links for 2010-08-01

• Economics of Contempt: Why the Fed Isn't Doing More
• Damon LInker: Turning Right
  DL: "[F]rom the beginning there have been two very different branches of neoconservativ[ism].... The first aimed to bring sober, dispassionate analysis and a skeptical temper to questions of domestic policy; the second specialized in devising cogent, often highly polemical arguments in favor of a militarily aggressive foreign policy. The first exercised its greatest political influence during the 1990s with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani... and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The second peaked in the years immediately after 9/11, when the administration of George W. Bush pursued a doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive war.... When critics denounce neocons, they... mean the ideas and outlook associated with the second branch. That ultimately means the ideas and outlook of Norman Podhoretz and Commentary..." That is wrong--it's Norman Podhoretz plus Irving Kristol as the bad guys, and Daniel Bell and Nathan Glazer as the good guys, with Daniel Patrick Moynihan on both sides.
• Paul Krugman: Taking Down The Goalposts
  PK: "Much of the speech is taken up with arguing that it’s not the Fed’s job to help the struggling economy, because the big problem there is business uncertainty about future regulation. Urk. Like others, I’ve tried to point out that there is no evidence for this claim: business investment is no lower than you’d expect given the state of the economy, while surveys say that weak sales, not fear of regulation, are holding back business expansion. Oh, and just to make it perfect, Fisher cites Mort Zuckerman to bolster his case."
• Paul Krugman: Comparative Disinflations
  PK: "[T]here’s another possibility: we went into this slump with much lower inflation than in previous episodes — and a flattening of the unemployment-inflation relationship at low inflation rates is exactly what you’d expect in the face of downward nominal wage rigidity. So we may be approaching deflation more slowly than some might fear — but only because we live in a world in which excessively low inflation is actually a very bad thing, and we’re already in the problem zone. Oh, and about the inflation expectations: they don’t look all that anchored over the past 6 months, with the 5-year TIPS spread falling more than half a percentage point since the winter. I wonder if people are starting to realize that the Fed can’t or won’t actually achieve its supposed inflation target."
• Matthew Yglesias » Education and Wages
  MY: "[0]ne point to keep in mind is that progress in educational attainment is generally beneficial not just beneficial to the people who get the extra education. Insofar as more Finnish people acquire skills and learn to be cell phone company executives or furniture designers or Finnair pilots that’s (a) more income to be spent on goods and services produced by lower-skilled people and (b) fewer lower-skilled people to compete for those jobs. Consequently, the Finnish people who don’t upgrade their skills also benefit from the fact that other Finnish people have been upgrading. Consequently, the great expansion in educational opportunities in the 1870-1970 era helped produce prosperity even for people like Connie Freeman’s dad who didn’t necessarily personally acquire a great deal of education."
• Calculated Risk: Negative Equity Breakdown
• Damon LInker: Norman On Norman (As Usual)
• Thank you - Michael Roston - Newsbroke - True/Slant
• E.D. Hirsch: Required Reading
• Bill Gale: Five myths about the Bush tax cuts
• David Frum: China’s Early Empires
• David Welch: Doing the Math on Obama's Detroit Bailout