What I'm Reading Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Climate & Climate Politics

• Climate and Sea Level: An Emerging Hockey Stick – YouTube.
  
• New Material Can Scrub Carbon Dioxide Right Out of the Air at Unprecedented Rates | Popular Science

Politics — Mitt Romney

• Newt Gingrich: Mitt Romney would be a ‘mess’ in Obama debate – MJ Lee – POLITICO.com
• Bitter Primaries Revealing The Real Romney | National Memo | Breaking News, Smart Politics
• What Did Romney Do at Bain? – Megan McArdle – Business – The Atlantic
  

  At any time, the Wall Street Journal’s article on the fate of companies that Bain Capital invested in during Romney’s tenure would have probably made a splash.  But luckily for the commentariat, Romney gave the story a nice push by making a really incredibly stupid gaffe–remarkably, the biggest one he’s made in months of hard campaigning.

  The result has been predictable: the left (and some of his opponents) are accusing Romney of exemplifyingpredatory capitalism that destroys firms, jobs, and lives, while the right defends his work as creative destruction.  What’s the truth?

  First, the particulars.[read on…]

Politics — Newt Gingrich

• Keli Goff: Why Politics Needs More Losers Like Newt Gingrich

Politics — Health Care

• Brad DeLong: Why America Cannot Stay Great Unless the Republican Party as We Know It Quickly Vanishes, Part CXXII: Health Care Mandates

Politics

• Where Are the Liberals? – NYTimes.com
• Who Increased The Debt? | Features
  
• Sh*t Republican candidates say | Lizz Winstead | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
  

  I thought I had a potty mouth, but you should hear the way this GOP field talks. For starters, they’re obsessed with sex …

  [read on…]

Economics & The Economy

• Businessmen and Economics – NYTimes.com
  

  A brief thought on something I’ll try to expand on later. Leaving aside all the questions about what Mitt Romney did or didn’t do at Bain — and about hisself-aggrandizing double standard — there’s an even broader question: why does anyone believe that success in business qualified someone to make economic policy?

  For the fact is that running a business is nothing at all like making macro policy. The key point about macroeconomics is the pervasiveness of feedback loops due to the fact that workers are also consumers. No business sells a large fraction of its output to its own workers; even very small countries sell around two-thirds of their output to themselves, because that much is non-tradable services.

  This makes a huge difference. A businessman can slash his workforce in half, produce about the same as before, and be considered a big success; an economy that does the same plunges into depression, and ends up not being able to sell its goods. Nothing in business experience prepares one for the paradox of thrift, or even the inflationary impact of increases in the money supply (which is real when the economy isn’t in a liquidity trap.)

  And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that presidents need to work with Congress, and face far more limits on their authority than CEOs.

  The idea that what America needs now is an executive type is just foolish.

• Mistakes and Ideology – NYTimes.com
  • mainly macro: Mistakes and Ideology in Macroeconomics

Sports