links for 2010-04-29
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PK: "I was rereading the spectacularly mistimed Jonung and Drea paper mocking American economists who were skeptical about the euro, and went back to what I wrote in 1998. Here’s how I described the ugly American critique: 'Here’s how the story has been told: a year or two or three after the introduction of the euro, a recession develops in part – but only part – of Europe...' Make that a decade or so rather than a year or two, and not too far off. To be sure, in that article I went on to predict big near-term trouble that, in fact, didn’t turn out nearly as badly as predicted. But the point is that something like the current crisis has always been an obvious danger — one that the architects of the euro chose to brush off."
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DJ: "Racial supremacy is a fairly taboo topic in the media.... William Saletan thought it was exciting to tell liberals that they were no better than creationists if they failed to accept the “studies” done by white supremacist J. Philippe Rushton.... Andrew Sullivan and George Will... promote The Bell C... I’d argue that Saletan’s and Sullivan’s flirtations with white supremacy are... general Slate/TNR fetish for contrarianism.... The popularity of Steve Sailer... is much more troubling. Sailer writes for site called VDARE.com; the name is taken from the name of the first white English child born in North America. After Hurricane Katrina, Sailer wrote "What you won’t hear, except from me, is that ‘Let the good times roll’ is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."
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MY: "William Galston argues, sensibly, that the politically smartest thing for Democrats to do is neither climate nor immigration after Wall Street reform but instead they should “quickly pivot to the economy and would sustain that focus through the spring and summer.” As a matter of political strategy, I agree with that. Nothing would do more to impact the midterms than improvements in the economy. But in legislative terms, what does that mean? The bad economy has led to a collapse in trust in public institutions, and the voters—falsely—believe that fiscal stimulus measures haven’t helped the economy. It would have been smart to simply ignore the voters’ half-assed macroeconomic theories back in February 2009 and pass a bigger and better-designed stimulus bill. But at this point, I think a wide range of incumbents (mostly Democrats, but also Bob Bennett) are simply going to have to lay in the bed they’ve already made."
