Ten Years and One Month Ago on Grasping Reality: July 15-17. 2008...
Brad DeLong was totally, utterly, completely wrong on July 16, 2008. In my defense, I would say that my wrongness was because I did not understand that Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson were about to abandon Bagehot's Rule for how to deal with a financial crisis. Why did they abandon Bagehot's Rule? None of them has ever given an explanation of their thinking that I can regard as other than transparently false: Greenspanism Looking Pretty Good...: The dot-com bubble and the real-estate bubble were bad news for the investors in Webvan, WorldCom, Countrywide, FNMA, and securitized subprime mortgages. But they were, by and large, good news for the rest of us. And investors are supposed to take care of themselves. Now we are not yet out of the woods. If the tide of financial distress sweeps the Fed and the Treasury away--if we find ourselves in a financial-meltdown world where unemployment or inflation kisses 10%--then I will unhappily concede, and say that Greenspanism was a mistake. But so far the real economy in which people make stuff and other people buy it has been remarkably well insulated from panic at 57th and Park and on Canary Wharf...
Why We Need a Different Opposition Party to Compete with the Democrats (Miscellaneous): The spinmasters for Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan rooted the Republican Party in three beliefs: 1. the government is not on your side--the government is on the side of the Negroes. 2. tax cuts always raise revenues. 3. the people outside our borders (and the people inside our borders who came from outside our borders) are not our friends. The ramifications of these beliefs have poisoned the entire party. They are the reason that smart well-intentioned Republicans--like George H.W. Bush--turned out to be mediocre presidents; that not-smart but well-intentioned Republicans--like Ronald Reagan (who with the help of his wife and her astrologer partially escaped #3)--turned out to be lousy presidents; and Republicans who were neither smart nor well-meaning--like George W. Bush--has turned out to be either the worst or the second-worst president in American history (depending on what you think of James Buchanan)...
Let Us Now Speak Ill of the Economist of London: I would not have thought that a British publication could write an obituary for Jesse Helms that omits Helms's claim that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a communist dupe helping the Russians conquer Central America. Nevertheless, the London Economist does...
Greenspanism Looking Pretty Good...: The dot-com bubble and the real-estate bubble were bad news for the investors in Webvan, WorldCom, Countrywide, FNMA, and securitized subprime mortgages. But they were, by and large, good news for the rest of us. And investors are supposed to take care of themselves. Now we are not yet out of the woods. If the tide of financial distress sweeps the Fed and the Treasury away--if we find ourselves in a financial-meltdown world where unemployment or inflation kisses 10%--then I will unhappily concede, and say that Greenspanism was a mistake. But so far the real economy in which people make stuff and other people buy it has been remarkably well insulated from panic at 57th and Park and on Canary Wharf...
Let Us Now Speak Ill of the Economist of London: I would not have thought that a British publication could write an obituary for Jesse Helms that omits Helms's claim that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a communist dupe helping the Russians conquer Central America. Nevertheless, the London Economist does...
FNMA: A History Lesson: Truth be told, I am having a hard time understanding why FNMA and FHLMC equity has dropped so much. The power to borrow money at essentially the Treasury rate and use it to make mortgages is awesomely valuable. FNMA and FHLMC shareholders own that power--unless the Fed and the Treasury force it into a Bear Stearns- or LTCM-like fire sale. That is, I think, what the market fears...
Out of Date Already! Will Fannie and Freddie Get Government Support?: The chance that American taxpayers will actually lose any money if Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson decide that Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE) need government support is very low...
Why We Need a Different Opposition Party to Compete with the Democrats (Miscellaneous): The spinmasters for Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan rooted the Republican Party in three beliefs: 1. the government is not on your side--the government is on the side of the Negroes. 2. tax cuts always raise revenues. 3. the people outside our borders (and the people inside our borders who came from outside our borders) are not our friends. The ramifications of these beliefs have poisoned the entire party. They are the reason that smart well-intentioned Republicans--like George H.W. Bush--turned out to be mediocre presidents; that not-smart but well-intentioned Republicans--like Ronald Reagan (who with the help of his wife and her astrologer partially escaped #3)--turned out to be lousy presidents; and Republicans who were neither smart nor well-meaning--like George W. Bush--has turned out to be either the worst or the second-worst president in American history (depending on what you think of James Buchanan)...
Rules of War: John Ashcroft says that it was perfectly OK for the ChiComs to use the water torture on American servicemen captured in Korea.... Impeach John Ashcroft. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach George W. Bush. Do it now...
The Grand Strategy of the United States of America: Barack Obama: "We have to hunt down those who would resort to violence to move their agenda, their ideology forward. We should be going after al Qaeda and those networks fiercely and effectively. But what we also want to do is to shrink the pool of potential recruits. And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it..."
New York Times Death Spiral Watch: Yep. Michael Grynbaum...
Health Care Reform Blogging: From As Good as It Gets: "Carol Connelly: F------ H.M.O. bastard pieces of shit! Beverly Connelly: Carol! Carol Connelly: Sorry. Dr. Martin Bettes: It's okay. Actually, I think that's their technical name..."
Noodle Salad Blogging: From As Good as It Gets: "Carol Connelly: OK, we all have these terrible stories to get over, and you-... Melvin Udall: That's not true. Some have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car. But, a lot of people, that's their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good..." IMHO, this is Jack Nicholson's best movie line evar...
New York Times Death Spiral Watch (Time's Numbers Master Gets Shrill, Berserk, and Medieval on Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee: Karen Tumulty: "I've long made the argument that journalists care wildly more about candidates’ spouses than readers do, but someone needs to tell me why the racial dissension is 'over Michelle Obama'..."
Tragedy of the Anticommons: Highly Recommended: Michael Heller (2008), The Gridlock Economy (New York: Basic: 9780465029167)...
Kieran Healy's Standard Model of Sociophysics: "I’m looking forward to spending a bit of time at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences this fall.... [T]he Stanford Superconducting Supersocializer... will propel local college sophomores at tremendous speeds into unfamiliar groups of people in an effort to plumb the structure of the elementary particles of social interaction..."
What All Schoolchildren Learn/Those to Whom Evil Is Done/Do Evil in Return: Both the Israeli and the Palestinian governments have very bloody hands. But there is a special circle of hell reserved for those who gleefully boast of their bloody hands—like Mahmoud Abbas today...
New York Times Death Spiral Watch (Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee Edition): The idea of saying anything about Black-white opinion differences based on a poll with only 300 Blacks in it... is bizarre statistical malpractice of a high order...
Why Does Mark Halperin Still Have a Job?
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the New Yorker's Obama Cover: Sadly, that picture exaggerates nothing--that's exactly what a slice of Americans believe about Barack Obama.... Later in the interview Remnick compares this to Colbert's lampooning of the Right. Um, no. Again, Colbert is so exaggerated that only an alien could think that he was actually a right-winger.... I get the intent of the picture, but I think it just fails...
Where Should Barack Obama Be Campaigning?: It's not the votes in states that the polls say are evenly divided that count the most. It's the votes in those states that will be evenly divided if the election turns out to be close that count the most...
