Late Night

enjoy

Saturday Night

Go outside and play. Or, sit on your ass and be lazy. Whatever you prefer.

More Thread

Nice day in the urban hellhole.

Don't Overreact

And back then people would try to convince me he was a liberal.

The War At Home

Took about 2 days after 9/11 for conservatives to recognize who the real enemies were: dirty fucking hippies.

More Thread

enjoy

9/11 Day

A tragic day which brought out the worst in our country. Not right away, but once evil people saw opportunity to exploit it for their own dreams of destruction.

600 Executives

Companies have 600 executives?

After surging in size and profits during the post-9/11 era, the defense industry in metropolitan Washington is bracing for a major contraction and significant layoffs that economists said could produce a drag on the regional economy for years.

Already, there have been signs that announced cuts in national defense programs are having an impact: Six hundred executives at Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin are accepting the company's offer of a buyout. ITT Defense and Information Systems, based in McLean, this year combined seven business units into three and cut 1,000 workers. Hundreds were let go this year from Northrop Grumman operations in Maryland.

Dogtrack

"Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits - a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities."

Might as well be a thousand words. But...

---
Updating: This is Keynes' "animal spirits" explanation of economic activity. Y's post suggests this is a much better way to explain fluctuations in financial activity than the "efficient markets" story. Neither buying strategy should be dominant if financial markets are "efficient." That betting with the crowd is so dominant is....interesting.

Evening Thread

Am out fringe festivaling.

Happy Hour Thread

enjoy

In Case It Isn't Clear

I'd like unemployment to fall so that people have jobs and I'd like the economy not to suck so that we are not ruled by insane Republicans.

They Write Letters

In response to my linking to this:

Duncan -

I saw you link to an argument that my dissertation fifteen years ago on investment subsidies implied that the administration’s recently-announced policy calling for temporary expensing of capital investment and making the R&D tax credit permanent would not work. While I admit to a small amount of joy that someone actually looked at my old research, I think the details in that work say differently. I started from the obvious point that subsidizing the demand for something when there are capacity constraints or a steeply rising supply curve, should tend to drive up prices in the short run rather than purely inducing more purchases. This was often true of capital goods like machinery in the data period I studied (which was from the 1960s to the 1980s).

But this effect centered on the idea that this should be in situations where there were constraints on supply in an industry. The findings in that paper showed quite clearly that the price increases were concentrated only among those products where there were significant backlogged orders/capacity was tight. In places of significant slack, there were no price effects. In a period like today, where capacity utilization in the industrial sector has suffered greatly (and where there are substantial numbers of unemployed R&D engineers), the findings in my old work would clearly indicate there would be little reason to expect the increased demand to go into higher prices. Investment subsidies at a time like this could generate significant amounts of investment.

-- Austan Goolsbee, Council of Economic Advisers

It's true that to the extent that we believe the supply curve is much more elastic (increased demand will increase the quantity sold and not simply just jack up the price) at this point in time, either due to the depth of the recession or due to the different composition of industry now, we'd expect such policies to have a greater impact. We also might think that subsidizing R&D is in general good policy, as there are greater social returns to innovation than private ones. Still my comment was "terrible bang for the buck," and while I'm willing to believe maybe it's "not as terrible bang for the buck," it's hard to see how this is in any way "the best bang for the buck." I suspect that while the full expensing of capital investment will be a nice bonus for firms, it'll cost the government a lot in lost revenue for capital purchases that would have been made anyway. There's also a bonus effect of making capital cheaper relative to labor, perhaps causing some capital substitution down the line. And the R&D tax credit will tend to benefit larger firms who have people on staff whose job it is to figure out how to take advantage of tax credits.

So will it have an impact? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's anything close to the best possible policy. If it's political compromise, then fine, but it isn't being offered as that, so...

Ending The Imperial Presidency

What it will take (and even then only temporarily) is a Republican Congress, a Democratic president, and a real or perceived abuse of power against some part of the conservative tribe.

Prescient Me

March, 2007:

Essentially you need to make it possible for people to refinance, both by getting rid of prepayment penalties and strongly "encouraging" lenders who gave out a bunch of mortages they shouldn't have to renegotiate the terms in order to make repayment more realistic.

Maybe if they'd listened to me we wouldn't have had all those problems all those years.


