Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

The List:

• Felix Salmon on Noise--Literally: Noise--Traders http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/felix-salmon-on.html: He watches Jim Cramer, and is scared: "Great Moments in Punditry: Jim Cramer on Housing: Is it worth responding to this as though it's rational? Is this what passes for informed commentary on TV these days? I can see how it gets ratings, in a train-wreck kind of way–hell, I'm blogging it. But the idea that wealthy people will stop paying their mortgages because their houses are 'fungible' (unless we get a 100bp cut in the Fed funds rate, of course)–it's like some kind of incredibly unfunny parody. Nouriel Roubini et al might be shrill, but at least there's coherent logic to their position. What scares me is that this could be a rare and genuine glimpse into how traders actually think. In which case the Great Moderation and decline in volatility of recent years is doomed to die a sudden and extremely unpleasant death..."
• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Bill O'Reilly Edition) http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/why-oh-why-ca-8.html: Atrios tells us that it is Felafel Day, and provides quotes from noted Fox News journalist Bill O'Reilly: "If any woman ever breathed a word I'll make her pay so dearly that she'll wish she'd never been born. I'll rake her through the mud, bring up things in her life and make her so miserable that she'll be destroyed. And besides, she wouldn't be able to afford the lawyers I can or endure it financially as long as I can. And nobody would believe her, it'd be her word against mine and who are they going to believe? Me or some unstable woman making outrageous accusations. They'd see her as some psycho, someone unstable. Besides, I'd never make the mistake of picking unstable crazy girls like that.... If you cross FOX NEWS CHANNEL, it's not just me, it's [FOX President] Roger Ailes who will go after you. I'm the street guy out front making loud noises about the issues, but Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes and makes things happen so that one day BAM! The person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me."
• Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post Edition) http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/why-oh-why-ca-9.html: Outsourced to Matthew Yglesias, who examines Ruth Marcus's special pleading for Alberto Gonzales.... "The possibility that if the administration continues to dissemble and mislead congress, and is told in advance that it can get off the hook for doing so, it might be difficult to get to the bottom of this matter doesn't seem to have occurred to her. Oh, well." She can't really be that stupid, can she? Anybody think that Ruth Marcus and company "should[n't] have been gone long ago"? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
• James Fallows: Two-Class Voting and the Great Newspaper http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/james-fallows-t.html: James Fallows writes about public trusts and public corporations.... One would think that the Wall Street Journal editorial page since a time before the memory of man, or the Washington Post editorial board since 2000, or the New York Times's Whitewater and Iraq coverage would give Jim a little pause. Freedom from market discipline is not enough; freedom from wingnuttery is needed as well.
• Three Links for 2007-08-01 http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/links-for-20-29.html
• David Wessel Sends Us to Bill Poole on Milton Friedman http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/david-wessel-se.html: "William Poole now thinks that Friedman was wrong, and too pessimistic, and that the Fed has done better over the past quarter century than the Friedman rule would allow..."
• A Real Red-Blue Vote Map http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/a-real-red-blue.html
• Smoking Gun on Bill O'Reilly http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/smoking-gun-on-.html
• Tom Slee on Distributed Collaborative Filtering: The Netflix Prize: 300 Days Later http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/tom-slee-on-dis.html
• Robert Guth on Craig Mundie of Microsoft http://www.bradford-delong.com/2007/07/robert-guth-on-.html