Politics
- How Liberal Is Barack Obama?
- » No Surprise: Republicans Moving To Far Right While Democrats Moving Towards Middle Liberal Values
- The Immoral Minority: Some Palin-bots simply cannot face the truth about their idol and are still requesting donations to run radio ads begging the RNC to ask Palin to jump into the race. Damn, how much of that koolaid did they drink? (I thought this was a joke at first but I guess its true, there are actually some folks who really do think Sarah Palin is a competent effective leader. Hah!)
- Soros: Obama, Romney ‘Not Much Difference’
Politics (Mitt Romney)
Economic & The Economy
- The Great Anti-Keynesian Flip-Out – NYTimes.com
Keynesian economists made some pretty clear predictions around 3 years ago – predictions that were very much at odds with what anti-Keynesians were saying. We said that as long as the economy remained deeply depressed, even a huge rise in the monetary base would not be inflationary, and that even huge budget deficits would not send interest rates soaring. And we said that fiscal austerity would be contractionary, not expansionary.
All these predictions have been borne out. And some of the anti-Keynesians seem to be in the process of acknowledging, at least in a grudging way, that they got it wrong.
But some anti-Keynesians have tried to save their dignity, or something, by attacking supposed Keynesian propositions that nobody actually, you know, proposed. The usual one is to claim that Keynesians predicted great results from the Obama stimulus (which I very noisily did not). But Tyler Cowen has come up with something truly strange. He seems to believe that any good news anywhere somehow refutes Keynes. Hints of recovery in Ireland (which proved a false dawn)? Keynesianism is wrong! A relatively encouraging month on the jobs front? Keynesianism is wrong!
I’d say that this was attacking a straw man, but that would be an insult to straw men. What is going on in Cowen’s head?
- No Rick Santelli and Zero Hedge, One Million People Did Not Drop Out of the Labor Force Last Month | The Big Picture
- Brad DeLong: It Really Looks as Though (i) Hayek Did Not Keep a Copy and (ii) Thatcher’s Office Put Hayek’s Letter in the Circular File…