Well, It’s Come to This
Emmanuel-across-the-Pond's love of poking fun of the U.S. is only matched by his love of poking fun of those who don't seek the utter humiliation and extirpation of the U.S. That means me. Which is all fine and good, and leads to some good discussions, but I fear that he's gone one step beyond this time. First, he endorses a theory of inequality that relies on "assortative mating" to explain shifts in income inequality. The theory basically says that before the 1960s capital and labor were in an "asymmetric marriage" where Capital guaranteed capital to Labor, and Labor guaranteed labor to Capital so they could mutually benefit from each other's company. (Funny... the rest of us call that relationship by another name: "markets"). Anyway, the crack-up supposedly occurred in the 1960s, and now Capital and Labor keep to themselves, doing everything in their power to keep everyone below them in the income ladder from climbing up
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Thought of the Day
At least it is for me, inspired by reading about sovereign debt on a day when everyone else is concerned with basketball and health care reform: One's normative political preferences are mostly formed by how strong one thinks the Law of Unintended Consequences is. For what it's worth, I think the Law is quite strong in most circumstances, but that it often works in multiple directions. If that sounds obtuse, well, it is: it means that I am often not sure whether to support or oppose major policy changes because I honestly have no idea how they'll really turn out. It also means that although I sometimes sound like an Oakeshottian conservative -- “To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” -- I also think that status quo bias is a killer. A whole lot of persistent injustices would be impossible without it. It also means that I am distrustful of anyone who claims to know anything about how any policy will work. It makes me think that they are either disingenuous or haven't thought things through very carefully. The greatest and worst developments in human history have come through the abandonment of the status quo and the willingness to experiment. Arguably, none of them could have been anticipated beforehand. I'm not religious, but one of my favorite verses of the Bible is Genesis 50:20 (NIV): "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." Discuss.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, miscellany, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently, political theory
Annals of Non-Scientific Polling
I just received a robo-call from the Family Research Council asking me to participate in a survey. It went like this: Robot: Are you a registered voter? Me: Yes. Robot: Do you have a favorable opinion of President Obama's government-run health care proposal? (emphasis added) I was stunned that they wouldn't at least pretend to be impartial. I'd read the Farley Family's experiences yesterday, but I wanted to see for myself, so even though I think this is a truly terrible bill (regardless of whether you prefer universal coverage or not), and even though I knew I was talking to a robot, I decided to try to pick a fight: Me: Yes and I object to the question as asked
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, miscellany, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Department of "Brad DeLong, Please Elaborate"
Brad deLong writes: Needless to say, Paul Krugman is right: if China saves less and spends more, its capital exports drop.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
The End of U.S. Influence Is Not at Hand
Joseph Nye takes a step back from the recent China hyperbole and notes the obvious: First, the U.S. is not in decline. Americans and others have been predicting decline regularly over the years: after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957; again when Nixon closed the gold window in 1971; and when the American rust-belt economy seemed to be overtaken by Japanese manufacturers in the 1980s. Predicting the decline of the U.S. has been something of a cottage industry over the past 5 or 6 decades. One of the foundational IPE texts took it as a given in the mid-1980s. The end of the Cold War stopped all of that talk temporarily, but it is difficult to keep those dogs at bay. Talk of the end of American influence has been popping up all over the place since the financial crisis. Nye explains why they are wrong: But when one looks at the underlying strength of the American economy, it is not surprising that the World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. second (just behind Switzerland) among the most competitive, while China ranks some 30 places below
Categories: amazon, climate Tags: amazon, climate, document-has, hegemony, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
And While I’m at it
Meanwhile, Emmanuel-across-the-pond drools over the latest congressional hysteria about the renminbi.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Today’s Edition of "Legislators Are Stupid and Should Not Be Trusted with Anything Important"
