Dean Baker on Clinton

The Armageddon Caucus by Krugman

article on Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

It goes online July 21st.

(via Alyssa Rosenberg)

Michele Bachmann's Holy War by Matt Taibbi

But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.

George Will Spreads Some Lies About the Economic Crisis by Dean Baker

Says Will,

In 1994, Bill Clinton proposed increasing homeownership through a "partnership" between government and the private sector, principally orchestrated by Fannie Mae, a "government-sponsored enterprise" (GSE). It became a perfect specimen of what such "partnerships" (e.g., General Motors) usually involve: Profits are private, losses are socialized.

Does Will agree that if losses weren't socialized that we would have had another Great Depression? (Next time there won't be bailouts so we'll find out.)

Should profits not be private then? Is that what he's saying?  I'm confused.

The Busts Keep Getting Bigger: Why? by Kruman and Robin Wells

Video of Krugman's Keynes talk with Q&A session

Interview with the cast and creators of Party Down

A Song of Ice and Fire saga's fifth book "A Dance with Dragons" to be published on July 12.

(via Charlie Jane Anders and i09)

payroll tax needs a vacation by Robert H. Frank

article on John Carpenter

A GREAT romance ended for the director John Carpenter 10 years ago on the set of his movie "Ghosts of Mars."

 His star Courtney Love was replaced one week before principal photography began, and after writing the script and the music as well as directing, Mr. Carpenter was bone tired. It was right in the middle of a scene when it hit him: "I don’t love her anymore."

Her is The Movies....

...

And while Mr. Carpenter likes to bring up the shellacking he received from critics after his remake of "The Thing" opened in 1982, the film is now regarded as one of the best horror remakes ever. There is also a revival of interest in his Reagan-era alien movie They Live, with rumors of a remake and a recent book about it by the novelist Jonathan Lethem, the winner of a MacArthur grant.

This seems to make Mr. Carpenter somewhat uncomfortable. After listening to a passage from Mr. Lethem’s book praising one famously long fight scene involving Keith David and the wrestler Roddy Piper, Mr. Carpenter scoffs. "Dude, he was a wrestler,"  he says. "I cast a wrestler. We just wanted to put on a show, because this was a wrestler. I like what this genius writer says."

The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas

trailer of David Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Lisbeth Salander will be played by Rooney Mara who played the girlfriend who dumped Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network. Daniel Craig will play Blomkvist.

Hitchens's review of the book.

Profiles in Fed Cowardice by Krugman

Not really a surprise, but still shocking. The Fed predicts disastrously high unemployment as far as the eye can see (pdf):

Fed forecast of the unemployment rate 

And in response to this dire prospect, it declares its work done.

Notice that the Fed does not buy into the notion that there has been a large rise in the structural rate of unemployment, that 9 percent is the new normal. That stuff off to the right, labeled "longer run", is in effect the Fed’s estimate of how low unemployment could and should go without causing inflation problems. So the Fed agrees that something should be done to greatly increase demand.

But it washes its hands of the problem, even though Bernanke and his colleagues are well aware that nobody else will act.

I’m aware that there are doubts about how much the Fed could accomplish; I share those doubts. But that’s no reason not to try.

This display of passivity is awesome. And it’s shameful.

Krugman lecture on Keynes

How the Repo Market Ate Wall Street by Kevin Drum

PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality by Brian Beutler

Bill Gross is saying what Bernanke and other are arguing: stimulus now, mid-term deficit reduction later. Hopefully if the economy continues in the doldrums Bernanke will do QE3.

(via Krugman)


Maybe Gross is admitting he was wrong about rates shooting up once QE2 ends.

Dean Baker on Clinton

Dean Baker on Robert Samuelson

Greg Mankiw:

Democratic critics of the [Ryan] plan suggest that enacting it would be akin to pushing Grandma over a cliff. But they rarely point out that the premium-support model is in some ways similar to the system set up under President Obama’s health care law. If choosing among competing private plans on a government-regulated exchange is a good idea for someone at age 50, why is it so horrific for someone who is 70?

Obamacare was a political compromise. It's better than nothing and Medicare is better than Obamacare.*

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*My theory is that after winning in 2008, Obama's people decided Romney was their most likely opponent in 2012. After passing the ARRA, they went to work to pass Romneycare and drew out the process (town halls, lengthy committee debates) so that it would really sink in with the conservative base that they hate Romneycare and therefore Obama's strongest opponent in 2012 would be tainted by the association and have a more difficult time in the primaries. But man that Mankiw really is a hack, isn't he?

Joe Nocera on Glass-Steagall:

The first thing I realized is that all the horse-trading over the bill’s provision was done by Democrats. The Republicans, having been badly defeated in the 1932 election, had no ability to block it or even amend it. For instance, Republicans tended to view the creation of deposit insurance as "socialism." (Sound familiar?) But it didn’t matter: Steagall cared deeply about deposit insurance. Many community bankers -- as strong a force back then as today -- also supported the idea because they believed it would renew customers’ faith in the banks, and bring back deposits. (This turned out to be true.) Glass, though skeptical, went along so he could get things he cared about, mainly a stronger Federal Reserve with more power over the banks.

The second thing I realized was that, the Sisson speech notwithstanding, there was surprisingly little controversy over what we now think of as the law’s primary achievement: splitting commercial and investment banking. The fights were all over issues that seem inconsequential by today’s lights. It’s as if the notion of breaking the banking business into two was always a foregone conclusion.

David Brooks Discovers That It Was All Fannie Mae's Fault by Dean Baker

collection of macro readings by Krugman