Things to Read on the Morning of September 18, 2014
Must- and Shall-Reads:
-
**Matthew Yglesias: Obama’s biggest economic policy mistake: “Barack Obama has not accomplished nearly as much as his most fervent supporters–or, indeed, the president himself–had hoped…. This has led… to a litany of back-biting complaints… corruption or incompetence… tactical failings or ideological betrayals. The truth is… he has accomplished an enormous amount…. But as the country waits to hear the latest announcement from the Fed about how rapidly it will end its Quantitative Easing programs, we are witnessing the biggest mistake of Obama’s presidency: the systematic neglect of the Federal Reserve… a failure that… has likely doomed millions of people to needlessly long spells of unemployment, permanently reduced the structural capacity of the American economy, and through poor macroeconomic performance reduced his political ability to drive change in environmental policy, bank regulation, and other areas…. Obama’s neglect of Federal Reserve appointments is, in some ways, mysterious. Nobody denies that the Fed is an extremely important institution…. When it comes to other important independent institutions such as the federal judiciary, it’s broadly acknowledged that the presidential appointment powers are among his most important powers…. [But[ bolstering the left flank on the FOMC so that Yellen’s consensus-building efforts would land in a more stimulative spot isn’t on the agenda…. The current vacancies are not a new phenomenon. When Obama first took office in 2009, he allowed Fed vacancies to linger for years, only putting forth candidates in 2011. When he did put two names into play, one was a Republican and the other–Jeremy Stein–is a Democrat who holds to an eccentric view that tight money is sometimes appropriate even when unemployment is high…. How much good could have been done if Obama had listened to Romer, Scott Sumner, Joseph Gagnon, or others and placed a higher priority on appointing unemployment-fighters to the Fed? Nobody can say for sure. But the experience of the United Kingdom is illustrative…. FDR’s long-term impact on American policy comes from the structural reforms of the New Deal. But as Romer showed… ‘nearly all the observed recovery of the US economy prior to 1942 was due to monetary expansion’. That recovery–driven by Roosevelt’s pursuit of aggressive monetary policy in the form of ditching the gold standard–is what gave him the political clout to pursue those structural reforms. Had Obama been as attuned to monetary matters as FDR, he could have secured a better result for the country and a firmer legacy for himself.”
-
Cheryl K. Chumley: The Problem with Being John Boehner: “Speaker John Boehner [explains] why… the Republican majority in the House looks good on paper but doesn’t always pan out with votes. ‘On any given day, 16 of my members decide they’re going to go this way, and all of the sudden, I have nothing. You might notice I have a few knuckleheads in my conference…. Dealing with Democrats is one thing. Dealing with the knuckleheads is another.’… In April, Mr. Boehner mocked some of his Republican colleagues for failing to support immigration reform, describing their attitudes as: ‘Ohhh, don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard…'”
-
Scott Gotlieb: Ebola:
-
Simon Wren-Lewis: Keynes and the Macmillan committee “When I was younger, I drew the wrong inference about the Great Depression. If only the General Theory had been written 10 years earlier, I reasoned, much of the agony of the Great Depression could have been avoided. Instead I should have focused on the gold standard… because of what it tells you about the influences on macroeconomic policy. Montagu Norman said to the committee ‘I have never been able to see myself why for the last few years it should have been impossible for industry, starting from within, to have readjusted its own position’. This was a few years after the General Strike of 1926! This was not someone lacking a coherent theory, but someone blind to the evidence and human nature, and enthralled to the ideology of the gold standard. No doubt being a central banker rather than a worker, or even an industrialist, helped this blindness. The lesson I should have drawn from the Great Depression is that a powerful ideology, in the hands of people remote from those adversely affected by it, can overcome common sense and evidence.”
-
Ezra Klein: Area Pundit Tom Frank Angry at Political Science for Proving Him Wrong: “Watching congressional Democrats who were more conservative than Republicans become Republicans is not a story that tracks very well with [Tom] Frank’s story of a populist electorate being turned off by Clinton’s triangulations. Indeed, Clinton was much more liberal than many of the congressional Democrats who lost their seats in 1994. But Frank wants to see the Democratic Party move leftward, and so this isn’t an analysis of the period that he finds very helpful…. I rely on political science research… because politics, in my experience, is thick with the ‘allow me to drop a single, disturbing data point’ approach to analysis. Skilled writers can make anything sound convincing in 24 column inches…. Political science has its problems, but… is more than capable of weeding out this kind of nonsense. It forces a much higher evidentiary standard…. The biggest problem any of us face trying to learn about American politics is the natural tendency to believe arguments we like and dismiss the ones we don’t. Poli-sci research is, for me, a helpful check…. I need to ground my political commentary in something beyond my own opinions. Political science research isn’t perfect or infallible, but it’s a start. So yes, Frank is right: politics is full of experts who don’t deserve the trust they’re given and retain prominence even after their theories are shredded. The problem is he’s one of them.”
