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This is a completely unfair attack on Stalin. Which is a pity, because the rest of it is very sensible. I don't know if it is laziness or Trotskyism which leads you to this casual dragging in of Stalin, but it should be resisted as firmly as an instant invocation of Hitler.
Stalin's trick
"If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics." With these words, Joe Stalin showed an understanding of one of the tricks of wielding power; you must ensure that the effects of your policies are seen only as abstractions rather than as the suffering ...
I'm afraid it is looking increasingly as if President Obama was right to doubt if Janet Yellen was the woman for the job. Larry Summers shows a much clearer understanding of the economy's needs.
**Must-Read:** I continue to fail to understand...
**Must-Read:** I continue to fail to understand the apparent thinking of the center of the Federal Reserve. The following argument seems to me to be obviously correct: 1. Asymmetric risks and the strong desirability of not returning to the zero lower bound after interest-rate lift-off call for ra...
The obvious alternative definition of "credible." And since I long ago stopped believing anything that Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson et al say, their warnings against Corbyn don't work.
The C-word
One of the more irritating memes of the Labour leadership election has been the use of the word "credible". For example, Gordon Brown says "the best way of realising our high ideals is to show that we have an alternative in government that is credible." Yvette Cooper says: "We have to have a rad...
I think something people ignore is that lots of these questions involve issues where Obama is intellectually weak. As one of his chief campaign advisers said "Barack is not really a numbers guy."
That's why he is so susceptible to people like Geithner. Doesn't mean that those people are necessarily wrong. But Obama, in spite of his obvious cleverness in some things, is not really equipped to judge.
Can Somebody Please Tell Me What Is Going on with Obama and TPP?
[**Over at Equitable Growth**][1]: Can somebody please tell me what is going on? What happened with the Obama administration and its making the case for the TPP? I am what Paul Krugman calls "Davos Man" to a substantial degree--a card-carrying neoliberal, a believer in globalization and free trad...
Got it in one.
Can Somebody Please Tell Me What Is Going on with Obama and TPP?
[**Over at Equitable Growth**][1]: Can somebody please tell me what is going on? What happened with the Obama administration and its making the case for the TPP? I am what Paul Krugman calls "Davos Man" to a substantial degree--a card-carrying neoliberal, a believer in globalization and free trad...
Cohen was, of course, Obama's first choice to be Deputy Treasury Secretary under Tim Geithner. Tells you how deeply the Obama team were committed to Change You Can Believe In.
Rodgin Cohen: Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain
The Wall Street Journal ran a story today about H. Rodgin Cohen, the Senior Chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell and "one of Wall Street's top lawyers" decrying "the myth of regulatory capture." All I can say is wow. That's some chutzpah. For Rodgin Cohen to downplay regulatory capture is a like the...
But the ice cream stall which set up inland won't be the only survIvor when rains wreck the beach. Because the inland stall will have gone bust in the years before. This is exactly what happened witH the banks. Banks which were cautious lost business and eventually had to sell out to the risk taking
Banks which made big money when times were good. The reason that we only had badly indebted and over extended banks like RBS in 2007 is that they had bought up all the cautious ones. Hotelling strategies are inevitable even though they do indeed sometimes lead to Minsky crashes
Heading for extinction?
Are our main political parties like banks in 2007? I'm prompted to ask because of the widespread belief that they are insufficiently differentiated. Seamus Milne complains that "only the narrowest range of policies is acceptable" and - from a different perspective - Nick Barlow bemoans the unins...
This attack is entirely spurious. If not dishonest it shows shocking ignorance of grammar. I have checked the original article and it is clear that the authors are not making fools of themselves in the way you imply. A colon separates the comment on Plato on Aristotle from the reference to the six modern philosophers.
The use of ..... To cover this really is not acceptable.
Live from La Farine: In Which We Watch the Daily Cal Foreclose a Discussion of the Classical Social Theory Syllabus...
As someone who thinks that the "great books" approach to classical social theory is past its sell-by date, I am now distressed. I confess that I believe that, over in sunny California, the *Daily Cal* is trolling us all when it decides to print this: **Rodrigo Kazuo and Meg Perrett**: [Occupy t...
This piece seems to rely very heavily on proof by assertion. "Tenure denials are never arbitrary." Really? If a man with 5 published articles and a woman is not, there must be a reason. Maybe. But why can't that reason be gender discrimination?
Once you assert an argument must be wrong because it must be wrong, you have won a very easy victory in your own mind but are not likely to change the minds of others.
