Things to Read on the Morning of January 2, 2013

Must-Reads:

1. Paul Krugman: How Much Better Things Are in Europe Now that the European Central Bank Is on the job: “Government debt to GDP… the 10-year interest rate… [at] the peak of the euro crisis in 2011 and a relatively recent observation…. Borrowing costs for the troubled euro countries have dropped a lot… not because austerity policies have brought their debt under control–debt ratios are still rising, in large part because of shrinking economies and deflation. Instead, there has been a dramatic flattening…. Why?… The timing strongly suggests that… the ECB’s signal that it will, in a pinch, act as sovereign lender of last resort has removed much of the fear of self-fulfilling liquidity panics… [and perhaps] some reduction in the political risk premium, because European nations are proving amazingly determined to stay on the euro at almost any cost. So is the euro crisis over? No–it’s not over until the debt dynamics sing… a duet with internal devaluation. We have yet to see any of the crisis countries reach a point where falling relative wages are generating a clear export-led recovery, or in which austerity is actually paying off…”

2. Steven Sherwood: Planet likely to warm by 4C by 2100: ‘Sherwood accepts his team’s work on the role of clouds cannot definitively rule out that future temperature rises will lie at the lower end of projections. “But,” he said, for that to be the case, “one would need to invoke some new dimension to the problem involving a major missing ingredient for which we currently have no evidence. Such a thing is not out of the question but requires a lot of faith.” He added: “Rises in global average temperatures of [at least 4C by 2100] will have profound impacts on the world and the economies of many countries if we don’t urgently start to curb our emissions.”‘

3. Josh Marshall: Where Does Obamacare Stand?: “One key thing any health care policy economist will tell you is that the pure numbers are less important than the demographic blend of the pool. Basically, what’s the mix of young and old people, healthy and sick. If that’s significantly out of whack you’ll have problems. All told, though, if you step away from the political pyrotechnics where every missed target is a catastrophe for Obamacare and the end of the Obamacare presidency, the current numbers look like a decent recovery from a very poor start. And there’s good reason to think that the program as a whole is moving along toward the benign and effective transformation of national health care markets it was intended to effect…”

Should Reads:

1. Menzie Chinn: Econbrowser: The Year in Review, 2013: Fantastical Pseudo Economics: “Bill Beach has retired, and the Heritage Foundation no longer ‘scores’ budget plans. Yet there is still so much… stuff… out there to debunk. Without further ado, here are my top ten examples of delusion in 2013. 1) January. Governor Walker compares Wisconsin to Minnesota, apparently without checking the data…. 2. The Heritage Foundation channels Jean-Baptiste Say. From Heritage Still at the Cutting Edge… J.D. Foster, Ph.D., “Budget Cuts Would Not Harm the Economy” (February 14, 2013)…. 3. March: In what reality are we in a recession?… ECRI’s Lakshman Achuthan…. I’m dubious, but I will not “pull a Lazear”. Or a Don Luskin for that matter…. 4. March: Representative Ryan tries to go legit in explaining the economics of his newest plan (no more scoring from Heritage as in here)…. 5. April: For some people, gold prices rising means policies are bad; and gold prices falling means policies are bad…. 6. May: Heritage Foundation assumes the Postal Service is not part of the US government in its tabulation of… government employment. From Heritage Assesses the Ever-Expanding Ever-Centralizing Federal Government Sector…. I guess it is an expansion of the center if the non-center shrinks…. 7. July. For some people, high inflation is always around the corner…. Examples include House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan… Sarah Palin… Ron Paul…. 8. September: Ed Lazear claims for Team Bush Mission Accomplished on ending the financial crisis of 2008. From The Absolute Funniest Thing I Have Read This Year…. Ed (We Are Not in a Recession) Lazear and Keith Hennessey…. 9. Is there a conspiracy so vast that it has reached all the way up the Oval Office, in order to manipulat … the part-time/full-time employment series?… Data Paranoia Watch…. 10. November: Yet more apocalyptic hyperventilating about hyperinflation…. 11. Bonus! US Treasury default is good thing!… Representative Yoho (R-FL)…”

