Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Required Readings Note:

The required readings for Module 11 are rather long—but not nearly as long as for Modules 9 & 5, where I wound up taking two weeks per module.

There is Skidelsky chapter 6 https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/chapter-skidelsky-keynes-6.pdf. The chapters of Skidelsky before this one I've been all about how Keynes was smart and right. This chapter is, from Skidelsky’s view as of 1995, as an enthusiastic advocate of the neoliberal turn, how Keynes’s disciples were dumb and wrong. It is a very good analysis, on the level of events and ideas, of why people decided to take the neoliberal turn.

11.1. The Neoliberal Turn, & Hyperglobalization: Readings
https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0wiN44cBruFAXnvv0weXzgCNw
https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/econ-115-module-11.1-neoliberal-turn-readings.pptx
https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/11/111-the-neoliberal-turn-hyperglobalization-readings.html
https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f080038834026bdea77620200c/edit Frame your reading of it around these three quotes:

George Robert Schwarz: The History and Development of Caravels https://nautarch.tamu.edu/Theses/pdf-files/Schwarz-MA2008.pdf: 'Information gained from the available sources reveals many of the caravel’s characteristics through time. This ship type outclassed its contemporaries during the age of exploration because of its highly adaptive characteristics. These traits were, principally, its shallow draught, speed, maneuverability, and ability to sail close to the wind. This combination of attributes made the caravel the ideal ship for reconnaissance along the rocky African coastline, as well as for making the transatlantic voyages to the New World. It was built in a Mediterranean way during its post-medieval phases, a method that still survives in some parts of the world today. During the Age of Discovery (ca. 1430 to 1530), the caravel sat low in the water, had one sterncastle, and was either lateen-rigged or had a combination of square and lateen sails. This vessel reflects the advanced shipbuilding technology that existed in Europe at this time, and played and important role in the voyages which allowed the Europeans to expand their territories around the world. The results of the studies presented in this thesis provide a history and development of the caravel, which was gradual and often obscure. What has been gained from this work is a body of information that can be applied to other studies about ancient seafaring, and can serve as a starting point for further research...

#commercialrevolution #economic hisotry#globalization #noted #2020-05-13

4149 words: https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/lecture-east-asia-text.pdf

East Asia was on the downside of the Malthusian cycle when western Europe erupted into the eastern Pacific in the 1800s: populous, with many ingenious and efficient non-machine technologies for squeezing output out of very limited resources, but desperately poor. “The West” brought machine technologies and the global market. It also brought a measure of contempt for east Asia. Nearly all western observers thought the idea that the Mysterious East might catch up to the north Atlantic in any reasonable historical timeframe was absolutely ludicrous.

Malthusian poverty meant no domestic middle-class to demand domestic manufactures, and productivity levels in Asia were hopeless as far as manufactured exports were concerned. The military and political power gradient vis-à-vis the north Atlantic meant no ability to impose tariffs, even had a domestic middle class on whose demand one might be able to build a community of engineering practice and progress existed. The lack of a powerful domestic bourgeoisie meant rule by princes for whom broad-based economic growth was simply not a priority. And in general a “Confucian” religious orientation meant that right moral attitude was more important than the rationalization of techniques and methods.

As Melissa Dale says: If we were sitting here in the 1950s, we would not have predicted anything like east Asia’s miracles.

Yet we have had four: first the early industrialization of Japan, then the extraordinary drive of Japan to global north status from 1950 to 1975, then the four east Asian tigers, and now coastal China.

All that surprises...

3086 words https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/lecture-inequality-text.pdf

The large populations and low levels of material wealth and agricultural productivity in China and India checked the growth of wages. Workers could be cheaply imported and employed at wages not that far above the physical subsistence level. Low wage costs meant that commodities produced in countries open to Asian immigration were relatively cheap. And competition from the Malaysian rubber plantations checked growth and even pushed down wages of the Brazilian rubber tappers as well. The late nineteenth century saw living standards and wage rates become and remain relatively low (although higher than in China and India) throughout the regions that were to come to be called the third world. And as wages in economies that were to become the global periphery were checked, the prospects for having a rich-enough middle class to provide demand for a strong domestic industrial sector ebbed rapidly.

