffrey G. Williamson: Australian Squatters, Convicts, and Capitalists: Dividing Up a Fast-Growing Frontier Pie 1821-1871: "Compared with its nineteenth century competitors, Australian GDP per worker grew exceptionally fast... http://www.nber.org/papers/w23416
• (1995): Trade Policy and America’s Standard of Living: An Historical Perspective http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jlbroz/Courses/POLI142B/syllabus/delong.pdf: Before the Great Depression, the U.S. went through waves of protection and liberalization...
• Katia Porzecanski: Ray Dalio Is Changing His Mind About Donald Trump: "'When faced with the choices between what’s good for the whole and what’s good for the part, and between harmony and conflict, he has a strong tendency to choose the part and conflict... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/dalio-concerned-by-consequences-of-trump-s-pursuit-of-conflict
• Nick Bunker: Monetary policy via income redistribution: "Combining these three redistribution channels... http://equitablegrowth.org/equitablog/value-added/monetary-policy-via-income-redistribution/

Links:

• The Center for Popular Democracy: Ady Barkan https://populardemocracy.org/ady-barkan
• Center for Popular Democracy and Action For the Common Good: Fed Up: The National Campaign for a Strong Economy http://whatrecovery.org/
• Greg Ip: Why Trump Could Use More Economists: "CBO and other experts have their flaws, but their analysis beats instinct..." https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-trump-could-use-more-economists-1496852326?mod=e2twe
• (2005): Unstructured Procrastination: "It's all Michael Berube's fault, but its worth it, for (highlighted below) he has the best paragraph on Louis Althusser ever written. The rest is (or ought to be) silence..." http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/unstructured_pr.html
• Justin Lahart: Some Inconvenient Facts for the Fed: "The facts have changed. Will the Federal Reserve change its mind?... That is the message not just from the data and the headlines, but from the market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note on Tuesday slipped to its lowest in more than a half-year–an indication that bond investors have downgraded their growth and inflation expectations. None of these developments are likely to prevent a rate increase next week, but they could prompt the Fed to rethink its projected rate increases through next year and its plan to begin winding down its balance sheet..." https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-inconvenient-facts-for-the-fed-1496770646
• David Frum (2012): Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The Review http://www.thedailybeast.com/coming-apart-the-review
• Tim Noah (2012): Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America: "CHARLES MURRAY HAS lost interest in changing anybody’s mind.... When Murray reaches any conclusion that his readers might quarrel with, he turns strangely diffident. Here’s where I go with this, he says with a shrug. Others would make a perfectly reasonable case arguing the opposite, he says. It’s a free country. If this sounds like humility, it isn’t. A humble author wouldn’t devote more than half his nine-paragraph acknowledgments section to thanking himself..." https://newrepublic.com/article/100841/charles-murray-white-america
• Stefan Each and Adam Tooze: THE ALLURE OF DARK TIMES: MAX WEBER, POLITICS, AND THE CRISIS OF HISTORICISM http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hith.12014/full
• Simeon Kerr: Crisis in the Gulf: Qatar faces a stress test: "The emirate’s neighbours have joined forces to isolate the tiny state and curb its ambitions, threatening stability in the region..." https://www.ft.com/content/147f1050-4cf9-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b
• M. G. Siegler: “These Go To 11”: "The day job prevented me from attending and/or watching the WWDC keynote this morning. Apologies for the lack of hot takes and snark. But my meetings today did allow me to mainly avoid the internet and so I got to come home and watch the keynote on tape delay (on Apple TV), like an animal..." https://500ish.com/these-go-to-11-b0f3488c9538
• Wikipedia: The Rise of the Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
• Statement for the BBC on the Disruption of Berkeley Speaker Event on February 1, 2017: http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/02/statement-for-the-bbc-on-the-disruption-of-berkeley-speaker-event-on-february-1-2017.html
• Jeet Heer (2010): The Frum Firing Fiasco: "AEI has a culture, the scholars are fiercely proud of that culture, and at its heart is total intellectual freedom..." https://sanseverything.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/the-frum-firing-fiasco/
• 2009: Why Friends Don't Let Friends Step Inside the American Enterprise Institute: "Charles Murray’s recent big AEI speech.... I’d seen quite a few conservatives offer it lavish praise.... His argument is that the problem with a social democratic model is that it makes people too fat and happy, thus depriving them of the higher contentment offered by suffering and misery..." http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/why-friends-dont-let-friends-step-inside-the-american-enterprise-institute.html
• Rich Miller: Fed Should Study Higher Inflation Target, Liberal Economists Say: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-09/fed-should-study-higher-inflation-target-liberal-economists-say
• Noah Smith: Summing up my thoughts on macroeconomics http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/summing-up-my-thoughts-on-macroeconomics.html