2. Garance Franke-Ruta: 3 Big Obamacare Numbers to Start Off the New Year: “More than 2.1 million have enrolled in private-sector health insurance through the state and federal exchanges… a million people short of projections for the first three months of open enrollment… but… also… an astonishing recovery by the program from its original disastrous launch…. 3.9 people were determined eligible for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program during just October and November…. Only 10,000 people whose individual market plans have been cancelled or slotted for cancellation under the Affordable Care Act will be unable to get affordable insurance going forward, according to a new report from Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. That’s ‘0.2 percent of the oft-cited 5 million cancellations statistic’, The Plum Line noted…. The specter of a massive increase in uninsurance due to the Affordable Care Act seems unwarranted…”

3. David Wessel: Surprises From 25 Years Covering the Economy: “I arrived in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal shortly after the stock-market crash of 1987. Except for a stint as Berlin bureau chief, I’ve been tracking the economy from that perch ever since…. Four surprises stand out: That the American middle class hasn’t done better…. That China has done so well…. That 9/11 didn’t have a longer-lasting harmful economic impact…. That the U.S. was so vulnerable to a financial shock [in 2008]…”

Should Be Aware of:

1. Austin Frakt, Aaron Carroll, Adrianna MacIntyre: A break from comments | The Incidental Economist: “All TIE admins are in agreement that we need a break from comment moderation. It’s a lot of work and the benefits relative to costs have dwindled. We’d rather use our time in other ways. So, at least until the end of January, comments will be disabled on all TIE posts by default…. This brief post doesn’t convey how much time and effort we’ve devoted over the past year or so in trying to find ways to make comment moderation less taxing on us…”

2. Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Myth Of Western Civilization: “I finished Tony Judt’s Postwar–a book which ends as it begins, with Europe in process–just in time to catch the most recent reported musings of Phil Robertson. Here he is offering Christian marriage counseling to a young man: ‘I said “Well son, I’m going give you some river rat counseling, here. Make that sure she can cook a meal. You need to eat some meals that she cooks. Check that out. Make sure she carries her Bible. That’ll save you some trouble down the road. And if she picks your ducks, now that’s a woman.” They got to where they getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting until they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ’em. Look, you wait ‘til they get to be twenty years-old and the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they’re about fifteen or sixteen and they’ll pick your ducks. You need to check with Mom and Dad about that of course.’ In many parts of America, this is an argument for statutory rape. More specifically, it is an argument for men seeking to elide the power of grown women, by seeking their sexual partners among teenage girls. This style of svengalism is generally seen as repugnant to our morality. Phil Robertson believes that society should withhold civil rights from consenting gay men, while allowing men like him to push the age of consent to its breaking point. The contradiction here is as predictable as it is ridiculous. The loudest of doomsayers, so often, carry the weightiest of sin.” 

3. Andrea Peterson: 2013 is the year that proved your ‘paranoid’ friend right: “Most people involved in the tech scene have at least one friend who has been warning everyone they know about protecting their digital trail for years — and have watched that friend get accused of being being a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. But 2013 is the year that proved your ‘paranoid friend right…. While the NSA story alone undoubtedly gives the ‘paranoid’ plenty of reasons to say ‘I told you so’, a slew of other reports from this year gave them even more reasons to retreat into the wilderness and start subsistence farming…”

Stephen J. Dowrick 1953-2013 | Josh Marshall: Meet the 5 Million | Simon Wren-Lewis: Free movement of workers has been a success for the UK and for Europe | Patricio Navia: Michelle Bachelet’s landslide victory in Chile’s presidential election does not herald a sharp left turn for the country | John Cassidy: Bloomberg’s Legacy: Plutocracy and Populism |