Brad DeLong's Egregious Moderation

Frank Foer Badly Needs to Exercise Some Quality Control Over The New Republic. Badly.

Marty Peretz: About the time I bought The New Republic, the British satirist and editor of Punch, Alan Coren, published a book titled The Collected Bulletins of Idi Amin, purporting to be the actual writings of the then dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin. They were attacks on the belly and politically smart, too. I got in touch with Coren and his publisher with the idea of putting the collection out in America. Frankly, I chickened out because the lingo of the volume was black jive talk which seemed uncannily apt for an African tyrant-bullshitter. Well, it was for that reason deemed by those around me too sensitive or rather insensitive for TNR. So I stopped negotiations with the publishers in London, and the wonderful book was never issued on our shores. It made plenty of money in England. Some of the book's pieces are reprinted here. If you don't laugh at these ... well, you're a stiff.

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Alan Coren: De Chrissermuss Broadcast, 'Punch' December 5 1973: DIS DE POINT where we steppin' into de worldwide role good an' proper, on account of dis bein' de tex' o' de pop'lar Xmas Broadcast, goin' out f'om de famous Radio Uganda station in de trendy downtown Kampala to ev'ry corner o' de world always provided we gittin' de plugs in proper an' not leavin' no bare wires hangin' out o' de skirtin' in Studio B. which is wot happenin' durin' de birfday broadcast an' it blowin' all de valves out o' de transmitter, had to wait six weeks fo' a new one f'om Hamley's, also all de wattles comin' off of de roof.

De broadcast goin' out at three o'clock pee em on Xmas day, an' de whole popperlation o' Uganda gonna be lissenin' in wid de love an' loyalty an' devotion, on account of we got de detector jeeps out an' anyone still guzzlin' de mince pies at 3.01 gonna find hisself havin' de brandy balls stepped on, not to mention bein' arrested by de ear an' taken down to HQ fo' a touch o' de seasonal goodwill, such as bein' worked over wid a lead-filled turkey. Now, here de scrip', hot f'om de miraculous four-colour Biro: Hallo word an' all de loyal subberjecks, especially all those on de Wolf Rock Lighthouse an' sim'lar, dis here are President Idi Amin speakin' f'om de centre o' de known universe an' hittin' you wid de Peace on Earf bit, which is jus' us DJs' way o' sayin' dat de time come roun' again fo' gittin' de matchin' socks an' hankies an' turnin' our thoughts to de loved ones wot sendin' dis sort o' junk, can't even be bothered gittin' de size right; jus' as a example, an' showin' dat even de top heads o' state human bein's like anyone else, de fust present I got dis year comin' f'om de Finance Minister an' it takin' de form o' de barf salts, an' wot I'd like to say is, it interestin' to learn he doan like de way I smellin' an' he got to de end o' de broadcast to clear out de desk an' git hisself down de car-park where he takin' up de noo duties, an' damn lucky it Yuletide, else he gittin' de head shrunk on top of it.

Turnin' now to de international scene, wot de hell happenin' to de Queen's Xmas card? I sendin' her de pussonal home-made job, wot I doin' wid de little bits o' sticky coloured paper, an' a damn fiddlin' job, too. If I ain't gittin' de recipperocation by de nex' post, de dipperlomatic representative o' HM Gumment gonna find hisself on de inside lookin' out.

Dis natcherly bringin' me to everyone spendin' Xmas in clink: it de time when we got to think o' those less fortunate than ourselves, so all you in chokey start thinkin' about de ones wot buried in quicklime in de prison yard, still plenty o' room out there fo' de slackers, an' I gittin' de word where a lotta shoddy mailbags bin appearin' lately, an' dis de last time I mentionin' it.

De way I seein' it, Xmas is a time fo' de fambly, an' I lookin' upon de whole word as a fambly, i.e. anyone steppin' out o' line gittin' de head smacked, especially if Julius Nyerere lissenin', altho' I ain't namin' no names, also any o' de Asian brudders wot givin' me lip, all ex-colonial rubbish wot still hangin' about de place, any memmers o' de Ugandan judiciary wot still on de lam, an' any subberjecks goin' roun' mumblin' under their bref.

Wow, lisseners, I jus' catchin' sight o' de studio sundial, an' it 3.10 already, so I signin' off now an' gittin' back to de puddin'. I mean, I'm fo' de peace an' de goodwill stuff as much as de nex' man, but enuff is enuff!

