Ten Years Ago on Grasping Reality: July 13-15, 2007
Most worth reading:
Rick Perlstein has a sense not of what is coming with the fallout from the collapse of the housing bubble, but that the immediate effects are bad.
The story of Paul Gigot, Kevin Hassett, and the worst—the absolute worst—the most mendacious, deceptive and unprofessional graph that the Wall Street Journal has ever published. You can find it here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118428874152665452. As Ezra Klein wrote:
Ezra Klein (2007): Is The Wall Street Journal Worth Saving? http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/is-the-wall-str.html: "Brad DeLong described this as 'Most Dishonest Wall Street Journal Editorial Ever'. I thought that was obvious hyperbole, if for no other reason than the data set encompassing dishonest Wall Street Journal editorials is far, far too large for Brad to have comparatively evaluated in a mere day or two. It'd be like declaring a yawn from moments ago your favorite breath of air ever. It might have felt that way, but that's a hasty choice from a large pool. Brad, however, may be right. One of the ways that mendacious ideologues can lie with statistics is to simply draw and ill-fitting line through the data, pretending it shows something entirely different than it really does..."
All I can say is: every economist who signed that letter supporting Kevin Hassett for CEA Chair has a lot of explaining to do, and should be searching their soul very hard right now trying to figure out how they went astray...
Worth Hoisting:
Most Dishonest Wall Street Journal Editorial Ever http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/most-dishonest-.html: Yes, it's the Wall Street Journal editorial page reporting more American Enterprise Institute-quality research from Kevin Hassett. This is the most mendacious ever...
Stupidest Man Alive Emeritus [Donald Luskin] Strikes AGAIN!! http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/stupidest-man-a.html: A correspondent writes that there is one and only one person who supports and endorses the Wall Street Journal's latest Laffer curve...
Caccianli i Ciel per Non Esser Men Belli,/ N lo Profondo Inferno Li Riceve... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/caccianli-i-cie.html: "Megan [McArdle]... trying to take a middle position.... three misrepresentations.... (1) The WSJ line is not "draw[n] through noisy data." It is drawn above noisy data. (2) To say that the WSJ line is "not... the obvious" one to draw implies that there might be some non-obvious reason to draw it. There isn't. (3) The claim that the WSJ line is "not the only... one to draw" is a statement that it is one of the lines that one might draw with some justification. It isn't. All I can say is: "Questo misero modo/ tegnon l'anime triste di coloro/ che visser sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo./ Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro/ de li angeli che non furon ribelli/ né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro./ Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,/ né lo profondo inferno li riceve..."
Ten Links for 2007-07-14 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/links-for-20-12.html: including: Rick Perlstein: The Foreclosing of America (Part 3): Chainsaw Jim https://web.archive.org/web/20070718091745/http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/foreclosing_america_part_3_chainsaw_jim: "Shaker Heights. How the very name once made your heart sing with joy-you, a hard-scrabble kid from Cleveland, who managed to work your way through college and a master's degree in computer science, even if the accomplishment left you with twenty thousand dollars in debt. You remember, that fall day in 2004 - Election Day! - as the happiest in your life. That day, you turned the key to your very own home: Shaker Heights. Now: not so much. Now, in March of 2007, the very phrase name makes you shudder. On your block there are two abandoned houses-two owners whose loans had been foreclosed-and city workers have been busy mowing the overgrown weeds, boarding up broken windows, and installing alarms against squatters, lest your block start looking like some Third World slum, and the price of you and your neighbors' homes plummet further..." Rick Perlstein got it.
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The Entire List:
Six Links for 2007-07-16 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/links-for-20-14.html: Including: Kieran Healy: "Dept of Being Savaged by a Dead Sheep", and "The Wealthiest Americans Ever" (I think Astor, Girard, Taylor, and van Rensselaer are ranked too high; and some of our moderns too low)...
Let's Not Tell Hilzoy http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/lets-not-tell-h.html that today the New York Times published Greg Mankiw's one-paragraph missketch of John Rawls...