As a result, the chain of causation went thus:

• The openness of some places where tropical goods could be produced to migration from China and India pushed down their prices in world markets.
• Low prices in the world markets meant low wages everywhere tropical goods were produced.
• Low wages meant no prosperous middle-class anywhere tropical goods were produced.
• No prosperous middle-class meant no mass domestic demand for manufactures.
• No domestic demand for manufactures meant no chance of starting industrialization.
• No chance of starting industrialization meant no building a community of engineering practice.
• No community of engineering practice meant no taking the next step and advancing in industrialization.
• No advancing in industrialization meant no walking onto the escalator to modernity and prosperity.

That, in a nutshell, is the story of the relative underdevelopment of the global south. It was not that globalization left the global south alone in the years before World War I. It was that globalization put it on a road that made its industrialization more difficult, even though the openness of world markets made it more prosperous in that pre-World war I half century seen rightly as a global El Dorado.

Introduction

Outside of the charmed magic circle of western and central Europe, North America, and the other Anglo-Saxon settler colonies, few indeed are the economies that have managed successful economic development in the sense of convegence: materially closing any significant fraction of their productivity and living standards gap vis-a-vis the world's economic leaders. The Northeast Asian Pacific Rim, now including China; further south, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam; India and Sri Lanka; elsewhere, Turkey, Chile, Botswana, Mauritius, and Cabo Verde. That is all. And with perhaps one or two exceptions, those few have followed the particular economic development path of using low-wage manufacturing exports to nurture their domestic communities of engineering practice—a path that is now closing.

It has long been easy to see the glass half-full with respect to global economic growth: technologies and organizational forms can be imitated and adopted, do diffuse, and even the poorer parts of the globe are much richer than they were two or one or even half a century ago. It has been much harder to see the glass half-full with respect to convergence: the catching-up and closing of the gap vis-a-vis the world's industrial leaders. Why have so few countries been able to walk the path? And what are our prospects for the future? With the prospective closing of the standard parth for convergence, seeing the glass half-full is becoming harder: perhaps there will be no glass at all.

Hoisted from the Archives: Ricardo's Big Idea, and Its Vicissitudes https://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/10/ricardos-big-idea-and-its-vicissitudes-inet-edinburgh-comparative-advantage-panel.html:

INET Edinburgh Comparative Advantage Panel

Ricardo's Big Idea, and Its Vicissitudes

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0QMFGpAUFCjqhdfLULfDbLE4g

Emma Lazarus: The New Colossus: "Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"...

Weekend Reading: Lin Zexu (1839): To Queen Victoria: "We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. The purpose of your ships in coming to China is to realize a large profit. Since this profit is realized in China and is in fact taken away from the Chinese people, how can foreigners return injury for the benefit they have received by sending this poison to harm their benefactors? They may not intend to harm others on purpose, but the fact remains that they are so obsessed with material gain that they have no concern whatever for the harm they can cause to others. Have they no conscience? I have heard that you strictly prohibit opium in your own country, indicating unmistakably that you know how harmful opium is. You do not wish opium to harm your own country, but you choose to bring that harm to other countries such as China. Why?...

In the modern world, it is not tariff reduction but regulatory harmonization that is required for grasping increased benefits from the world division of labor. We need to work to level up rather than level down or level stupid, but we need to work to level the regulatory landscape. The Brexit hope is for a free-trade zone with the United States but also with "national sovereignty" over regulatory matters. That is just not how it works:

N. Piers Ludlow: Did We Ever Really Understand How the EU Works?: "Michael Gove... referred... to a free trade zone... from Iceland to Turkey of which Britain would, he was confident, still be part... irrespective of the outcome of the referendum. But this focus on tariffs was quaintly anachronistic, because ever since the 1980s the main target of European liberalisation efforts has... been... non-tariff barriers... regulatory convergence...

Hoisted from the Archives: _What Is This "White" You Speak of, Kemosabe?: One way to look at Nixon's 'Silent Majority' strategy was that it involved the redefinition of lots of people as 'white'—people who wouldn't have been 'white' even thirty years before, back when they were seen as not-quite-real-American ethnic immigrants living in ghettos and serving the corrupt Democratic political machines against which the Republicans fought—probably entangled in organized crime, too.

