Things to Read at Nighttime on February 10, 2015
Must- and Shall-Reads:
-
: There’s Something About Money: “Continuing a family tradition, Rand Paul is saying crazy things about the Fed and monetary policy. It’s important to note, however, that he’s not that far out of the modern Republican mainstream. Remember this: ‘I always go back to, you know, Francisco d’Anconia’s speech, at Bill Taggart’s wedding, on money when I think about monetary policy. Then I go to the 64-page John Galt speech, you know, on the radio at the end, and go back to a lot of other things that she did, to try and make sure that I can check my premises…’ Yes, that’s Paul Ryan citing a second-tier character in Atlas Shrugged as the ultimate authority on monetary policy; and we’re not talking about when he was an adolescent, we’re talking about someone who was already a rising Republican star. But why the craziness?… Here’s my current thought: in some sense money is a really weird thing, which can look to individuals like a real asset–cold, hard, cash–but is ultimately, as Paul Samuelson put it, a ‘social contrivance’ whose value is more or less conjured out of thin air…. Dealing with monetary economics [in the standard] way lets you address monetary and fiscal policy in terms of lucid, elegant little models that are… not at all intuitive to people who haven’t learned to think this way…. Still, there’s a bit of sleight of hand involved in the way we handle money itself: first acknowledge that it’s a special sort of good that people desire only because other people desire it, then ignore that specialness…. The conclusion of generations of macroeconomists has been that for most purposes models that treat money as if it were an ordinary good are good enough; whereas attempts to ground everything in models in which the role of money is in some (weak) sense derived rather than assumed have been generally useless. Still, there’s always an undercurrent of unease…. The elder and younger Pauls… Paul Ryan… having no contact with the intellectual tradition of macroeconomics, they find the role of money in the economy a great mystery and possibly an outrage–how dare banks/governments/the Illuminati pretend to create value out of nothing! Fiat money, whether created by the government or by banks, seems to them to be a violation of natural law; creating more fiat money in an attempt to relieve economic distress must surely lead to disaster…. This epistemological panic is gaining a growing hold over American conservatives at a time when the standard way of dealing with money has, in fact, been covering itself in glory…. But so it goes.” -
: Is Resistance Futile?: “Krugman…. ‘So if Larry [Summers] were at the Fed, would he be saying what he is, or would he have been assimilated by the FedBorg?’… This got me wondering: In the past 7+ years have I, as a staff economist, been ‘assimilated by the FedBorg?’… What are some Fed-specific signs that I have changed as an economist?: Fedspeak: My economic writing tends to be more factual and less forceful now…. The staff view: As an economist, I uttered the words: ‘we think xyz’ much, much less before joining the Fed…. The Fed: More than once I have thought how wonderful it would be if monetary policy in the real world were like in Woodford’s textbook…. I am constantly amazed at the array of inputs to and outputs from the policy work at the Fed. And I am pretty sure that most academic economists could learn something from reflecting more on this…. So it seems to me the good part of assimilating is learning new things, the bad part of assimilating is forgetting what you knew…” -
: “There Can Be No Partnership with the King”: Regulatory Commitment and the Tortured Rise of England’s East Indian Merchant Empire: “The English East India Company helped build Britain’s colonial empire, but the Company was not a leader in East Asian trade for nearly a century after its founding in 1600. This paper argues that its early performance was hindered by a problem of regulatory commitment. It gives a brief history of the torturous renegotiations over its monopoly trading privileges and the fiscal demands by the monarchy. It also analyzes the effects of political instability, warfare, and fiscal capacity on the Company’s investment in shipping tonnage. Regressions show the growth of shipping tonnage declined significantly when there were changes in government ministers, when Britain was at war in Europe and North America, and when shipping capacity exceeded central government tax revenues. The findings point to the significance of regulatory institutions in Britain’s development and its links with politics and war. They also provide an important case where regulatory uncertainty lowers investment.” -
: The National Rise in Residential Segregation: “We exploit complete census manuscript files to derive a measure of segregation based upon the racial similarity of next-door neighbors. Our measure allows us to analyze segregation consistently and comprehensively for all areas in the United States and allows for a richer view of the variation in segregation across time and space. We show that the fineness of our measure reveals aspects of racial sorting that cannot be captured by traditional segregation indices. Our measure can distinguish between the effects of increasing racial homogeneity of a location and the tendency to segregate within a location given a particular racial composition. Analysis of neighbor-based segregation over time establishes several new facts about segregation. First, segregation doubled nationally from 1880 to 1940. Second, contrary to previous estimates, we find that urban areas in the South were the most segregated in the country and remained so over time. Third, the dramatic increase in segregation in the twentieth century was not driven by urbanization, black migratory patterns, or white flight to suburban areas, but rather resulted from a national increase in racial sorting at the household level. The likelihood that an African American household had a non-African American neighbor declined by more than 15 percentage points (more than a 25% decrease) through the mid-twentieth century. In all areas of the United States–North and South, urban and rural–racial segregation increased dramatically.”
Should Be Aware of:
- : Chromebooks: Electronics
- : “The New York Times’ [Campbell Robertson’s] coverage of a new report on lynchings in American history in a piece published today failed to mention the race of the people who were responsible for these acts…”
- : Help Ukraine Seize This Chance
-
: Changed Military Status: “Three tours in Iraq…. I went to fight al-Q’aida, and instead hunkered down under indirect fire from mostly Shi’a old men and young boys, shooting off decrepit, refurbished rockets for the paltry sums they needed to keep their families fed for another day. These people hadn’t attacked us on 9/11. They weren’t plan ning to attack us in the future. And we were killing them. I was killing them. More revelations… Manning and Snowden.. ISIS. I finally stood in the lobby of a hotel in Washington, DC as Obama announced that we were sending another 1,500 troops to Iraq and I asked myself: ‘if they called you now, would you want to go?’ And I realized that, for the first time, the answer was, ‘no.’” -
: The Parent Agenda, the Emerging Democratic Focus: “Just a few years ago, one could be forgiven for wondering whether the liberal agenda had run its course…. The big Democratic policies yet to be fully addressed, like immigration overhaul and restrictions on carbon emissions, pitted the party’s new progressive constituencies against its traditional, white working-class base. Yet in the months after last year’s midterm elections, a reinvigorated liberal agenda has started to emerge… parents. The policies under discussion–paid family leave; universal preschool; an expanded earned-income tax credit and child tax credit; free community college and perhaps free four-year college in time–are intended both to alleviate the burdens on middle-class families and to expand educational opportunity for children. The result is a thematic platform addressing some of the biggest sources of anxiety about the future of the middle class…” -
: Response to Freddie deBoer, Just Like I Done Promised, Ye of Little Faith: “[Jonathan] Chait’s whiner’s petting zoo proffers feeble… things…. ‘Someone who looked in the mirror with a towel on as a cape dubbed herself an Official Feminist 4Eva come whatsoever might. Then she pitched the #slatiest book ever to fly right over home #splatepitch, declaring that the sexism war is over and the patriarchy…DUN DUN DUN…lost!1 [shocka!] And then people made fun of her on Twitter! Let us never lose sight of the root and branch and wasp-blown fruit rottenness of Chait’s essay.” -
: Obama Joins the Greek Chorus: “US President Barack Obama’s recent call to ease the austerity imposed on Greece is remarkable–and not only for his endorsement of the newly elected Greek government’s negotiating position in the face of its official creditors. Obama’s comments represent a break with the long-standing tradition of official American silence on European monetary affairs. While scholars in the United States have frequently denounced the policies of Europe’s monetary union, their government has looked the other way…”