Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

I highly recommend watching my Milken Institute panel last week:

Or, alternatively, at least read the transcript—but watching is better.

The panel is worth watching and reflecting upon and not just because of the ideas discussed. It is also very much that there were two people on that stage who are true masters of rhetoric, and their performances are masterpieces: Gillian Tett and Steve Schwartzman.

Debt to GDP Ratios and Future Economic Growth:

###Some Talking Points from Fall 2014:###

Over at Equitable Growth: I never turned this into a proper piece...

At some deep level, the overwhelming problem is that Eurocrat elites--and, to a remarkably and unhealthy degree, American elites and not just republican legislators--believe that:

1. Something called "structural reform" is essential for future economic prosperity.
2. "Structural reform" cannot be accomplished during a time of prosperity and full employment, but requires deep and visible pain to get politicians to do what must be done.
3. The remarkable failure of austerity to produce either a successful structural rebalancing or political pressures that lead to meaningful "structural reform" since 2007 means only that austerity has not been austere enough.

We are indeed trapped in the sewer of Romulus... READ MOAR