Introducing Partha Dasgupta: Economics: A Very Short Introduction

http://amzn.to/2gR2jH3

Back in 1800, nearly the entire world lived in dire poverty—what we today see as the dire poverty line of $1.90 a day, a level at which you are spending more than half your income on bare calories and essential nutrients, the minimum of heat and shelter, and the minimum of clothing. Below that line, certainly your health and perhaps your life is impacted: women become too skinny to reliably ovulate, and children become too malnourished to have healthy and effective immune systems. Back in 1800, there were only a few economies where the median household had a standard of living of more than $3 a day: Germany, France, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the U.K., the U.S., and that was it.

Important to today, I think, is that the aliens in Ossian's Ride are refugees: Henry Farrell: Ossian’s Ride: "In 1959 the famous British astronomer Fred Hoyle published his novel, Ossian’s Ride... a future Ireland miraculously transformed into a technological superpower.... Hoyle wasn’t really interested in talking about Ireland.... Instead, he wanted to score points in an internal fight over British identity... responding to the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, who regularly denounced Hoyle as a secular atheist on radio and had written his own science fiction novel, That Hideous Strength, a decade before. The villain of Lewis’s book was a sinister institute called NICE, which Satanic aliens wanted to impose contraception, lesbianism, secularism and surrealist art on an unsuspecting Britain.... Hoyle riposted with a novel where rational and benevolently ruthless aliens used an organization called ICE to pull the priest-ridden republic next door into the technological age. His satirical portrait of Ireland told British readers that the world was being transformed around them, and that even their most backwards seeming neighbor would outstrip them if they didn’t embrace modernity. The irony of history is that Hoyle’s parody is now the truth...

Project Syndicate: America’s Superpower Panic: History suggests that a global superpower in relative decline should aim for a soft landing, so that it still has a comfortable place in the world once its dominance fades. By contrast, US President Donald Trump's incoherent, confrontational approach toward China could seriously damage America’s long-term interests.

Consider a country that is the global superpower.

Its military is best-of-breed. Its reach extends from Japan to the West Indies to the Indian Ocean, and beyond. Its industries of the most productive in the world. It Is predominate in world trade. It dominates global finance.

But, when this global superpower looks to the west, across the sea, it sees a rising power—a confident nation with a larger population, hungry for wealth, hungry for preeminence, seeing itself as possessing a manifest destiny to supersede the old superpower. And, unless something goes horribly wrong with the rising power to the west, its rise is indeed all but inevitable.

I want to thank XXXXXX XXXXXX. I confess I had thought that if the President started putting migrant children in cage, the immediate reaction would not be that this might well be a clever political move. I do have a sense that for a lot of people who know better on the Republican side, they think there's mileage to be gained by characterizing bedrock American values as if they were foreign and "cosmopolitan" values. And it is very nice to hear XXXXXX pushing back.

In fact, I really do not understand XXXXXX XXXXXX's claim that the President has "put the Democrats in a box" on immigration. As I read the Gallup Poll, by 64% to 35% Americans want immigration continued at the same level or increased. 37% want the level decreased. The President wants the level of immigration decreased—illegal immigration and legal immigration alike, and we certainly shouldn't have any judges whose parents were born in Mexico. Trump is on the side of the late Sam Huntington—who liked to rant about how the immigration of Cubans had ruined Miami, and "would the last American leaving please remember to bring the flag."

How is abandoning the 64% position for a 35% position putting your opponents in a box?

Hoisted from Two Years Ago: I must say, afgter two years I think Duncan Black was much too kind here. My remarks at the time: Monday Smackdown: Every Time I Try to Get Out, They Pull Me Back In... Clive Crook Edition_: So after a pep talk from Noah Smith Saturday night about how it is time to become kinder and gentler—to look for opportunities to praise for being smart people who in the past I have criticized for being really really really dumb—I wake up Monday morning, and I wince because Duncan Black has been reading the once-thoughtful Clive Crook again....