Jacob Goldstein at Planet Money ponders a potential rainy-day fund for winding up TBTF financial institutions: In the current system, there's no good way to deal with big financial institutions that are about to go bankrupt and don't fall under the umbrella of the FDIC, which oversees some banks. Exhibits A and B for why this is a problem are Lehman Brothers, whose bankruptcy sent the economy into panic, and AIG, which received a gargantuan government bailout. Of course, the Treasury and the Fed put more than $100 billion into the AIG bailout alone -- which makes a $50 billion safety fund look a bit paltry. But the Senate bill would also allow the government to collect more fees after a bailout, if $50 billion didn't cover it. The trust fund would be paid for by financial firms so big or so interconnected that their failure would pose broad risks to the economy. Under the Senate proposal, the Fed would decide which firms fit that description, Bloomberg News reports, and the FDIC would wind down big firms that are about to fail. This is apparently part of the Senate financial reform plan. The House plan that passed last year included a $150bn plan
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, finance, financial crisis, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently, regulation
Yet Another Post on Sovereign Debt and Democracy
Dr. Oatley disagreed with my post on democracy and sovereign debt, and cited some of his own recent research to smack me down. I don't disagree with a word of what he wrote. (And believe it or not, I noticed that that paper -- which I had previously read -- had just come out, but was waiting to post on it until he had a chance to.) I also don't think anything he wrote contradicts anything I wrote. Why does he think it does? It's my fault
Categories: climate Tags: climate, democracy, document-has, greece, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently, sovereign debt
Democracies and Sovereign Debt (Again)
I have a very different take on Greece's sovereign debt struggles. Here’s a random thought ( writes Doug Muir ): this blog has seen a lot of posts recently talking about economic problems in Greece, Spain and the Baltic States. All of these are countries that were, within living memory, governed by brutal non-democratic authoritarian regimes. Accident? Or is there something else at work here? Will develops the point further: " democracies are exceptionally prone to the sort of time inconsistency problems that lead to things like debt crises. As such, there is a huge potential for moral hazard built in if states are able to escape their debt obligations without pain. Just ask California. It's an internal contradiction of democracy, if you like." I must demur.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Sovereign Debt As Social Contract
The Economist blogger Charlamagne has written an insightful post on Greece: The Greek civil war, and the bloody score-settling that followed, is a living memory for many Greeks. Any consideration of Greek nepotism or clientelism needs to be seen in that light. So for example, it is not enough to say that Greek civil servants enjoy jobs for life, and that is a big problem. (Though it is a big problem, not least because many Greek civil servants are paid pitiful wages—partly because there are so many of them. That means they will resist austerity measures all the harder, because they feel like victims in this crisis, not fat cats.) But the bloated public sector is also a function of history. ... Newspapers here in Belgium talk all the time about the government needing to "buy social peace" by paying off some interest group or other. In Belgium, the alternative to " paix sociale " is a strike. In Greece, plenty of grown-ups remember when the alternative to social peace was their neighbour, or their loved-one, vanishing in the night into a jail cell or worse. The current clientelist truce between right and left is the price (albeit a horrible, wasteful price) established for the current version of social peace enjoyed in Greece
Categories: climate Tags: climate, debt, democracy, document-has, emu; monetary union, greece, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, miscellany, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Geithner Files
Things I learned from Joshua Green's very long (but excellent) profile of Timothy Geithner: 1. Contrary to popular belief, Geithner was not only aware of the dangers of derivatives and off-balance sheet transactions, but he spoke out about them repeatedly over a number of years. His talk about "fat tails" sounds like it came straight from Nassim Taleb. 2. Bush was routinely lambasted for not properly vetting administration officials, as was McCain during the campaign, but Obama seems to have chosen Geithner based primarily on one hour-long interview. True, Geithner had great references, but given the context -- the height of the financial crisis and administration of the new TARP program -- it still is a bit odd. 3.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently, tariffs, us treasury
3D TV FAQ
CNET experts answers questions about 3D TV display technology, and 3D LCD and plasma TVs from Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Vizio and more. Read this blog post by David Katzmaier on Crave.