Patrick Appel: Minding The Store The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Minding The Store: As always, it a pleasure to step in while Andrew gets some much needed rest. Guest-blogging is not all that different than my day-to-day activities on the Dish – 24 of the 50 posts currently on the front page were written by me. All the substantive posts are Andrew's work, but it's my and Chris's job to read through the blogosphere and pick out the choicest bits. Andrew edits, approves, and spins what we find, but the illusion of an all-reading blogger is maintained by employing two extra sets of eyes...

Paul Krugman: Barack Obama: The WYSIWYG president

The WYSIWYG president - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com: There’s a lot of dismay/rage on the left over Obama, a number of cries that he isn’t the man progressives thought they were voting for.

But that says more about the complainers than it does about Obama himself. If you actually paid attention to the substance of what he was saying during the primary, you realized that (a) There wasn’t a lot of difference among the major Democratic contenders (b) To the extent that there was a difference, Obama was the least progressive

Now it’s true that many progressives were ardent Obama supporters, with their ardency mixed in with a fair bit of demonization of Hillary Clinton. And maybe they were right — but not on policy grounds. (I still remember people angrily telling me that if Hillary got in, she’d fill her economics team with Rubinites).

So what you’re getting is what you should have seen.

And exactly what should we blame Obama for? Here’s how I see it.

I still believe that Obama could have gotten a bigger stimulus. Yes, he needed some Senate “centrists”, but my read is that they were determined to take a slice off whatever he proposed — so he could have proposed more and gotten more. It was very different from health care, where it was really about policy rather than essentially arbitrary numbers.

Obama could definitely have taken a harder line with banks.

Obama could also have done a lot more to change the discourse — less hope and change and let’s end the partisan bickering, more conservatives have the wrong ideas and we need to undo the damage.

But on health care, I don’t see how he could have gotten much more. How could he have made Joe Lieberman less, um, Liebermanish? And I have to say that much as I disagree with Ben Nelson about many things, he has seemed refreshingly honest, at least in the final stages, about what he will and won’t accept. Meanwhile the fact is that Republicans have formed a solid bloc of opposition to Obama’s ability to do, well, anything.

Some of my commenters have argued that even with this bill Democrats may well lose seats next year — possibly even more than they would have without it. Definitely on the first point; on the second, I don’t think people realize just how damaging it would be if Obama didn’t get any major reforms passed. But in any case, that misses the point. The reason to pass reform, even inadequate reform, now isn’t to gain seats next year; it is to pass reform, which will do vast good, during the window that’s available. If it doesn’t pass now, it will probably be many nears before the next chance.

But back to Obama: the important thing to bear in mind is that this isn’t about him; and, equally important, it isn’t about you. If you’ve fallen out of love with a politician, well, so what? You should just keep working for the things you believe in.

Alok Jha: Five possible scenarios for our future climate Environment | guardian.co.uk

Copenhagen climate summit: Five possible scenarios for our future climate:

1C – Vital for low-lying island states but virtually impossible

The Arctic sea ice is already disappearing and, after a 1C global average temperature rise, it would disappear for good in the summer months. Heatwaves and forest fires will become more common in the sub-tropics – worst-hit will be the Mediterranean region, southern Africa, Australia and south-west United States. Most of the world's corals will die, including the Great Barrier Reef. Glaciers that provide crops for 50m people with fresh water begin to melt and 300,000 people are affected every year by climate-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea.

2C – The temperature limit the scientists want

The heatwaves seen in Europe during 2003, which killed tens of thousands of people, will come back every year with a 2C global average temperature rise. Southern England will regularly see temperatures around 40C in summer. The Amazon turns into desert and grasslands, while increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere make the world's oceans too acidic for remaining coral reefs and thousands of other marine lifeforms. More than 60 million people, mainly in Africa, would be exposed to higher rates of malaria. Agricultural yields around the world will drop and half a billion people will be at greater risk of starvation. The West Antarctic ice sheet collapses, the Greenland ice sheet melts and the world's sea level begins to rise by seven metres over the next few hundred years. Glaciers all over the world will recede, reducing the fresh water supply for major cities including Los Angeles. Coastal flooding affects more than 10 million extra people. A third of the world's species will become extinct as the 2C rise changes their habitats too quickly for them to adapt.