Duncan Black http://www.eschatonblog.com/2017/07/national-humiliation.html: "People is weird.... [Clive Crook:]...

Suppose a second referendum was called and the result was Remain; suppose the EU said, "Great, glad to have you back."... This cringing submission would raise instinctive euro-skepticism to new extremes and divide the U.K. even more bitterly... a national humiliation... [that] would surpass the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the country's surrender to trade-union militancy in the 1970s—crushing setbacks with far-reaching political consequences. If there were ever a case of "be careful what you wish for," this is it...

This the thinking that leads to pointless catastrophic wars. Let's shoot ourselves in the face just to prove our gun works...

I really, really wish Jared Bernstein would not do this. It is simply not the case—as he knows well—that policymakers "quickly forgot about the need to compensate for the losses" from expanded international trade. Democratic policymakers—of whom Jared is one—well-remembered this, but after November 1994 did not have the power. Republican policymakers did not see the need as a need at all: they did not forget it: they ignored it.

Do you want to know what I think? I think a lot of not completely consistent things. Here are three things to read:

I confess I do not get this from Paul Krugman.

Yes, the trade deficit crowds-out traditionally-male blue-collar import-substituting manufacturing jobs, but imports crowd-in traditionally-male blue-collar wholesale trade jobs, and finance traditionally-male blue-collar construction (and capital-goods manufacturing) jobs. If you look at all traditionally-male blue-collar—wholesale, construction, manufacturing, and mining)–what you get is not a story of the trade deficit, but rather a story of (a) macro shocks to aggregate demand, and (b) the long-run technology-and-preferences trend—some of which is automation.

NAFTA is nowhere.

The 2002-2007 bilateral-trade "China shock" is simply not a terribly big deal for the country as a whole: employment in traditionally-male blue-collar occupations was flat. A big deal for places that found their manufactures competing with new imports from China, yes. But not for blue-collar traditionally-male employment in the country as a whole.

For the country as a whole, it is aggregate demand—2001-3 recession, weak recovery, 2007-9 catastrophe, and then superweak recovery—with a supporting role for technology-and-preferences:

Paul Krugman: "Yang asserts that automation destroyed lots of manufacturing in the midwest, [but] you don't have to be a protectionist to realize that the acceleration of job loss after 2000 was mainly about the surging trade deficit:

No Longer Fresh at Project Syndicate: In the New York Review of Books, Adam Tooze recently wrote that: "across the American political spectrum, if there is agreement on anything, it is on the need for a firmer line against China". He is correct: On this, the bombs-and-bullets people, the geopolitics people, and the blame-somebody-else people are all agreed. The U.S. needs to do something to strengthen its relative position, and that means it needs to start doing something to China.

But that would be going about it the wrong way. Thinking that the right way to do something is to do something to China is a very bad way to think.

Berkeley Economics: Economics CIP Code Update and FAQs | Department of Economics: "(5) What are the practical effects of this change for domestic students? For international students? The reclassification of Economics as a STEM major may enhance research and funding opportunities, job market placement and diversity and growth in the field that can be associated with other STEM majors. For international students, the STEM classification increases accessibility to US job opportunities with an extension of work visas, etc. This was not an available option with our current general economics CIP code.... (6) As an international student, how will this impact my Optional Practical Training (OPT)? OPT is work authorization available to F-1 international students who have been full-time students for at least two consecutive semesters and who plan to seek employment in the United States in their fields of study. On March 11, 2016, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a new STEM Final Rule, with effective date May 10, 2016. Eligible students may now apply for a 24 Month STEM Extension up to 90 days prior to the expiration of their OPT Employment Authorization Document (EAD). Our CIP code approval qualifies our degree programs as a STEM related field of study for the Optional Practical Training (OPT) extension for employment of 24 months. For further information about your OPT options, please consult with the Berkeley International Office (BIO)...