Categories: computer Tags: document-has, here, moved, moved-here-, moved-permanently
University Administration Jobs and Hiring Practices
This morning, UNC students and faculty awoke to an email from UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp notifying the university community that Dr. Bruce Carney , Samuel Baron Professor of Physics and Astronomy and the interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at UNC, has been appointed the permanent Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost. I have absolutely no doubt that Dr. Carney deserves the job, will serve the university proudly and competently and will prove to be a very good hire in the years to come. Dr. Carney has been at UNC since 1980, starting off as a lowly assistant professor and working all the way up to his current endowed chair and serving as chair of the Physics department and both Senior Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences along the way. What was interesting to me when I read the email from Chancellor Thorp was that the university held a national search, brought in three external candidates for interviews, lectures and Q&A, and then hired the internal, interim position-holder that was not a candidate for the position.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, college, document-has, miscellany, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Connecting Government and Academia
Yesterday, I spent the day in Washington, DC attending an all-day panel on political violence that brought together an array of academics from various fields including political science, criminology, sociology, public policy, statistics, mathematics and psychology, private sector analysts and researchers, and government practitioners from various departments and agencies. The panel was put together by the Institute for Homeland Security Solutions , a collaborative effort between Research Triangle Institute International , the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, and the Human Factors and Behavioral Sciences Division (HFD) of the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, which is the primary research and development arm of DHS. I'm not allowed to divulge any details from the all-day event nor can I talk about who was present or what they said since government officials and agencies were involved and are funding the project (which kind of sucks but makes sense and is understandable), but this kind of academia-government interaction is exactly the type of collaborative effort that is needed to foster cooperation between academics and practitioners, and the kind of interaction that Joe Nye, Dan Drezner and others have called for in recent months. One of the primary goals of the discussion was to bring social science scholarship and methodology to the table to help government agencies find answers to problems and questions that they face on a daily basis. There is a lot that government practitioners can learn from social science research and the ways we approach complex questions.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, miscellany, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently, social science
Now This Is How You Do Journalism
I spend more time bashing bad press work than praising good. I don't know if that's because there isn't very much good stuff, or because I'm mean-spirited, but today I can happily praise this article on Greece and the IMF by Sewell Chan and Liz Alderman of the NY Times . Let's parse it a bit: In the last two days, Greece’s finance minister has threatened to turn to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout if Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and other European politicians resist pledging aid to help Greece cope with its newfound frugality.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, greece, imf, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently, political economy, sovereign debt
Categories: climate, internet Tags: climate, document-has, internet, miscellany, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
PSA: Iraq Election Breakdown
For those curious about the recent Iraq election and what it means, Juan Cole is always a reliable source.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, iraq, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
P (Agreement | Different Epistemologies) < 0.5
"Scott Wedman" kills the "Great Quant/Qual Debate of 2010" in a guest post at Abu's place by saying almost exactly what I said , but more succinctly and with more grace. If Abu had taken that tack originally there would have been no disagreement from anyone. Nobody thinks that quant analysis is flawless or that qual research is worthless; just that it has a lot to offer if done well. As for humor... I don't think anyone missed anything. I don't think Abu would've been criticized by any of us if his post had been obviously humorous, and a few of us would've linked to it approvingly in that case. Abu was trying to cheekily make a substantive point, and the criticisms directed at him were at the substance, not the cheekiness*. It wasn't in good humor at all, or certainly didn't come across that way, since he's made very clear in the past how little use he has for quant/formal research.
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, international relations, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
Who’s Afraid of the IMF?
Emmanuel notices that multilateral lenders-of-last-resort are popping up in Europe and Asia, and wonders: why not scrap the IMF? A European lender could tailor its policies to European needs, by surveilling compliance with the Maastricht criteria, for example. Emmanuel also notes that European countries rarely have balance of payments problems, which is the ostensible purpose of the IMF. The Vreelander sees the move from international to regional multilateral institutions as just another sign of the times: The European Monetary Fund is less of a big deal. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, European countries borrowed from the IMF and had to accept the conditions attached. With the United States as the largest shareholder of the IMF, this gave our country some influence over policy in Europe. But Europe turned away from the IMF a long time ago. With Greece flirting with the idea of turning to the IMF for a loan, Germany and France are moving to make the divorce more final; Europe will deal with European monetary affairs. But this European monetary move adds impetus to other regional organizations, like the Chiang Mai Initiative for Asia, and the Banco del Sur for South America. Global governance going forward will be increasingly based along regional lines
Categories: climate Tags: climate, document-has, imf, moved-here-, moved-permanently, permanently