Joking aside, my real reason for looking that up is that blog time gets very confusing and sometimes I forget how far back it was obvious that the housing situation was going to be a disaster. Quite awhile.

Nobody Is Ever Responsible

And no one will be held accountable.

According to residents, the tragic disaster may have been preventable.

San Mateo Assemblyman Jerry Hill said he was "outraged" to learn that some residents had complained to PG&E about gas leaks in the neighborhood "for up to three weeks" before the explosion.

Hill said the pipe that ruptured was installed in 1948.

Aside from the accountability/responsibility issue, it's also a wee reminder that our infrastructure is old and crumbling, and the impacts of that can range from troubling to catastrophic...

I Know Chris Hayes Is There

Occasionally it'd be nice if there were some questions marginally from "The Left." Could ask about why HAMP was such a disaster, for example. Maybe about the DADT court ruling. Or maybe about assassinations and indefinite detentions.

...Helene Cooper had decent question about corruption in Afghanistan.


...Compton asks about Guantanamo not closing.

Presser

No need to turn on the teevee.


...booo..seems to be auto-on, at least for me. Watch here.

I've Said It Before

But I have no idea why we're talking about the "Bush tax cuts" instead of talking about how Bush's tax cuts are expiring as he intended, and meet the new and improved "Obama tax cuts."

An Excercise In Balance

I think I've mostly avoided talking about the wannabe Koran burner, but it's worth pointing out that the whole thing was just another exercise in false balance by our idiot media. On one hand we have mooooslims doing something "provacative" with that community center thingy, so on the other hand we have a guy burning Korans. That these things are not the same, and that they've established that any random nutcase can make himself front page news for no good reason, will likely not occur to anybody.

HAMP'd

This is a story in which the bank admits they screwed up, but it's the kind of screwup which is enabled by the fact that HAMP encourages homeowners to continue making payments while banks decide how best to screw them.

It's thoroughly depressing.

Who Would Jesus Bomb

I like that he's "self-described."

A Concord man was charged with describing how to make explosives, in an effort to bomb an abortion clinic, after FBI agents found instructions on the man's Facebook page and caught him in a sting, officials said Thursday.

Justin Carl Moose, 26, is a self-described "extremist, radical" and the "Christian counterpart of Osama bin Laden," according to an affidavit filed by FBI agents. Agents arrested Moose, who lives in a northwest Concord neighborhood, on Tuesday.

Nobdy Could Have Predicted

That energy "deregulation" was just a scam to enrich monopolists and that actual competition would never appear.

Slow Progress

Gotta cheer the good news.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A federal judge in Southern California has declared the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips on Thursday granted a request for an injunction halting the government's "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military.

Evening Thread

Chat on.

The Summer Of The Shark

So what's next?

Curious

Good for Voinovich, but I'm also a bit curious about why I don't ever remember hearing him be one of those reasonable Republicans the Obama administration was trying to reach out to. He stepped up a couple of times during the Bush years.

Driving Is Really Dangerous

I know for lots of people getting around by any means other than automobile for most purposes is basically unfathomable, but it still amazes me that we collectively yawn at the massive number of annual automobile deaths. They continue to decline, which is good news of course, but it's still a lot of people.

All We Need To Do Is Anything

Of course there are better and worse plans, and I'm not especially enamored with parts of this, but what we need are people who recognize that 9.6% unemployment is a problem and it's their job to fix it.

Rigged Game

I do not think I am going out on a limb in predicting that there will never be any consequences for Bob Rubin ever.

That Nasty Deficit

So the "centrist" Dems who are usually given lots of friendly ink over the endless kvetching about the deficit are going to prove, for the trillionth time, that they don't actually care about the deficit but instead only care about marginal tax rates for rich people.

That won't stop reporters from writing about their "deficit concerns," though with any luck they'll all be chucked out of their jobs.

Our Genius Overlords

OECD in May:

RATE RECOMMENDATIONS:

UNITED STATES:

In the United States, where some long-term measures of inflation expectations have increased and the labour market has stabilised earlier than expected, the start of normalisation should not be delayed beyond the last quarter of 2010. Policy interest rates should be well above half-way to neutral by end-2011, but the path of convergence to full normalisation would have to accelerate if long-term inflation expectations were to drift up further.