Live at Project Syndicate: What to Do About China?: BERKELEY–In a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, the historian Adam Tooze notes that, “across the American political spectrum, if there is agreement on anything, it is on the need for a firmer line against China.” He’s right: On this singular issue, the war hawks, liberal internationalists, and blame-somebody-else crowd all tend to agree. They have concluded that because the United States needs to protect its relative position on the world stage, China’s standing must be diminished.... But that is the wrong way to approach the challenge.... It is entirely foreseeable that America’s attempt to “get tough” with China could accelerate its own relative decline, effectively handing China the semi-hegemony it is already approaching.... So, what should the US do to shore up its position vis-à-vis China?... The US could start to become what it would have been if Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election, if Hillary Clinton had defeated Trump, and if the Republican party had not abandoned its patriotism... Read MOAR at Project Syndicate

Joseph Ford Cotto: J. Bradford DeLong says "NAFTA is just not a big deal for the U.S.", explains why: "Support for Bernie Sanders and the Donald did not rise out of nowhere, after all. In such turbulent waters as these, it is important to seek the guidance of a wise, seasoned captain. Insofar as the sea of dollars and cents is concerned, J. Bradford DeLong is just that fellow. He is "a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, a weblogger for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth http://equitablegrowth.org/blog, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Clinton administration .... He also writes the weblog Grasping Reality: http://bradford-delong.com," as DeLong's U.C.B. biography explains. Dr. DeLong recently spoke with me about many topics relative to our nation's economy. Some of our conversation is included below....

Weekend Reading: Chris Cook: Defeated by Brexit: Forgetting Our History: "The Brexit negotiations are not really about the UK and 27 other countries. They are about Britain’s long and troubled relationship with Ireland. And while Dublin was prepared for that, it took London completely by surprise.... During the 2016 referendum campaign, John Major and Tony Blair, the former British prime ministers, tried to alert voters to inherent tensions between leaving the EU and preserving the UK’s relationship with Ireland. Their warnings were dismissed as fear-mongering. Ireland attracted almost no attention, but it would be the central pivot on which Brexit would turn. None of this was clear on the morning after the referendum. But nothing was. The prime minister, David Cameron, was preparing to announce his resignation. The people had voted against EU membership, but not for anything to replace it. For new leadership the government would have to wait for the Conservatives to choose a new leader...

Note to Self: From Council on Foreign Relations: The Future of Democracy Symposium: Session Two: Economics, Identity, and the Democratic Recession: Over 2001—2008 the furniture workers who had lost their jobs because of NAFTA and the China shock were getting new and better jobs in construction, building up Raleigh and Durham. Few unhappy about the economic transformation of the Carolinas until late 2008. Then, all of a sudden, it turned out that a great many securities rated AAA by Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s in fact had no business being sold to anyone at any price at all; the Democrats did not prioritize a return to full employment; and the Republicans prioritized a non-return to full employment in the hope of weakening a Democratic president. Economic anxiety producing racial cleavage, yes. But it was political decisions, not trade or even technology that done it.

Note to Self: From Council on Foreign Relations: The Future of Democracy Symposium: Session Two: Economics, Identity, and the Democratic Recession: Look at me: Harvard Ph.D., Harvard B.A., Harvard B.A ancestors back to 1686 or whenever, Sidwell Friends School, and before that Cal Tech nursery school. But my wife grew up—first generation in her family to go to college—in a Portuguese neighborhood of Fall River, where everyone’s parents and grandparents worked in the textile mills. The textile mills of Fall River were stripped by Greensboro, North Carolina. They took the jobs away from the Portuguese millworker immigrants of Fall River. They stole that identity.

Weekend Reading: Raphael Hogarth: "Some MPs Talk about 'No Deal' as a Great Liberation. 'No Deal' Actually Means Total Supplication, Handing Huge Control over the UK to the European Commission.Read the government’s technical notices on no deal, and you will find that an awful lot of sectors will need a decision from Brussels to keep trading...

Hoisted from the Archives: Note: The Ten Americans Who Did the Most to Win the Cold War:

• Harry Dexter White: Treasury Assistant Secretary* who was the major force behind the Bretton Woods Conference and the institutional reconstruction of the post-World War II world economy. He accepted enough of John Maynard Keynes's proposals to lay the groundwork for the greatest generation of economic growth the world has ever seen. It was the extraordinary prosperity set in motion by the Bretton Woods' System and institutions--the "Thirty Glorious Years"--that demonstrated that political democracy and the mixed economy could deliver and distribute economic prosperity.

