Things to Read at Lunchtime on November 20, 2013

Must-Reads:

1. Ezra Klein: Elizabeth Warren wants to spend more on Social Security. But she’s not thinking big enough! “She joins a growing movement of Senate Democrats, including Tom Harkin, Mark Begich and Bernie Sanders. ‘Social Security is incredibly effective, it is incredibly popular, and the calls for strengthening it are growing louder every day’, Warren said…. Washington frets endlessly over the problems that Social Security, which is projected to exhaust its trust funds in the coming decades, might cause the budget. It frets about it so much, in fact, that it completely misses the problems Social Security is uniquely poised to solve for the country. For years, pension experts have spoken of the ‘three-legged stool’ of retirement savings: Social Security, employer pensions and private savings…. [But] today, Social Security is basically the only leg holding it up…”
2. Barry Eichengreen: Does the Federal Reserve Care about the Rest of the World?: ” Many economists are accustomed to thinking about Federal Reserve policy in terms of the institution’s “dual mandate,” which refers to price stability and high employment, and in which the exchange rate and other international variables matter only insofar as they influence inflation and the output gap–which is to say, not very much. In fact, this conventional view is heavily shaped by the distinctive and peculiar circumstances of the last three decades…. The Federal Reserve paid significant attention to international considerations in its first two decades, followed by relative inattention… then back to renewed attention to international aspects… in the 1960s, before the recent period of benign neglect…. I argue that in the next few decades, international aspects are likely to play a larger role in Federal Reserve policymaking…”

Should-Reads:

1. Noam Levey: Healthcare plan enrollment surges in some states after rocky rollout: “A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials. ‘What we are seeing is incredible momentum’, said Peter Lee, director of Covered California…. California–which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month–nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month. Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure, officials said…”
2. Burkhard Bilger: Inside Google’92s Driverless Car
3. ProGrowthLiberal: EconoSpeak: John Taylor on Monetary Policy and Inflation: “If you were expecting John Taylor to address… Barry Ritholtz… stop holding your breath… Taylor of late has been saying that our current mess was created by a deviation from the Taylor rule. Here’92s his evidence: ‘Inflation was not steady or falling during the easy money period from 2003-2005… [the] Fed’92s interest rate was too low… inflation… doubled from 1.7% to 3.4% per year… extraordinary inflation and boom in the housing market…. Finally, the unemployment rate got as low as 4.4% well below the natural rate.’… No one… was saying back then that the employment to population ratio had become dangerously high. The 4.4% unemployment rate… was not reached until late 2006… [after] two years of rising short-term interest rates. Now had Taylor and his fellow Bush economic advisors were very concerned about excessive aggregate demand–why did we not seen calls for fiscal restraint back then? If Taylor thinks this is a serious rebuttal to what Summers said, it is no surprise he has yet to acknowledge that 2010 forecast of inflation from QE.”

Should Be Aware of:

Matt Schiavenza: A Chinese President Consolidates His Power | Mark Thoma sends us to Paul Krugman: The Geezers Are Not Alright | Menzie Chinn: An opinion piece by Sean Fieler in USAToday…. I found the reference to growing inflation of interest. Here are some data of relevance. They indicate low and declining inflation using various measures, CPI, PCE, PPI, core, headline | Marco Nappolini: Secular stagnation and post-scarcity | Joshua Angrist et al: Semiparametric Estimates of Monetary Policy Effects: String Theory Revisited | Mike Konczal: Given the Myth of Ownership, is the Idea of Redistribution Coherent? |