OECD now:

The global economic recovery is proving slower than projected and policy makers may need to extend or bolster stimulus programs to support it, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

...

If the slowdown is temporary, then policy makers should postpone the withdrawal of monetary support for a few months, while maintaining plans to cut fiscal deficits to reassure investors, the OECD said. If growth is threatened for longer, then central banks may need to buy assets and commit to near- zero interest rates for a long period and governments may need to delay budget cuts, it said.

Our business discourse is so absurd. "Reassure investors."

Is That Really So Many?

My local newspaper is trying to make a big deal out of the fact there was a 1.5% absentee rate for teachers on the first day of school. That doesn't sound so bad to me.

Hopey Changey

I admit to just feeling completely powerless over the issues that are Glennzilla's main beat, as the Obama administration continues with the worst of the Bush administration claims on executive power and torture/assassination. This, it must be said, has nothing to do with the power of President Snowe.

Thursday Is New Jobless Day

451K new lucky duckies.

Better, but still high.

Deep Night Thought

I'm very grateful that the Guardians of Our Elite Discourse have decided to listen carefully to Pam Geller. They are however missing out on a good thing in regards to Pastor Grant Swank. I could hook them up. Pastor Swank = Great Copy.

Late Night

More Thread

Because you talk too much.

Happy Hour Thread

Enjoy

Terrible Bang For The Buck

Indeed.

The View From TheMineapolis Fed

The problem is structural, nothing we can do, call us in a few years, naptime.

This estimate is based on a rather aggregative view of the labor market. It is important to dig deeper to get a better understanding of the problem, and there is a considerable amount of research under way exploring the quantitative importance of the various forms of mismatch. For example, the International Monetary Fund has recently released a special study based on a new state-by-state measure of the gap between demand and supply for workers with different levels of educational attainment. The study examines the impact of this variable and the foreclosure rate on state-level unemployment. It estimates that 1.5 percentage points of the national unemployment rate is due to these two sources and their interaction. Thus, according to this study, these two types of mismatch alone can account for a significant fraction of my estimate of 2.5 percentage points.

Good economic policy is about using the right tool for the problem at hand. The mismatch problems in the labor market do not strike me as readily amenable to the kinds of monetary policy tools currently available to the Fed.

Oh well.

Econ 101 Makes You Stupid

It is indeed a problem. Just to add to the linked post a bit, in normal situations increased demand for shovels would lead to new entrants into the shovel manufacturing and distributing businesses, causing there to be more shovels available for all. But in snow storm crisis, there isn't actually going to be time for new shovels to appear in the marketplace. Instead, shovel sellers will simply make more money, and rich people will be more likely than poor people to obtain needed shovels, even though poor people might not just shovel their own driveways but also might get a bit entrepreneurial and sell their driveway shoveling services to their neighbors. As James says, the point isn't that there's necessarily a perfect rationing mechanism, just that in this case there's no particular reason to think that price is the best one. Under certain conditions, price is a good rationing mechanism, but not all.

Why Does Everything Have To Be So Complicated

Consider the amount of money wasted on multiple programs, evaluation, administration, means-testing, etc...

Just provide universal daycare already. Simple, easy, popular.

You Know What Else Is Anti-Semitic?

Blaming it on the Jews.

Leave The Technocratting To The Technocrats

I think the important point is that executives (mayors, governors) we think are "good" are good in large part because they are good at hiring...skilled technocrats... so that technocrats can do good stuff while the politician spends time convincing the public that the good stuff is indeed good. Obviously wonkier-seeming politicians have a greater than normal appeal for wonky liberal bloggers, and having some wonksense gives them the ability to hire quality technocrats, but the job of a politician is a bit broader than that.

Not Entirely Stupid

I certainly don't think that, say, losing the House will usher in a glorious period of bipartisan cooperation whereby exciting progressive legislation gets passed with some Republican support, though it is probably true in some sense that it would lead to something other than Republicans trying to torpedo absolutely anything. They'd have some power to set the agenda and therefore take credit for things unlike now where they aren't in charge, don't get credit, and therefore have a rational interest in just opposing everything.

On the other hand, I don't especially care if Republicans start voting yes on things they support and then maybe agreeing to some compromise. I don't think we'll get better results that way, and certainly don't care about bipartisanship as an end in itself.