• George Kennan: Author of the "containment" strategy that won the Cold War. Argued--correctly--that World War III could be avoided if the Western Alliance made clear its determination to "contain" the Soviet Union and World Communism, and that the internal contradictions of the Soviet Union would lead it to evolve into something much less dangerous than Stalin's tyranny.

• George Marshall: Architect of victory in World War II. Post-World War II Secretary of State who proposed the Marshall Plan, another key step in the economic and institutional reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II.

• Arthur Vandenberg: Leading Republican Senator from Michigan who made foreign policy truly bipartisan for a few years. Without Vandenberg, it is doubtful that Truman, Marshall, Acheson, and company would have been able to muster enough Congressional support to do their work.

• Paul Hoffman: Chief Marshall Plan administrator. The man who did the most to turn the Marshall Plan from a good idea to an effective aid program.

• Dean Acheson: Principal architect of the post-World War II Western Alliance. That Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, and the United States reached broad consensus on how to wage Cold War is more due to Dean Acheson's diplomatic skill than to any single other person.

• Harry S Truman: The President who decided that the U.S. had to remain engaged overseas--had to fight the Cold War--and that the proper way to fight the Cold War was to adopt Kennan's proposed policy of containment. His strategic choices were, by and large, very good ones.

• Dwight D. Eisenhower: As first commander-in-chief of NATO, played an indispensable role in turning the alliance into a reality. His performance as President was less satisfactory: too many empty words about "rolling back" the Iron Curtain, too much of a willingness to try to skimp on the defense budget by adopting "massive retaliation" as a policy, too much trust in the erratic John Foster Dulles.

• Gerald Ford: In the end, the thing that played the biggest role in the rise of the dissident movement behind the Iron Curtain was Gerald Ford's convincing the Soviet Union to sign the Helsinki Accords. The Soviet Union thought that it had gained worldwide recognition of Stalin's land grabs. But what it had actually done was to commit itself and its allies to at least pretending to observe norms of civil and political liberties. And as the Communist Parties of the East Bloc forgot that in the last analysis they were tyrants seated on thrones of skulls, this Helsinki commitment emboldened their opponents and their governments' failures to observe it undermined their own morale.

• George Shultz: Convinced Ronald Reagan--correctly--that Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika" and "glasnost" were serious attempts at reform and liberalization, and needed to be taken seriously. Without Shultz, it is unlikely that Gorbachev would have met with any sort of encouragement from the United States--and unlikely that Gorbachev would have been able to remain in power long enough to make his attempts at reform irreversible. *Also, almost surely an "Agent of Influence" and perhaps an out-and-out spy for Stalin's Russia. If so, never did any intelligence service receive worse service from an agent than Stalin's Russia did from Harry Dexter White....

#hoistedfromthearchives #politics #security #history #highlighted

Note to Self: Monday, February 11, 2019 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM (PST). IRLE. 2521 Channing Way. Berkeley, CA 94720: Kim Clausing: Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0674919335: "With the winds of trade war blowing as they have not done in decades and Left and Right flirting with protectionism, Kimberly Clausing shows how a free, open economy is still the best way to advance the interests of working Americans. She offers strategies to train workers, improve tax policy, and establish a partnership between labor and business...

The Charge of the Brexit Brigade: “Forward, the Brexit Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

White papers to right of them,
Pollsters to left of them,
Presslords in front of them
Volleyed and thundered...

I'm still trying to come to terms with my Commonwealth Club event with Steve Moore last month. As therapy, I took some of my less-than-coherent ravings and tried to turn then into proper rant:

Steve, what you are saying is simply delusional.

You keep saying that Xi needs to deal. Why? Because, you say, Trump is deadly serious on China an sod will not back down.

Do remember that Trump declared victory on reforming NAFTA, "the worst trade deal in the history of the world", with small adjustments on autoparts rules-of-origin. Small adjustment on auto parts were enough to transform NAFTA, in Trump's mind, from the worst trade deal in the history of the world into something he is now very proud of. Xi has to be thinking that he should deal with Trump the same way that Mexico did—hang tough, provide a few symbolic concessions only, and Trump will cave. then things will go go back to business-as-usual.