Should Be Aware of:
- John Emerson: Anti-Populism One More Time
- Rachel S. Cordasco: On The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer
-
LizardBreath: Sexism Without Sexists:
Talking about children’s books yesterday, DaveLMA said “Wizard of Earthsea, wonderful as it is, may be less good for a young woman than a young man.”… They’re beautiful books about magic as a way of naming and knowing the world, but… there’s an aphorism from the world of the books: Weak as women’s magic, and wicked as women’s magic…. I had a similar set of thoughts when Mary Stewart died last spring. I loved her trilogy of books about Merlin…. Merlin’s power is (initially) contingent on his avoiding sex with women, and women’s magic is weak, and repeatedly equated with poison…. Both of these sets of books I loved uncomplicatedly as a teenager…. Looking back, though, I find them upsetting, particularly considering the authors. It’s not just that they’re both women…. Tthey both came up with these worlds where weakness and evil were baked into the nature of femininity. I don’t know what to do with this in either case, except that I haven’t recommended either trilogy to my kids, and thinking about them makes me angry…. There’s a lot of stuff that’s much more aggressively sexist that I read and reread with enjoyment and without taking it personally, but these two sets of books got under my skin.” -
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Hirsi Ali addresses over 300: as reported by Nicole Ng And Wesley Yiin: “Growing up, Hirsi Ali said religious teachers taught her the duties of being a Muslim, such as worshipping Allah, telling the truth, looking after those in need and being obedient and modest. She said in her community, those who neglected their religious duties were never ostracized or attacked, but rather were ‘left alone’ or ‘nudged gently’ at most. When she was 15, Hirsi Ali said she encountered a different kind of religious teacher–whom she referred to as a ‘Preacher Teacher’–who encouraged youths to enforce the religious duty of Islam and wage jihad against those who did not obey…. This ‘indoctrination’ is at the source of radical Islam and leads to intolerance and violence. Therefore, she said, in order to fight the symptoms of radical Islam, the ‘core creed’ of Islam–the Qur’an and hadith–must be reformed. Hirsi Ali called on Muslims to listen to their consciences and stand up to Allah, rather than bending to his will…. ‘The clash is there, but what we follow up with is restraint. And restraint is what we’ve been showing for the last 30 years’…. Hirsi Ali directly addressed the MSA during her speech, asking why the organization took the time and resources to ‘silence the reformers and dissidents of Islam’, including herself, rather than fighting against the violence, intolerance and indoctrination Hirsi Ali associates with Islam. ‘MSA students of Yale, you live at a time when Muslims are at a crossroads’, she said. ‘The Muslim world is on fire and those fanning the fire are using more creed. With every atrocity [they underscore] your commitment to Allah…. Will you submit passively or actively, or will you finally stand up to Allah?’…. Individual Muslim students interviewed expressed a variety of reactions to Hirsi Ali’s talk, but declined to attribute their names out of fear of retribution…”
-
Daniel Drezner: The System is Working: “True, the first year of the Great Recession was more severe than the first year of the Great Depression. But, despite this initial shock, the system responded in a surprisingly nimble fashion. Compared to previous global downturns triggered by a financial crisis, the global economy bounced back robustly. Trade and output levels exceeded pre-crisis levels in most countries a few years ago, and global poverty continues to decline rapidly. One key to this rebound was that, in contrast to the 1930s, the global economy maintained existing conditions: trade barriers remained low, as did restrictions on foreign direct investment, and cross-border exchange continued to spread with the Internet…. By any reasonable metric, multilateral institutions and great-power governments did what was necessary to preserve the global economy’s openness. So why the widespread misperception that the system failed? Here, we run into a dirty little secret of world politics: many commentators on international politics do not know much about economics or economic policy…. This ignorance matters when political commentators try to write about the global economy. They will naturally rely on the most accessible facts as their guide…. Does the system’s remarkable resiliency since 2008 mean that it can withstand the next crisis? In theory, yes…. Ironically, the only thing that might stop the system from continuing to work is the low confidence of its greatest proponents.”
Comments:
- Optimism of the will is fine when attached either to optimism or pessimism of the intellect. But optimism of the will combined with denial of the intellect is not a terribly effective rhetorical pose. You do realize that your arguments would be stronger if you had, like, actual quotes from Jonathan Chait saying things you think are wrong? And, like, actual explanations of why you think what Chait writes is wrong? Joining Tom Frank and Sally Quinn in their war on Ezra Klein and Nate Silver really looks like a career-limiting move to me…