A decade or so ago I had a line about how there were three big potential storm clouds on the horizon–clouds that would probably dissipate, but that we should all fear. They were the (then distant, and now thankfully still distant) possibilities... 1/
...of: (1) Weimar Russia (ex-superpower that thought it had been snookered by the west at the end of a struggle), (2) National Hinduist India (casting Muslims in the historical role traditionally reserved for the Jews), and (3) Wilhelmine China–a rising economic... 2/
... uperpower, ruled by a class that had lost its social role, and that contemplated busying giddy minds with foreign quarrels as a way to distract popular attention from internal problems and debates.
Let me highlight this. Why? Because Martin Wolf has also been... 3/
...worrying about Wilhelmine China. The problem is that a social class that has lost its role–whether it is the Prussian aristocracy before 1914 or the cadres of the CCP today–knows that it has lost its role, and fears what the future brings. The task of United States... 4/
...(and Japanese, and Korean) foreign policy has to be to persuade the cadres of the CCP that they have much more to gain from an Eastern Pacific that lives up to its name rather than from a new cold war in Asia–or a hot one. 5/END
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That is not quite what it looked to me at the time.
As I saw it then, and I think I was right, there were Republicans... 1/
who believed that the Democratic Party's policies were harming Negroes by coddling them (A), Republicans who believed that the Democratic Party's policies were harming the world by coddling Communists (B), and Republicans who believed that the Democrtatic Party's policies... 2/
were harming economic growth by too-high taxes on the rich (C). There were even a few Republicans who believed all 3.
But most Republicans who believed in (C) did not believe in A&B—saw them as boob bait for the bubbas. & most Americans who believed in (B) did not believe... 3/
Jeet Heer has been writing about Wilmoore Kendall: That reminds me of this from 2005. Whatever else he thought, Harry Jaffa was an American at his core...
HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Harry Jaffa, Willmoore Kendall, the Crisis of the House Divided... 1/
...& the Party of Abraham Lincoln: ‘“Most conservative books are pseudo-books: ghostwritten pastiches whose primary purpose seems to be the photo of the ”author“ on the cover. What a tumble! From The Conservative Mind to Savage Nation; from Clifton White to Dick Morris... 2/
...from Willmoore Kendall and Harry Jaffa to Sean Hannity and Mark Fuhrman—all in little more than a generation’s time. Whatever this is, it isn’t progress…”—Andy Ferguson, Weekly Standard. Let me enthusiastically agree with Andy Ferguson’s high praise of the very... 3/
* Josef Schumpeter’s “depressions are… forms of... 2/
...something which has to be done, namely, adjustment to previous economic change. Most of what would be effective in remedying a depression would be equally effective in preventing this adjustment…” is perhaps the most zombie of zombie economic ideas.
First: An ur-text for the doctrines of Dark Satanic Millian Liberalism. Here George Stigler writing back in 1949 seeks to assimilate the classical economists Smith, Senior, and Mill to his claim that a good economic system does not produce... 1/
... prosperity but rather builds character: George Stigler (1949): Five Lectures on Economic Problems: ‘Why encourage men to work and save ? The customary answer is to maximize output…. One might defend the goal of maximum output by arguing that the ultimate utilitarian... 2/
... goal was maximum satisfaction, and that greater output will lead to larger increases of satisfaction than will greater equality. This interpretation is plausible, but I believe it is mistaken.... Why, then, did the classical economists display such great and persistent... 3/
Claudia Sahm: "We should have a recession,” John H. Cochrane said in November [2008], speaking to students and investors. “People who spend their lives pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.” #yikes...
Scott Gosnell: I was there... 1/
.... I may even have a recording down in the archives and may have sprained my eyes I rolled them so hard.
...Brad DeLong: What! Really? Tell me more… I mean, private housing construction as a share of GDP had crashed from its peak of 5.0% of GDP in 2005Q4 through its... 2/
...historical average of 3.4% in 2007Q2, and had bottomed all the way down to 2.1% by 2008Q4, when Cochrane was opining about too many people pounding nails in Nevada. How was it possible to say such a thing? How could he avoid looking at graphs like this one... 3/
@paulkrugman ...happens to stabilize aggregate demand is the true non-interfering 'neutral' monetary policy". It was a con, yes, but it was a successful con. And it is not clear that it was wrong as a practical policy position. It was, after all, Keynes's as well: "the result of... 2/
@paulkrugman ... filling in the gaps in the classical theory is not to dispose of the ‘Manchester System’, but to indicate the nature of the environment which the free play of economic forces requires..." <marxists.org/reference/subj…>. Friedman's insistence that you could do it with... 3/