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Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

@delong

18 Jun

<braddelong.substack.com/p/document-joh…>

John Maynard Keynes (1938-02-01): Private Letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Private and personal

Dear Mr. President,

You received me kindly when I visited you some three years ago that I make bold to send you some bird’s eye impressions which... 1/

...I have formed as to the business position in the United States. You will appreciate that I write from a distance, that I have not revisited the United States since you saw me, and that I have access to few more sources of information than those publicly available. But... 2/

...sometimes in some respects there may be advantages in these limitations! At any rate, those things which I think I see, I see very clearly.... Personally I think there is a great deal to be said for the ownership of all the utilities by publicly owned boards. But if... 3/

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Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

@delong

15 Jun

@MaxKennerly

@MaxKennerly @TheStalwart @markets We shouldn't be talking about inflation **at all** right now: we have much bigger fish to fry.

We should be talking about how we get 10M more workers back to work in þe right jobs as fast as possible, accepting þt we are leaving rubber on þe road as we do so, & postponing... 1/

@MaxKennerly

@MaxKennerly @TheStalwart @markets ...worrying about inflation until 2023, when we will see where we are. Why? Because þe Fed has a straightforward way of reducing demand & cooling off inflation if it turns out þt demand is too high, but we have no good way of boosting demand if it turns out it is too low... 2/

@MaxKennerly

@MaxKennerly @TheStalwart @markets ...Given þe enormous uncertainty, þe asymmetries þt emerge when you walk down þe strategy tree dominate. Until þose uncertainties resolve, no reasonable case for tightening immediately can be made. 3/END

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Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

@delong

15 Jun

braddelong.substack.com/p/outtake-the-…

One set of lenses with which to view the technological core of modern economic growth brings into focus General Purpose Technologies: those technologies where advances change, if not everything, a lot, as they ramify across sector upon sector... 1/

...In the 1950s there came another GPT. Electricity was no longer a sector, for it was everywhere. But there emerged something called “microelectronics”: electrons made to dance Not in the service of providing power but rather of assisting and amplifying calculation—and... 2/

...communication. Take sand, which is mostly very finely grained particles of the rock quartz. Purify it by removing things like pieces of shell. Heat it to more than 1700°C—that is 3100°F. Add carbon. The carbon will then pull the oxygen atoms out of the quartz to make... 3/

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Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

@delong

14 Jun

@UCSF

braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First:

The plague year is not over. It may be only half-over, depending on what Delta and subsequent variants do:

Bob Wachter: Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 453: ‘I know everybody’s sick of playing 3-dimensional Covid chess. Sorry, but Delta... 1/

... forces us back to the chess board…. If you’re fully vaxxed, I wouldn’t be too worried, especially… in a highly vaxxed region…. If you’re not vaccinated: I’d be afraid. Maybe even very afraid…. Sadly, ~50% of the U.S. (>age 12) remains unvaccinated, and in certain... 2/

...states (mostly southern & right-leaning), it’s more like 2/3rds…. This is the most dangerous moment to be unvaccinated…. The virus… is better at infecting people…. 3 things… about variants… a) are they more infectious? b) are they more serious? (ie, are you

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Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

@delong

14 Jun

braddelong.substack.com/p/reading-reco…

Axel Weber (2013): "I was invited to a group of banks—now Deutsche Bundesbank is frequently mixed up in invitations with Deutsche Bank. I was the only central banker sitting on the panel. It was all banks. It was about securitizations. I asked my... 1/

... people to prepare. I asked the typical macro question: who are the twenty biggest suppliers of securitization products, and who are the twenty biggest buyers. I got a paper, and they were both the same set of institutions.... I said: "It looks to me that since the... 2/

...buyers and the sellers are the same institutions, as a system they have not diversified". That was one of the things that struck me: that the industry was not aware at the time that while its treasury department was reporting that it bought all these products its... 3/

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Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

@delong

12 Jun

braddelong.substack.com/p/briefly-note…

First: I find this from Mervyn King for Bloomberg annoying. Yes, the risk of inflation is “real”—as it was not in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, in all of which we were assured that it was very real... 1/

...indeed. But the risk that the recovery will be anemic is real as well. If inflation risks turn out to materialize, the Federal Reserve has a straightforward way of handling them. If anemic-recovery risks materialize, there is no path to easily handle them. Given the... 2/

...immense uncertainties, an ability to do the math of option value under asymmetric risks mandates that the sensible thing to do is to prioritize rapid recovery now, and to wait until early 2023 to see where we are with respect to inflation. And, no, we are not... 3/

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More from @delong

Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

Brad DeLong: 'Live long, & prosper!'

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