• Neil Irwin: Of Kiwis and Currencies: How a 2% Inflation Target Became Global Economic Gospel https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/upshot/of-kiwis-and-currencies-how-a-2-inflation-target-became-global-economic-gospel.html?mcubz=2&_r=0
• Charles P. Kindleberger: Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises http://amzn.to/2s5Gadi
• John Kenneth Galbraith: The Great Crash 1929 http://amzn.to/2sUEjEu
• Noah Smith: Authoritarians Flop as Economic Modernizers: "The myth of the enlightened despot who spurs growth endures even though democratic reformers have a better record..." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-07/authoritarians-flop-as-economic-modernizers?utm_content=view&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic
• Erika Solomon and Simeon Kerr: Qatar falconry party: when the hunters became the hunted in Iraq: "Deal to release Qataris was one of the triggers that led to this week’s stand-off between Doha and its Arab neighbours..." https://www.ft.com/content/57aeba9c-4c4f-11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43
• Noah Smith: Uber Still Doesn't Look Like the Next Facebook: "The ride-hailing service lacks the powerful network effects that compel customers to stick with it..." https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-06/uber-still-doesn-t-look-like-the-next-facebook
• Don Newgreen and Jeffrey Craig: Why so many domesticated mammals have floppy ears http://theconversation.com/why-so-many-domesticated-mammals-have-floppy-ears-29141
• Ben Thompson: Apple’s Strengths and Weaknesses https://stratechery.com/2017/apples-strengths-and-weaknesses/
• JEF https://www.jef.or.jp
• Frank Fukuyama https://fukuyama.stanford.edu
• Ralf Dahrendorf: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: http://amzn.to/2rBLi7x
• Francis Fukuyama: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution: http://amzn.to/2sEt4AI
• Francis Fukuyama: Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy http://amzn.to/2sU0WZP
• John Maynard Keynes: Economic Consequences of the Peace http://amzn.to/2sTZdn7
• George Orwell: Road to Wigan Pier http://amzn.to/2sgiUZO
• George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia http://amzn.to/2s4RK8h
• George Kennan: Sources of Soviet Conduct http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm
• Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation http://amzn.to/2rMsPDq
• Frank Fukuyama: "The End of History?" http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm
• Ralf Dahrendorf: Reflections on the Revolution in Europe http://amzn.to/2sTXfTE
• John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money: Chapter 12. The State of Long-Term Expectation https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch12.htm
• Jennifer L. Doleac: New evidence that lead exposure increases crime https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evidence-that-lead-exposure-increases-crime/
• Per Kurowski: Tea with FT http://teawithft.blogspot.com/
• Per Kurowski: Why should technocrats seemingly be exempt from U-turn requirements, even in the face of horrendous mistakes?: "The worst idea, of the last century at least, has been that of, in order to make the banks safe, one needs to distort the allocation of bank credit by favoring, as if that was needed, banks’ exposures to what is perceived safe over those to what is perceived risky. That meant that when the ex ante perceptions of risk, of especially large exposures, ex post turned out to be very wrong, that banks would stand there with especially little capital. That meant that those rightly perceived as risky, like SMEs and entrepreneurs, those so vital for conserving the dynamism of the economy, would find their access to bank credit much harder than usual..." http://teawithft.blogspot.com/2017/05/why-should-technocrats-seemingly-be.html
• Susan Glasser: Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech: "The president also disappointed—and surprised—his own top national security officials.... A White House aide even told The New York Times the day before the line was definitely included. It was not until... Trump started talking... that the president’s national security team realized their boss had made a decision with major consequences—without consulting or even informing them in advance of the change..." http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/05/trump-nato-speech-national-security-team-215227
• Larry Summers: Business needs to show there is more to the US than Donald Trump: "It is essential that leaders in American society signal clearly their disapproval of the course the administration is taking. History will judge poorly business leaders who retain their positions on Trump administration advisory boards in the hope of being in a position to cut favourable deals..." http://larrysummers.com/2017/06/05/business-needs-to-show-there-is-more-to-the-us-than-donald-trump/
• Ben Thompson: Lexmark and Patent Exhaustion: "This is a fantastic outcome, and a case that could have far-reaching effects..." https://stratechery.com/2017/lexmark-and-patent-exhaustion-patents-and-first-principles-lexmark-and-apple-versus-qualcomm/
• Stefan Gerlach: The Swiss Phillips curve, 1916-2015: "Inflation may have remained stubbornly low during the recovery because their Phillips curves have become flatter. This column uses an analysis of Swiss data since 1916 that support this argument. ..." http://voxeu.org/article/swiss-phillips-curve-1916-2015
• Adam Ozimek: Monetary Policy And Declining Mobility: "If the Fed was setting interest rates for the worst performing 20% of the U.S., it would keep interest rates lower for longer..." https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2017/06/03/monetary-policy-and-declining-mobility/#2d5182d4315f