3C – Looking increasingly likely

After a 3C global temperature rise, global warming may run out of control and efforts to mitigate it may be in vain. Millions of square kilometres of Amazon rainforest could burn down, releasing carbon from the wood, leaves and soil and thus making the warming even worse, perhaps by another 1.5C. In southern Africa, Australia and the western US, deserts take over. Billions of people are forced to move from their traditional agricultural lands, in search of scarcer food and water. Around 30-50% less water is available in Africa and around the Mediterranean. In the UK, summers of droughts are followed by winter floods. Sea levels rise to engulf small islands and low-lying areas such as Florida, New York and London. The Gulf Stream, which warms the UK all year round, will decline and changes in weather patterns will lead to higher sea levels at the Atlantic coasts.

4C - Possible with an extremely weak deal

At this stage, the Arctic permafrost enters the danger zone. The methane and carbon dioxide currently locked in the soils will be released into the atmosphere. At the Arctic itself, the ice cover would disappear permanently, meaning extinction for polar bears and other native species that rely on the presence of ice. Further melting of Antarctic ice sheets would mean a further 5m rise in the sea level, submerging many island nations. Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50C in summer. Southern England's summer climate could resemble that of modern southern Morocco.

5C and above – Highly unlikely nightmare scenario

With a 5C rise, global average temperatures would be hotter than for 50m years. The Arctic region sees temperatures rise much higher than average – up to 20C – meaning the entire Arctic is now ice-free all year round. Most of the tropics, sub-tropics and even lower mid-latitudes are too hot to be inhabitable. The sea level rise is now sufficiently rapid that coastal cities across the world are largely abandoned. Above 6C, there would be a danger of "runaway warming", perhaps spurred by release of oceanic methane hydrates. Could the surface of the Earth become like Venus, entirely uninhabitable? Human population would be drastically reduced.

Jeff Merkley: Senate “Dysfunctional”

FDL News Desk » Sen. Jeff Merkley: Bernanke Thinks “Everything’s OK If Wall Street’s OK,” Senate “Dysfunctional”: There’s no question that the Senate has become dysfunctional, and it’s not good for democracy. I think there are a lot of reasons for that. First, not a lot of folks know each other. We’re here three days a week and then back in our districts. Sometimes you need personal bonds to overcome that partisanship. I got to know people at the state legislature level just by sitting next to them in committees. And we could work together on issues and move things forward. There’s a lot of isolation in the Senate. I think there are a lot of reinforcing factors to the partisanship as well.

But there’s no question that the procedure itself is dysfunctional. I’m working with a colleague to come up with some ideas to improve that. It’s going to be a long-term project, because to change the rules around here takes 67 votes. But we’ve come up with some ideas. What if appropriations bills could be moved through an expedited process, with a timeline that would take two days for a vote rather than two weeks? And you could do the same thing with nominations. Right now, there are still hundreds of unfilled Administration positions, because the Republicans can obstruct them and eat up a lot of floor time, and it’s hamstrung these federal agencies. So maybe we could get some of the things we do expedited, with an up or down vote, even if it’s a super-majority, so we can clear the decks for a longer consideration of policy bills, because a lot of this is about time. And you can do that while protecting minority rights.

And then we’re thinking that we could sort of time-release a change to the cloture rules. Something where they don’t take effect until years down the road, or at a time when the parties are more equal in power.

Matthew Yglesias: Politics as a Vocation

Matthew Yglesias: Politics as a Vocation: A lot of what goes wrong in American foreign policy commentary, I came to see, was a refusal to adopt the ethic of responsibility. Instead, people would want to orient themselves in a way that expresses a sense of moralized outrage. So if some country is bad, a proposal to do bad things to that regime must be good, because what’s right is to be on “the right side” in some maximal way. Anything less is “realism” and a betrayal of ideals about human rights and democracy. The problem is that what’s needed, from a humanitarian point of view, is a foreign policy that does in fact make conditions around the world better not a foreign policy that expresses high ideals and a grand sense of purpose.

“Realism” pursued on behalf of purely selfish goals is immoral, but the pursuit of laudable goals in an unrealistic and destructive manner doesn’t help anyone.