Wanker of the Day

Mike Lester.

It's The Little Things

One thing that always fascinates me is how massive theft and corruption often get a pass, but things like "free bridge tolls" incense people.

GOP Daddies

I joked on twitter yesterday that the only possible replacement for Rahm was David Gergen. Then we get this from Chuck Toddler:

Coming up on @dailyrundown the Rahm-replacement short list. Which Republicans are on it. Plus...

Your Liberal Media

Where "compromise" means giving Republicans everything that they want. NYT.

Overnight

enjoy

Tuesday Night Thread

Hey, Will Bunch wrote a book.

Happy Hour Thread

enjoy.

I Endorse Blago

I'm actually not all that familiar with Chicago, but news that Richard "Mayor For Life" Daley isn't running again was quite surprising. Some things are just fixtures whether or not they should be.

It's Ours Because We Say So

So much awesomeness.

While AmTrust, a failed Ohio bank that is now a division of New York Community Bank, said it owned the note and could foreclose, Mr. Waters’s lawyer produced documents showing that Fannie Mae, the taxpayer-owned mortgage finance giant, was really the owner.

In spite of the conflicting evidence, Aaron Bowden, the retired judge overseeing the case, made a summary judgment on Aug. 3, ruling that the property should go back to AmTrust.

...

When contacted by a reporter on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Fannie Mae confirmed that it owned the note.

David Tong, the lawyer representing AmTrust in the case, declined to comment on the matter. But on Friday, he did an about-face, filing papers with the court acknowledging that Fannie Mae owns the note.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Your Afternoon Reading Assignment

Krugman&Wells.

Fail

This is a righteous rant pointing out that what we have is a complete fucking fail. It's a failure of our political institutions, of our financial system, of our economy as structured, of the economics profession, of unelected elite GOP Daddies who are supposed to fix things, of the media, of the whole fucking thing. Extended 9.5%+ unemployment is not ok. It means something is seriously fucking wrong, and the people in charge are unwilling or for whatever reason (including being idiots) unable to fix the problem.

What Howie Reads

Or, why almost every day we talk about whatever conservatives want us to talk about.

Innovations In The Field Of Advanced Blogger Ethics

One of the weird things over the years has been the unwillingness of major media outlets to give credit to certain sources for their stories. You know, bloggers. The reasoning seemed to be something along the lines of "we're the AP so we don't have to." Personally I never cared much, but it seemed to be rather rude and not all that ethical.

Responding To Incentives

It's possible to observe critically the reality described below without criticizing individual parents for their behavior. While I think in most places people who are paranoid about "child abduction" are a bit off, I get that people respond to social pressure and attempt to conform to social norms. If no one else is walking to school, you're going to be less likely to let your kid walk, etc. If your neighborhood has no sidewalks, or if the "close" school is across a theoretically but not really traverseable 8 lane road it might not really be wise for kids to walk.

I guess there are two issues here. One is parental attitudes about appropriate levels of supervision and concerns about certain safety issues. The other is how we build our neighborhoods.

The Way We Live

Let me just point out that cars are dangerous and car accident injuries are the #1 cause of death for children in this country.

First, the "car kids" are herded into the gym. "The guards make sure all children sit still and do not move or speak during the process," reports a dad in Tennessee. Outside, "People get there 45 minutes early to get a spot. And the scary thing is, most of the kids live within biking distance," says Kim Meyer, a mom in Greensboro, N.C.

When the bell finally rings, the first car races into the pick-up spot, whereupon the car-line monitor barks into a walkie-talkie: "Devin's mom is here!"

Devin is grabbed from the gym, escorted to the sidewalk and hustled into the car as if under enemy fire. His mom peels out and the next car pulls up. "Sydney's mom is here!"

Kerry Buss, a curriculum developer in Fairfax County, Va., says her son's school does this, "And this is the same school that took out the bike racks to discourage kids from biking." It's also the school her husband attended as a child. Back then, "he and his sister walked to school like every other kid in the neighborhood. It was unheard of that there'd be a bus, much less a car line."

Overnight

Rock on.

Monday Night

It probably doesn't matter much, but I do wish I could spend the next couple months worrying about electing Democrats instead of worrying that Democrats are planning to cut Social Security.