Is economics really a dismal science for women?
Donna Ginther and Shulamit Kahn have just published a paper that tracks thousands of American academics from the time they first get their PhDs through to their tenure and promotion decisions. They conclude: Economics is the one field where gender differences in tenure receipt seem to remain eve...
There many reasons Germany gets away with it. One is that it does not really accept that power with the EU is distributed according to votes. Instead it acts as if it plays the role in Europe which Prussia played in Imperial Germany. Thus it is assumed that if if the German constitutional court says ECB actions breach the GERMAN constitution, the ECB cannot act. Does anyone believe that a constitutional court in, say, Italy, would be taken seriously in such a situation.
Tied in with this is the French obsession with appearing to be a partner in key decisions, which effectively means giving in to German demands.
'Why the Eurozone Suffers from a Germany Problem'
Simon Wren-Lewis: Why the Eurozone suffers from a Germany problem: When, almost a year ago, Paul Krugman wrote six posts within three days laying into the stance of Germany on the Eurozone’s macroeconomic problems, even I thought that maybe this was a bit too strong, although there was nothin...
The gap vanishes by the time people get to 25. Maybe men are taking longer to grow up.
Who needs the responsibility?
Twenty years ago, men and women had similar attitudes towards children - young women, on average, wanted slightly more children than young men, but the differences were nothing to speak of. Now, on the other hand.... I'm not going to commit sociology here - I don't have time to do a serious ...
No one who really wants to scoff a huge amount of food likes sushi in the first place. So not a problem.
All-you-can-eat sushi restaurants should not exist. Why do they?
All-you-can-eat restaurants should not exist. People with large appetites crowd into all-you-can-eat establishments. These greedy customers eat vast amounts, driving up the restaurants' costs. Restaurants have no choice but to increase prices, but this turns off people with small appetites. Even...
Dave is right. I think that not only does he not understand macro, he doesn't understand anything to do with figures. After all, one of his chief political strategists said "Barack's not really a numbers guy." And in possibly the most perceptive piece of journalism this year the NYT's Gail Collins pointed out that in his farewell poker game in Chicago the local pols cleaned him out.
The really annoying thing about Romney was that he was so bad that people had to vote for Obama.
Department of "Oh Dear!": Basic Macro Briefing Weblogging
I have been complaining strongly about the failure of Republican economists to adequately brief their political principals. It looks like it is sauce-for-the-gander time: Paul Krugman: >Guess Who Still Believes in Invisible Vigilantes: Lots of chatter about the WSJ’s [Republican-sourced] account ...
I was working in the fixed income division of a leading investment bank sometimes thought of as an aquatic creature at the time. It took us a while to work out what was happening, but eventually we decided that the Fed and markets had built up a feedback loop. The Fed tightened. Bonds sold off partly as an automatic eaction but also because markets thought the Fed might know something. The Fed tightened again; markets thought the Fed must know something about inflation, so bonds sold off. Commodity prices were rising, so the Fed worried that might impact on inflation (in Europe the first central bank to hike was Sweden, and they actually cited coffee prices as the reason.) Some big hedge funds decided to go short bonds long commodities. And then the loop completed. The Fed decided that the market must know something it didn't know, so it raided rates. Markets felt the Fed must know something really bad and was intending more hikes so bonds sold off.
Greenspan later admitted that some of the Fed hikes had not been necessary. They had been counter-productive. The Fed was raising rates because the bond market was selling off. The bond market was selling off because the Fed was raising rates. No one cared at all what was happening to the deficit.
Back When I Feared the Bond-Market Vigilantes: Maundering Old-Timer Reminiscence Weblogging
I think Paul Krugman gets one partially wrong today… Paul writes, correctly: >Maya and the Vigilantes: Maya MacGuineas… is the queen of the deficit scolds, having run the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, perhaps the most prominent of the many Pete Peterson-backed organizations trying...
That's 627 votes more than the LibDems deserve.
Liberal Democrats poll 2% in yesterday's Inverclyde by-election
By Paul Goodman Follow Paul on Twitter. I linked earlier this morning to Sky News's summary of the result, but here it is in full for the record: Iain McKenzie (Lab) 15,118 (53.8%, -2.2%) Anne McLaughlin (SNP) 9.280 (33%, +15.5%) David Wilson (Con) 2,784 (9.9%, -2.1%) Sophie Bridger (LD) 627 (2....
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Jul 1, 2011
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