And the same applies in other arenas of the political. On the climate front, in particular, I note a strong tendency among certain kinds of thought-leaders and activists to treat the issue as if it’s a phantasmagoria whose purpose is to demonstrate their own righteousness and the clarity of their searing moral vision. As if the goal is that hundreds of years after we fail, when our civilization has collapsed and a new one has taken its place, their archeologists will uncover records of our blog posts and determine that Bill McKibben’s prophesies of doom were the most eloquent and dire. The sensible goal, however, is to avert the collapse. To do the best we can today, and the best we can tomorrow and the best we can the day after that. And next week? To do the best we can. And again next month and next year and next decade.

Which is perhaps a long-winded way of explicating Weber’s maxim: “Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.”

Mark Thoma: Libertarians and populists versus Bernanke

Mark Thoma: Libertarians and populists versus Bernanke:

Thorstein Veblen: Bernanke's Comedy of Errors...

Bernanke's Comedy of Errors...: Here's the thing -- I think Ben Bernanke is a really nice guy. His heart is basically in the right place. He doesn't wake up each morning like Dick Cheney wanting to screw the poor. But, for a variety of reasons, he is just not up to the job of being Fed Chairman. Part of this has to do with the worthlessness of Academic Macro, the culture from which Bernanke came, the failed job PhD programs do in training their students, and the fact the discipline is still largely psuedo-scientific. Due to this culture, a guy w/ Bernanke's pedigree -- Harvard undergrad, MIT PhD, and very good math skills -- was predestined to be at the top of the field. As I've mentioned before, however, it's very difficult to look at his academic papers and say "this guy is really bright". Here is an example I blogged about before. Another paper of Bernanke's has the dumbest title of all-time: "Is Growth Exogenous: Taking Mankiw, Romer, and Weil Seriously." Why is this dumb? Well, b/c of course growth is not exogenous! That would mean that economic growth just ... happens, comes down to Earth like manna from heaven, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Incidentally, it's doubly stupid b/c there's no reason to take MRW seriously. It's a simple paper in which the authors simply have no clue what's driving their result, not realizing that low birth rates are proxies for rich countries, and so foolishly find in support of the Solow model, in which lower population growth increases the steady-state capital stock. But I digress. Bernanke also apparently had not heard of the Demographic transition.

Brad DeLong has pointed out four mistakes of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman:

• Not supporting Ned Gramlich's push for tighter regulatory oversight of mortgage financing and associated securitizations and derivatives.
• Not moving immediately in early 2008 to nationalize more of the banking system and support asset prices to a greater extent.
• Believing in the late summer of 2008 that the big problem was that the Federal Reserve had pumped too much liquidity into the economy, and believing that a bankruptcy on the part of Lehman Brothers would send a healthy message to bankers that they would not always be bailed out by the government and would send that maessage without having damaging consequences for the economy as a whole.
• Failing to walk down the strategy tree in the fall of 2008 and thus to place a high priority on ensuring that if the government's interventions in financial markets worked to stabilize asset prices and avert depression then the government would profit and would be seen to profit healthily from its interventions.

To which I'd add 4 more mistakes, which really could all be lumped together and are ongoing...

1. After 12/31/2008, to shrink the Fed's Balance sheet... The Fed's Balance sheet is still below where it was at the end of last year. This corresponds to net tightening in a severe recession.
2. To wait until March -- March! To start QE in long-term government bonds. As it happens, I was actually under the impression that the Fed had started doing this much sooner. Especially since Bernanke's own academic research suggested that the Fed could influence the economy in a liquidity trap via QE, it did not occur to me that the Fed was not doing this. And then to do only $300 billion of QE... Paul Samuelson argued that Monetary Policy was basically worthless in a liquidity trap. Paul Samuelson was no fool -- to have real effects, QE has to be done on a large scale. $300 billion is only slightly better than nothing. Joe Gagnon has estimated that $2 trillion in QE is roughly equivalent to a 75 basis point cut in normal times, and he may be optimistic.
3. This summer, the labor market was doing waaay worse than he'd expected the previous winter. And yet, there was no recalibration of Monetary Policy. As the information came in that inflation was still at bay and unemployment was still rising fast, he ... did nothing. And on top of that, he predicted unemployment would not rise to 10%.
4. Now w/ unemployment at 10%, way worse than he predicted, once again, and with inflation still under control and below target, there is still no re-calibration of monetary policy. The Fed's predictions for Q4, 2010 are unemployment at 9.3-9.7% and inflation at 1.4-1.7%.

