Ryan Adams interview with Onion AV Club

AVC: But why pay attention to people on the Internet? You’ve reached a point in your career when you can pretty much do whatever you want, can’t you? 

RA: Yeah, I am doing what I want, but one of the interesting things about the Internet when you’re a musician is the sociology of the fans, the psychology of being a fan, and observing this negative and positively weird behavior. It’s kind of hard to explain this, but there’s this weird illness with people where it’s almost like they view their [favorite] artist as a football team or something, and all other artists are another team. [Laughs.] Or even sometimes, your records become sports teams. You put out a new record, and it’s like, “Tonight at Dodger Stadium, it’s the Easy Tigers vs. the Heartbreakers.” It’s super-competitive, and it’s a highly judgmental place for a place that should be free of judgment. My feeling about music is that it’s a place to go to get away from fucking negative creeps. And now, what’s really weird is that music is full of negative fucking creeps.

Same with the Left. From comments at Yglesias's blog post on NGDP level targeting:

Adam Short: I don't think that much of NGDP targeting in the abstract, but honestly it's a damn sight better than what we've got now. So, huzzah! Let's do it!

Steve LaBonne: At first blush it seems as though NGDP targeting would just end up providing cover for the reinflation of asset bubbles (and there's certainly a strong political constituency for that.) And that's not better than what we have now, it indeed helped to get us where we are now. Can you convince me that I'm wrong?

Adam Short: Steve LaBonne under our current system any recovery is going to reinflate asset bubbles. Asset bubbles are a natural consequence of our financial system.

So, do you really think not recovering is superior to recovering? If so, I guess I can't convince you.

Steve LaBonne: Adam Short I don't accept your premise. A properly designed Keynesian stimulus should increase inflation on a broad front rather than creating bubbles in particular sectors of the economy. Yes, I know we can't have that politically, so certainly new asset bubbles may be better right NOW than not doing it. But as a long-term policy (which is what the "targeting" implies")? Sorry, no. There, the only thing that will work is fixing the political system so that decently competent management of the economy is possible.

Translated:

Short: It's better than what we have now.

LaBonne: No it isn't. (it will just reflate asset bubbles, nothing more)

Short: A recovery is better than no recovery. (Any recovery will reflate asset bubbles.)

LaBonne: Yes a recovery is better than no recovery (admittedly my earlier comment was one hundred percent wrong). A Keynesian fiscal stimulus would be better (DID SHORT EVER SAY IT WOULDN'T?!?!? - ed.) But a long-term policy (WHICH SHORT SAID NOTHING ABOUT) targeting NGDP levels would be bad.

And negative fucking creep MMTer Dan Kervick comments:

NGDP targeting has a number of features that appeal to upper middle class knowledge elites:

It allows them to target increased inflation without saying "I want increased inflation."

It allows them to support backdoor debt deleveraging for the middle class without supporting the kind of moral hazard that offends bourgeois sensibilities.

It allows them depress the real wages of the most struggling members of our society, whom the knowledge elite believe are overpaid.

It allows them to avoid calling for any redistribution of income, the avoidance of which is a goal they share in solidarity with the very affluent.

Demanding the perfect in place of the good allows MMTers to name-call and insult others as sellouts so as to make themselves feel hardcore.

It allows them to continue believe what they will because their proposals will never see the light of day.

It allows them to keep unemployment at high levels because their policy proposals will never see the light of day.

What would Kervick say about Argentina's recent experience?

Krugman blogs about Dean Bakers commentary on a New York Times story:

Dean Baker is once again on the warpath over Argentina, this time over news reports that treat Kirchner’s reelection as somehow mysterious. The economy is booming and the opposition is hopelessly divided; how on earth did she win?

There is indeed a remarkable unwillingness in press coverage to face up to the reality that Argentina has done very well since its default and devaluation. Yes, there are problems. But there is a stunning contrast between the consistently negative tone of reporting on Argentina and, say, the fawning coverage of Latvia –which has now achieved such vigorous growth that real GDP is only 18 percent below its peak!

But I realized that this is just a sovereign version of Keynes’s dictum:

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally then to succeed unconventionally.

Keynes meant it as a description of bankers, but it goes for economic policy makers too.

Emphasis added.