Truth

James Kwak:

It’s possible that after school I will go back to more serious blogging; I do think it’s a valuable and potentially powerful medium, and certainly a lot more gratifying than writing academic papers.

It is the case that after starting this sucky blog and fairly quickly amassing an audience of HUNDREDS PER DAY, the lure of academic research was greatly diminished. It wasn't that I had no interest in it, but it was instead the realization that my new sucky blog would probably have more influence on the world than any academic work I was likely to do (there are actually a couple of heavily cited papers with my name on them floating around, and I don't just mean ones by that other Duncan Black). That was in 2002, 4 million blog years ago.

Though it is a demanding medium. To keep an audience you have to feed the beast. I think it was Dan Froomkin who said to me that if you're gone from the internet for the day you're gone forever. Exaggeration, of course, but there's truth to it.

Umm Mawagir

For those interested in archaeology.

Evening Thread

One more week until Congress returns to session. Oh boy.

Winning The Politics

It isn't too crazy to imagine that "we want to fix your bridges and they don't" might actually sell well.

Not Enough

Obviously proposing and hopefully spending $50 billion on infrastructure is a lot more exciting to me than random small business tax cuts, but it's also the case that it isn't enough. One wishes he'd go long...

Lunch Thread

Out doing my patriotic Labor Day Duty: shopping.

Hey That's More Like It

Drudgico:

Seeking to bolster the sluggish economy, President Barack Obama is using a Labor Day appearance in Milwaukee to announce he will ask Congress for $50 billion to kick off a new infrastructure plan designed to expand and renew the nation’s roads, railways and runways.

The goals, according to the White House: “Rebuild 150,000 miles of roads — renewing our commitment to the backbone of our transportation system … . Construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail — enough to go coast-to-coast … . Rehabilitate or reconstruct 150 miles of runway — while putting in place a NextGen system that will reduce travel time and delays.”

The measures include the “establishment of an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on investments of national and regional significance that often fall through the cracks in the current siloed transportation programs," and “the integration of high-speed rail on an equal footing into the surface transportation program.”

Grumpy old Monday

I'm so old I can remember when lefties called conservatives names and made fun of them and won the public discourse.

Signed,
Not Atrios

More Thread

For your pleasure.

Evening Thread

End of an era. The grill has reached its end days.

More Than That

In my time among the econ I thought there was asymmetric pressure in that it is ok to go forth and spew right wing horseshit with impunity but suggesting that maybe raising the minimum wage a tad isn't such a bad idea would be frowned upon.

...adding, in my experience, academic economists tended to be what you could call Slate Democrats. Not especially liberal, especially on economic issues, and a bit enamored with contrarianism, but they still tended to actually care about grappling seriously with policy issues, something Republicans just don't do.

Late Morning Thread

Another nice day in the urban hellhole. Fall's the season we can count on here. Gonna dodge the bullets and walk to the farmers market.

Sunday Bobbleheads

This Week has The Poodle.

Meet the Press has Attorney General Graham and Plouffe.

Face the Nation has Laura Tyson and Mark Zandi.

Document the atrocities!

Congratulations

To Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books, but more importantly of Making Light, for winning a Hugo as Best Editor.

Huzzah!

Signed,
Not Atrios

Table

Public works projects are off the table.

Social Security benefit cuts are on the table.

These are both obviously bad policy positions.

These are both obviously bad political positions.

Many of us have asked why Obama and the Democratic leadership are so deeply committed to these obviously bad policies, even to the point of risking the House majority, not to mention increasing rather than reducing American human misery.

Eventually you have to consider the possibility they are getting the policies they want to get.

When Barack Obama made his famous remarks about Ronald Reagan being transformational, it was misinterpreted as being political, an attempt to reach out to the other side. It actually was, as some feared, philosophical. It really did mean, sincerely, that except around the edges, he thought that Reaganism-Thatcherism was irreversible. Just as Bill Clinton does, just as Tony Blair does.

The Third-Wayers are serious about this. Seriously deluded, perhaps, but dead serious. There was never an attempt to triangulate the "independent center", those who still believed in Reaganism but were distressed by the partisan cultural meanness. That was sincere.

(h/t Stuart Zechman)