Someone please tell me how the risks of doing too much and of doing too little are symmetric?

If the Fed "does too much" and unemployment in one year is at 8.3-8.7%, while inflation is at 2.7%, there is no loss to society whatsoever. If the Fed "does too much" and unemployment in one year is 7.3% and inflation is 3.7%, that is still a tradeoff I would make in a heartbeat. Above 4%, and I would reconsider, but there would be plenty of time between now and 4% inflation in which the Fed could roll its stuff back... And I'm aware that once a inflation starts to increase, the Fed may have to roll it's stuff back quickly, but since the Fed can increase the Fed Funds rate, but cannot cut it, it should be easy to keep inflation under 3%, much less 4%.

On the other hand, if the Fed "does too little", and unemployment in one year is at 10.3-10.7%, and inflation is at .3-.7%, that would be a total f*cking nightmare for millions of people, and the Dems will be bloodied in a landslide. If the numbers get worse, and unemployment rises to 11.3-11.7, that would be a total f*cking nightmare for millions of people, and the Dems will be bloodied in a landslide. Of course, in either of these latter two scenarios, what would happen is so much pressure would build on the Congress, that we would get more stimulus, and at some point, if the economy continues to do badly enough w/ no inflation, Bernanke might recalibrate and do more QE.

The most likely scenario from my vantage is the "boiled frog" scenario, by which the economy continues to get better, albeit slowly, and may even beat unemployment predictions next fall, falling to 8.9% by election day! In this case, of course, there would be no urgent need for more QE, no need for more stimulus, but it would be a total f*cking nightmare for millions of people, and the Dems will be bloodied in a landslide

I'm really starting to wish I had done more, personally, to fight against Bernanke's confirmation. What am I going to tell my children and grandchildren -- that, oh, I didn't fight Bernanke's confirmation b/c I was working on a journal article?

Charlie's Diary: Why I don't (usually) use Windows

Via Charlie Stross's regrettable attempt to upgrade to Windows 7, L2GX:

Charlie's Diary: Why I don't (usually) use Windows: My girlfriend has a vaio from back when she was working for sony, and I have to agree; Sony are the bloatware specialists... the hardware though... nice.

In general Sony's engineers seem to have the free hand in designing the prettiest, friendliest, most well-built machines possible. They get to develop advanced technology, or buy it from competitors at any price. At the cutting edge of consumer electronics their design process has the grace and elegance of a tea ceremony.

Their products have a soul.

Then, at a certain point during development, the engineers take their slick, shiny prototype up to the thirteenth floor and leave it on a massive smoked glasss table in an dark, empty conference room. They go home silently, and drink sake in a melancholy their wives cannot understand.

Back on the thirteenth floor, a team of crack marketeers emerges and starts handicapping the prototype. They add bloatware that links to unyielding vaporware websites, disable hardware for unlocking in future updates, install seven gigs of designer screen saver 'introduction' movies. They disable any meaningful way to use the device without buying into a distributed network of an occult protocol.

Meanwhile the CEO's stalk each other in bamboo rooftop forests, their katanas gleaming with the blood of intra-corporate informants as they search to battle for supremacy.

At home the engineers try to forget what could have been. At one point they have drank enough sakes to allow themselves to cry a single, desperate tear.

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Charlie Stross's Update:

Fifty hours and yes, I now have a Vaio P running Windows 7, fully patched and updated and mercifully free of re-installed Sony bloatware.... The Vaio is still chittering away re-indexing the filesystem, but by tomorrow it should be done. As it's no slower — while indexing — than Vista was while twiddling its thumbes, I shall call this a win, and declare the upgrade complete at 50 hours ellapsed, wall clock time.... Microsoft: providing pointless hamster-wheel exercises for gearheads since 1976.

Jeff Ely's Intermediate Micro Course

Jeff El’s Intermediate Micro Course:

• Welfare Economics
• Utilitarianism
• Incentives and Game Theory
• Auctions
• Vickrey-Clark-Groves
• Second-Best Mechanisms
• Market Mechanisms
• Large Public Goods
• Profit-Maximizing Mechanisms