What is there in the situation that would keep that from being the obvious strategy for Xi to follow?

My view has always been that (a) too many big lies were told by pro-"Leave the EU" advocates and that (b) too large a proportion of the pro-"Leave the EU" advocates were shady grifters sure that they would lose but who were maneuvering for political advantage—they wanted to denounce the Establishment for failing to give everybody a pet unicorn, rather than to actually take power and run a unicorn-breeding stable. My view has been that the British press committed grave malpractice in hiding (a) and (b) from the electorate. My view has been that the best way to deal with this shambles is (c) for the press to come clean and (d) hold an informed revote—and that politicians opposed to a revote given the illegitimacy of the "Leave" mandate are shady grifters, etc. The argument against a revote is that it will split the country. But the country is split already. Better to have a split more-prosperous country with a government with a genuine mandate for its policies than a split less-prosperous country with a government with a fake mandate. Martion Wolf agrees with me: Martin Wolf: The Risks of a Second Brexit Referendum Must Now Be Run: "Another vote will be divisive —but what is happening is already splitting the country.... I can say what should happen. The answer is a second referendum.... I do not take that view with enthusiasm...

Zack Beauchamp: Brexit Vote: Theresa May’s Defeat Reveals the Lies Behind Brexit: "UK Prime Minister Theresa May spent months negotiating a deal with the European Union on the terms of Brexit.... The UK Parliament voted to reject the deal by a resounding 432-202 margin.... May’s tenure in office... was premised on the lie that she could work out a Brexit deal palatable to all sides. Now, in the clarifying light of this vote’s failure, it’s time to be honest.... Either the UK exits the EU without a deal by the March 29 deadline, which virtually every expert agrees would result in economic catastrophe, or else the country pulls back from the brink and decides to remain in the EU. These options aren’t what the Brexiteers promise, but it’s difficult to envision any other ones after the failure of May’s deal...

Ian Dunt: Historic Defeat: May Faces Her Day of Judgement: "At the moment there is no majority for no-deal or a People's Vote. Many MPs have ruled out both. But soon they are going to have to decide which of the two they find least objectionable. No-deal comes closer and closer.... Options are likely to whittle down until only a People's Vote is left. The question is whether enough MPs have the bravery and responsibility to prevent no-deal. We're about to find out...

Wolfgang Münchau: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of a No-Deal Brexit: "I believe that the probability of a no-deal Brexit is higher than you think. Much higher.... A no-deal Brexit is clearly not rational. But if you look at the incentives of each individual decision maker, you may find there are worse options than no deal for each one of them...

Marina Hyde: Welcome to the Westminster apocalypse. Have you thought about theocracy instead?: "Here comes the affectedly shambling figure of Boris Johnson—not so much a statesman as an Oxfam donation bag torn open by a fox–who could conceivably still end up prime minister of no-deal Britain. May needed to go again to the EU 'with a high heart, fortified by the massive rejection of the House of Commons', judged Johnson, speaking as always like a Taiwanese news animation of Winston Churchill. In the meantime, 'we should be actively preparing for no deal with ever more enthusiasm'...

Daniel Larison: Threat Inflation and "The Jungle Grows Back": "Damir Marusic has written an incisive review of Robert Kagan’s The Jungle Grows Back.... 'Kagan... rues the fact that... no bogeyman big enough to keep Americans focused on maintaining their preeminent position in the world exists.... Kagan therefore makes an attempt to cast first Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and then Xi Jinping’s China, as authoritarian challengers and potential threats to the American way of life...' The end of the Cold War was a calamity for many hawks because it deprived them of a sufficiently powerful and menacing adversary, and the history of U.S. foreign policy over the last three decades has been the desperate search for a suitable replacement...

Needless to say, time has left me a lot wiser: We need to design economies so that they can operate without disaster even when deregulatory clowns like those of the George W. Bush or the Donald J. Trump administrations are in control of the levers of policy at key moments. How to do that is not so clear. What is clear is that only a fool today would think that our political economy would support a clever technocracy so that we might have our cake and eat it too. Indeed, the most likely scenario seems to be that we will be unable to eat our cake, and then the kleptocrats will steal it out from under our noses so that we will not have it either. In short: I should have listened harder to Jagdish 20 years ago...

