From Mark Thoma: Very Funny In the Unintentional Comedy Way
Does Not! Does Too!
The WSJ argues with itself:
The Fed Is Out of Ammunition - WSJ.com
Fed Has More Ammunition After Firing Rate-Cut Bullets - WSJ.com
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It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that the very same food policies that have contributed to overnutrition in the first world are now contributing to undernutrition in the third. But it turns out that too much food can be nearly as big a problem as too little — a lesson we should keep in mind as we set about designing a new approach to food policy.
The Food Issue - An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief - Michael Pollan - NYTimes.com.
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wow, can’t say this enough: We Are All In It Together!
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In online discussions people say we should let the companies fail — they scare me even more, because they don’t understand how much our lives depend on each others. That was clear in New Orleans after Katrina. They couldn’t re-open the restaurants not because there was no demand for the services, there was, but because there was no place for the staff to live and no way to get the supplies they needed. And you can’t bring in the workers to rebuild the city without places for them to eat.
Civilizations take a long time to reboot after a crash, so you must do everything you can to avoid crashing, but this one seems to be willful, we have the means to prevent it, but for some reason we’re too stupid, collectively, to stop it.
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Fact is, we all live in New Orleans and Detroit, and we’re going to learn that in this country, but it’s going to be a very very painful lesson, apparently.
Q: What the … your buddy JackO is getting married? And you chose to just drop that on us with absolutely no set-up? I don’t know where along the line of listening to the podcasts, I developed my fake relationship with JackO, but I did. I was psychotically 100 percent sure that we would have a chance meeting where he would be really impressed that I knew who he was, and we would get married. I’m really disappointed. In both him getting married and my life in general.
– Claire, Atlanta
SG: You know how women fall in love with serial killers, write them letters and eventually marry them even though they’re on death row and can’t consummate the marriage? Suddenly, that seems a little less strange.
Q: Is it possible for a heterosexual woman to have a man-crush on a guy? What would you call that? I have a man-crush on you.
– Michelle, Atlanta
SG: OK, what’s going on in Atlanta? Do we need to send some more men with a sense of humor between the ages of 25 and 40 down there? To answer your question, a heterosexual female cannot have a man-crush on a heterosexual male. It’s just a crush. You might rationalize it as a man-crush, but deep down, you want to jump my bones. Of course, you live in Atlanta, so apparently any female fits that category. I think Atlanta is the new San Francisco — just horny, successful, fun-loving women looking for love and questioning their self-esteem on a daily basis. I feel totally comfortable making that generalization after two e-mails.
Back in 1998 I argued that the Bank of Japan needed to find a way to “credibly promise to be irresponsible.” That didn’t go down too well, but it was what sober, careful economic analysis prescribed.
Or as I said in the linked paper,
The whole subject of the liquidity trap has a sort of Alice-through-the-looking-glass quality. Virtues like saving, or a central bank known to be strongly committed to price stability, become vices; to get out of the trap a country must loosen its belt, persuade its citizens to forget about the future, and convince the private sector that the government and central bank aren’t as serious and austere as they seem.
Macro policy in a liquidity trap (wonkish) - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com.
Republicans Dive Deeper into Fantasy
If there is a prominent reality-based Republican officeholder, his name is Arnold Schwarenegger. Paul Krugman has evidence that there is no prominent reality-based Republican officeholder:
I liked that rondo had a steal for every assists, though they lost, to an increasingly looking good denver team.
Rajon Rondo, PG 30 1-8 0-1 0-0 0 0 0 7 7 0 1 3 2
“Every American has a right to affordable, high-quality health care,” Mr. Baucus said. “Americans cannot wait any longer.” Far from being a distraction from efforts to revive the economy, he said, “health reform is an essential part of restoring America’s economy and maintaining our competitiveness.”
ouch
The number of welfare claims unambiguously decreased, but at what cost? More education increases the value of your human capital which leads to higher wages and more self-sufficiency. The authors wonder if discouraging education might ultimately leave the women more dependent on state benefits than they would if education were encouraged. The trade-off is a classic example of the choice of short-term gain and long-term pain.
I have to confess that I have this character failing that I am slowly trying to change, Its a combination of not wanting to waste time (from ikiru–”I don’t have that kind of time”) and somewhat being bored with establishing context for effective communication. I think its a patience thing!
And Summers, like Paulson, is really bad when he has to talk to people he doesn’t respect.
Against Summers - Finance Blog - Felix Salmon - Market Movers - Portfolio.com.
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