• • Sarah Kliff: The opioid crisis changed how doctors think about pain https://www.vox.com/2017/6/5/15111936/opioid-crisis-pain-west-virginia
• Pedro da Costa: Why the job market doesn't feel like it's back to normal http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-job-market-doesnt-feel-like-its-back-to-normal-2017-3 | Fed to raise rates in June but September still in question http://www.businessinsider.com/fed-to-raise-rates-in-june-but-september-still-in-question-2017-5
• Brad DeLong (2006): Socialism with German Nationalist Characteristics: "It is hard to avoid the belief that there was a way out of the disaster--a way to beat the Nazis even at the end of 1931--and that if only Rudolf Hilferding and his ilk had been less blinkered ideologues who sought truth from old books rather than new facts, the SPD could have led a German 'New Deal' that would have been as great a success as Roosevelt's New Deal in America...." http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/10/socialism_with_.html 2006-10-30
• Chad Bown: Economics and policy in the Age of Trump http://voxeu.org/content/economics-and-policy-age-trump
• Rachael Ray: Chickpea and Tomato Penne Pasta http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe/chickpea-and-tomato-penne-pasta/

Highlighted on Grasping Reality 10 Years and One Month Ago: May 1-May 20, 2007:

• Tom Grubisich Is One Unhappy Camper http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/tom_grubisich_i.html: On February 8, 2005, I opened my virtual Washington Post to find Post reporters Jonathan Weisman and Ben White writing that a series of calculations made by me, Dean Baker, and Paul Krugman were "absurd... they ignore global economic growth and investment in countries unaffected by the demographic slowdown," according to people whom Jonathan Weisman and Ben White described as "White House economists." The interesting thing is that every economist who had an office in the White House on February 8, 2005 has denied that they did or would characterize Dean's, Paul's, and my arguments as "absurd"...
• Yet More Journamalism from the New Republic http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/yet_more_journa.html: Franklin Foer... says the Wall Street Journal is a mighty force for good, and its editorial page—well, he can't bring themselves to even hint that the Wall Street Journal has an editorial page. But they do say that liberals should fight to defend the Wall Street Journal—as it is currently constituted, with its editorial page. Craven. Mendacious. Journamalists. How dumb does Franklin Foer think that I am? How dumb is Franklin Foer?...
• National Review's core principal: "Now that I'm in, let's pull up the ladder": Mark Krikorian Warns of the Hispanic Pizza Menace! http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/mark_krikorian_.html: Now remind me again how to distinguish National Review from the Onion? National Review's anti-immigration crusader Mark Krikorian warns us of the Histpanic pizza menace.... "'Hispanics now have their own pizza chain', Mr. Krikorian said. 'It's a consequence of having too many people arrive from a single foreign culture, and may well reflect a kind of cultural secession...'"
• Mathing Up "Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy" (It Has Been Done Before Department) http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/mathing_up_why_.html
• Take Education as the Key Link! http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/take_education_.html: Tyler Cowen accuses me of being "too quick" to resort to the Marshallian scissors in defending Goldin-Katz "inequality the result of too few people going to college" against Becker-Murphy "inequality the result of wonderful technological progress." How can an economist be too quick to resort to the Marshallian scissors?...
• Research Continues on the Stupidity Rays Emanating from the American Enterprise Institute... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/research_contin.html: Only Shrillblog can deal properly with American Enterprise Institute economist Kevin Hassett's declaration that the Russian economy is outperforming America's--because, you see, dictatorships like Vladimir Putin's "are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state"...
• Peace and Order Reign on the River: One of the greatest surviving artworks from 900 years ago. At wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Along_the_River_7-119-3.jpg/15000px-Along_the_River_7-119-3.jpg... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/peace_and_order.html
• Would Somebody Please Keep Ben Stein from Calling Himself an Economist? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/would_somebody_.html
• Robert Waldmann Sends Out an Emergency Call for Karl Popper to Deal with Joe Klein http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/robert_waldmann.html
• Reasons to Be Mean to the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt, Part MCCXXXIII http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/05/reasons_to_be_m.html: Back in the winter of 2003, when Europeans--serious Europeans--smart Europeans--establishment Europeans--submitted op-eds to the Washington Post saying "let the weapons inspectors in Iraq do their work," Fred Hiatt rejected them. Fred Hiatt rejected them, telling at least one: "We do not need criticism [of the Bush administration]. The decision [to attack Iraq] has been made. We have to get behind it, and deal with the world as it is, and not as we wish it would be"...