PGL and Mark Thoma on Greg Mankiw http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/pgl-and-mark-th.html
The Record Industry's Decline http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/the-record-indu.html
Caccianli i Ciel per Non Esser Men Belli,/ N lo Profondo Inferno Li Riceve... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/caccianli-i-cie.html: "Megan is trying to take a middle position.... I see three misrepresentations.... (1) The WSJ line is not "draw[n] through noisy data." It is drawn above noisy data. (2) To say that the WSJ line is "not... the obvious" one to draw implies that there might be some non-obvious reason to draw it. There isn't. (3) The claim that the WSJ line is "not the only... one to draw" is a statement that it is one of the lines that one might draw with some justification. It isn't. All I can say is: "Questo misero modo/ tegnon l'anime triste di coloro/ che visser sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo./ Mischiate sono a quel cattivo coro/ de li angeli che non furon ribelli/ né fur fedeli a Dio, ma per sé fuoro./ Caccianli i ciel per non esser men belli,/ né lo profondo inferno li riceve..."
five Links for 2007-07-15 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/links-for-20-13.html
Books Do Furnish a Room http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/books-do-furnis.html
Around the Lafayette, CA Reservoir This Morning http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/around-the-lafa.html
Stupidest Man Alive Emeritus [Donald Luskin] Strikes AGAIN!! http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/stupidest-man-a.html: A correspondent writes that there is one and only one person who supports and endorses the Wall Street Journal's latest Laffer curve...
Ten Links for 2007-07-14 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/links-for-20-12.html: including: Rick Perlstein: The Foreclosing of America (Part 3): Chainsaw Jim https://web.archive.org/web/20070718091745/http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/foreclosing_america_part_3_chainsaw_jim: "Shaker Heights. How the very name once made your heart sing with joy-you, a hard-scrabble kid from Cleveland, who managed to work your way through college and a master's degree in computer science, even if the accomplishment left you with twenty thousand dollars in debt. You remember, that fall day in 2004 - Election Day! - as the happiest in your life. That day, you turned the key to your very own home: Shaker Heights. Now: not so much. Now, in March of 2007, the very phrase name makes you shudder. On your block there are two abandoned houses-two owners whose loans had been foreclosed-and city workers have been busy mowing the overgrown weeds, boarding up broken windows, and installing alarms against squatters, lest your block start looking like some Third World slum, and the price of you and your neighbors' homes plummet further..." Rick Perlstein got it.
The Past Week in "Egregious Moderation": July 13, 2007 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/the-past-week-1.html: Bruce Bartlett has observed that with the coming of the internet everyone can become a pundit and a columnist. Everyone can also become editor of a small weekly magazine. Here is my last week's worth of rotisserie-league discourse and debate on politics and reality...
The Past Week in "Shrillblog": July 13, 2007 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/the-past-week-i.html: We still remember the early days, when the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill was so small that its Grand Conventions consisted of Paul Krugman talking to himself while warming a can of baked beans over a can of sterno while he huddled from the rain beneath a New Jersey Turnpike overpass. Wow, have things changed...
Don Boudreaux vs. Dani Rodrik on Industrial Policy: I Call This One for Don--I Think It's a Knockout http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/don-boudreaux-v.html: As Lant Pritchett put it once: "there is nothing as catastrophic as state-led development led by an anti-developmental state"...
Most Dishonest Wall Street Journal Editorial Ever http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/most-dishonest-.html: Yes, it's the Wall Street Journal editorial page reporting more American Enterprise Institute-quality research from Kevin Hassett. This is the most mendacious ever...
Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius... http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/tlon-uqbar-orbi.html
Dean Baker Has to Spend His Time Countering More Misinformation from the Washington Post http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/dean-baker-has-.html
France has Been Our Friend for 240 Years (Lafayette We Are Here Department) http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/france-has-been.html
Tyler Cowen on Paul Collier's "The Bottom Billion" http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/tyler-cowen-on-.html