(a) Dr. Evil and the Professor
How a clever economist wrote a misleading paper to get through the Senate confirmation gauntlet. It worked, but had unexpected consequences.
(b) Shawshank Gives Great Catharsis
Prison fascinates us. Why else would “Shawshank Redemption” be the highest rated movie of all time, by a million verified movie reviewers on the Internet Movie Database? Around 2008 it knocked “Godfather” off the champ’s podium. “Citizen Kane,” the “greatest” movie of ages past, ranks 64th. Shawshank is a good...
(c) Recovering antitrust’s lost meaning
One hundred years ago, Woodrow Wilson ran for President on an "anti-trust" platform. Today, anti-trust is a economic hypothesis, a favorite target of conservative Chicago-school economists. Wilson saw it differently. The economic impact of monopolies wasn't good, but their political impact was worse. They violated Madison's lobbying principal, that competitors...
(d) Paranoia: South to Southwest, of the West Wing
This is about traitor paranoia, and the origins of a sub-culture. Back in U.S. history’s dark age, when “southern minority” meant slaveholders, not blacks, a culture of personal distrust threaded through the south. Historians William Freehling and George Frederickson agree that slaveholder faith in other people’s reliability declined after 1800....
(e) The credit crisis was a Minsky moment. Another Minsky idea sheds light on inflation.
Hyman Minsky achieved renown in during the credit crisis, a decade posthumous. His portrait of America’s financial sector cycling into the verge of meltdown reads like recent history. Quixotic yet level-headed, Minsky refused to collapse ideas into flat-land orthodoxy. He deduced how post mid-1960s American capitalism oscillated between overheated expansion...
(f) How Media Fashions Alter History
In the midst of current economic chaos, a few loud perspectives get much attention. They lack good judgment. To paraphrase one of Abraham Lincoln’s early speeches, the public, guided by community and institutions, says what’s fashionable. Lincoln used the word fashion deliberately, because even in the mid-19th century appearances mattered...
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Economic Issues That Matter, Ignored
Republicans have a Janus-like attitude towards public deficits. When Democrats hold office, deficits suppress business investment. Otherwise, deficits can boost industrial output, especially defense. Democrats migrate towards a financing perspective, where debt loads depress expectations. But the world loans the U.S. government at almost nil. This isn’t a subprime loan;...
From Malthus to Boltzmann Economics
Historians credit Thomas Malthus as the first modern economist. Although a religious leader by training, Malthus combined original thinking, widespread observation, and statistical reasoning to confront changes in society and nature. He observed that farmers increased output gradually, but reasoned that human population grew exponentially, while industry expanded geographically. Agriculture...
Let’s talk about geoengineering
My teenage son told me, a few years ago, that his future was dark. He’d seen predictions of what climate change will bring in 15, 20 years time. Flooding, forced migration, spreading disease, biological exterminations. Depressing. A child makes you focus. I realized that societies, democratic or autocratic, will topple...
Obamacare’s Show Trials
… a quick riff. The trials of the Affordable Care Act are political theater — show trials. They provide a public spectacle of robed authority, but careful observers believe these justices already know Obamacare’s guilt or innocence. Although the ACA’s supposed crimes are brought by outside groups, the Court chooses...
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Demographics 2012
Ruy Teixeira, among others, has determined the US electorate is undergoing a long term ethnicity shift favoring Democrats. While minority voting spiked with Obama’s 2008 campaign, Teixeira’s view is that these trends’ major impacts are still two or three election cycles distant: “The tectonic plates of American politics are shifting...
The Wage Fulcrum
The Great Depression’s demand collapse, World War II’s production consensus, and finally the USA’s 1950’s-era economic boom: these demonstrated to many businesses that aggregate employee wages were correlated with future profitability. Businesses could believe in the wage fulcrum: if they paid employees good salaries, they could expect more revenue. It...
Why people say Hillary Clinton is corrupt
I’m a pragmatist, to the left. Policy by policy, in different places. About trade: I read history, understand economics, and anti-globalization arguments leave me cold. Protectionism leads to war. But Glass-Steagall was a critical protection. If it was eroded by 1999, Clinton’s acquiescence to Robert Rubin went too far. So...