Hoisted from the Archives: Reply to Bhagwati: "I open my May/June [1998] issue of Foreign Affairs to discover myself pilloried in an article by Jagdish Bhagwati between Paul Krugman and Roger C. Altman (excellent company to be in, by the way: much better than I am used to) as a banner-waving proponent of international capital mobility, guilty of "assum[ing] that free capital mobility is enormously beneficial while simultaneously failing to evaluate its crisis-prone downside."

I rub my eyes in surprise. I had not thought of myself as a banner-waving proponent of international capital mobility.

Barry Eichengreen: The Euro at 20: An Enduring Success but a Fundamental Failure: "The belief of... Francois Mitterrand and... Helmut Kohl that a single European currency would apply irresistible pressure for political integration. It would lead eventually to their ultimate goal.... To function smoothly, monetary union requires banking union... an integrated fiscal system.... Banking union and fiscal union will only be regarded as legitimate if those responsible for their operation can be held accountable for their decisions by citizens.... Monetary integration creates a logic and therefore irresistible pressure for political integration. Or so the euro’s architects believed...

Yes, the "LEAVE!" faction of the British Conservative and Unionist Party is bats--- insane. Any questions?: Arj Singh: 'Increasing Number' Of Tory MPs Are Considering No-Deal Brexit As A 'Viable' Plan B: "A Leave-backing former cabinet minister said... 'People aren’t going round and saying "No Deal" is going to be a cakewalk. But... people are... asking "how much will this actually impact people’s lives?" We won’t be able to get certain foods like bananas or tomatoes but it’s not like we won’t be able to eat. And we’ll be leaving at a time when British produce is beginning to come into season, so it’s the best possible time to leave with no deal'...

Maybe now that Trump has embraced lowering corporate profits as a policy goal, Mike Pence will be willing to invoke Amendment 25: Josh Barro: China Is Losing Trump’s Trade War—and So Are We: "This is the insanity of the president’s trade war policy: it’s negative-sum.... Trump’s own economic adviser is going on television and saying his policy is going to reduce corporate profits. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the strange disconnect between financial markets and economic data.... Well, as Bloomberg put it in a headline this morning, 'Bad Stuff the Stock Market Worried About Is Starting to Happen'.... The economy is weakening, and market participants know it, but the weakened performance has not yet shown up in lagging economic data...

Richa Gupta and Umang Aggarwal: Is there a “Late Converger Stall” in Economic Development? Can India Escape it?: "A major driver of these good times is 'economic convergence', whereby poorer countries have grown faster than richer countries and closed the gap in standards of living. The convergence process has been broadening and accelerating for the last 20-30 years.... [But] the possibility of... a 'Late Converger Stall'...

Hoisted from 2008: Trade and Distribution: A Multisector Stolper-Samuelson Finger Exercise: This argument of an inconsistency between free trade and the well-being of the majority of potential voters rests substantially on the two-factor example of the Stolper-Samuelson result. It does not fare too well when we generalize to a situation in which there are a number of different factors—even if the ownership of the abundant factors of production is very concentrated indeed... https://delong.typepad.com/stolper-samuelson_finger_exercise-1.pdf

EconSpark: Derrick Miedaner asks: What role, if any, does secular stagnation play in the flat growth of wages since the recovery?": I reply: I think Ed Lambert is correct. "Secular stagnation" is probably not the best label for the worry. The worry is that financial markets have gotten themselves wedged into a situation in which frequently and for sustained periods of time it is the case that the full-employment real safe short-term Wicksellian neutral rate of interest turns out to be less than the negative of the central bank's inflation target. In a flexible-price full-employment economy, the economy deals with this and maintains full employment by having the price level drop instantaneously and discretely whenever this occurs in order to generate the extra inflation needed to get the market rate at the zero lower bound to its value needed for full employment, the real safe short-term Wicksellian neutral rate of interest. This was one of the major (but I think often overlooked) points of Krugman (1998) https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1998/06/1998b_bpea_krugman_dominquez_rogoff.pdf.