Politics Roundtable

Politics Roundtable

Political blogs of interest to economists.

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September 2, 2010, 12:19 pm, 759159
BARBOUR EXPLAINS THE SOUTH WITH BASELESS, REVISIONIST HISTORY.... For much of the 20th century, America's Southeast, now the Republicans' strongest region, was closely aligned with Democratic politics. The shift began quickly after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,...


September 2, 2010, 12:19 pm, 759158
BREWER'S PAINFULLY LONG PAUSES.... I've seen politicians freeze on the air when confronted with a tough question for which they're unprepared, but going blank during a debate's opening statement? This is a new one. Ben Smith reported, "Arizona Governor Jan...


September 2, 2010, 12:19 pm, 759157
THURSDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers. * As was rumored yesterday, Bud Chiles ended his independent gubernatorial campaign in Florida today,...


September 2, 2010, 10:19 am, 759057
Paul

Some folks are defending President Obama's decision not to say anything positive about the substance of the Iraq war in his Tuesday speech on the grounds that Obama simply doesn't believe any good came out of the project. And, although I certainly haven't defended this aspect of the speech, ...


September 2, 2010, 10:19 am, 759056
GEORGE WILL'S BAD HABIT.... Over the last several months, George Will has written a series of columns about some of the most extreme politicians in Republican politics. In each instance, he seems to go out of his way to ignore...


September 2, 2010, 10:19 am, 759055
THE WISDOM OF A LIBERATED REPUBLICAN, CONT'D.... This week, congressional Republican leaders did their best to downplay the end of combat operations in Iraq, insisting President Obama was wrong and that President Bush deserves credit for recent progress. It was,...


September 2, 2010, 10:19 am, 759054
MARK KIRK SYNDROME SPREADS TO OTHER GOP CANDIDATES.... When it comes to candidates with an almost pathological tendency to exaggerate their backgrounds, Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk (R) is obviously in a league of his own. But there are others...


September 2, 2010, 8:19 am, 758976
Scott

The Wall Street Journal editorial staff dug up some New York Times letters to the editor by the imam behind the Ground Zero Mosque. The Journal editorial reports:

In a letter published on November 27, 1977, Mr. Rauf commented on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's historic trip to Israel and ...


September 2, 2010, 8:19 am, 758975
Scott

The emergence of Joe Miller as the Republican senatorial candidate in Alaska is one of the most surprising results so far in an already surprising year. Miller's defeat of incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary must be attributable in substantial part to the support of Sarah Palin, ...


September 2, 2010, 8:19 am, 758974
ADL STEPS AWAY FROM MESS IT HELPED CREATE.... The controversy surrounding the Park51 project in lower Manhattan has been disheartening, but perhaps no moment was as disappointing as the Anti-Defamation League's statement in late July. The organization committed to combating...


September 2, 2010, 12:18 am, 758785


September 2, 2010, 12:18 am, 758784

September 1, 2010, 10:18 pm, 758778

Dean Mark Schissel makes me smarter by emailing to say that I am working off of wrong and out-of-date information. It looks as though at least one of my fears is groundless: insurance companies are not likely take genetic information about folic acid metabolism and use it to ...


September 1, 2010, 10:18 pm, 758777

August 30: Introduction to Macroeconomics: Audio | Slides | Notes


September 1, 2010, 10:18 pm, 758776

September 1: Introduction to Depression Economics: Audio | Slides | Notes


September 1, 2010, 8:19 pm, 758761
Paul

I didn't watch any of the TV commentary on President Obama's speech last night. But J.E. Dyer at Contentions informs us that the "TV commentariat rose up to advance the narrative that Obama had no obligation to acknowledge Bush's surge decision, because there was never a valid ...


September 1, 2010, 6:19 pm, 758720
Paul

I expect November 2, 2010 to be a very good night for Republicans. But for me, it won't be a fully satisfactory night unless Sen. Barbara Boxer goes down to defeat.

To understand why, consider Sen. Boxer's exchange with then-Secretary of State Rice regarding the troop surge in Iraq, which ...


September 1, 2010, 6:19 pm, 758719
THERE'S NO POINT IN ADVERTISING AN UNPOPULAR AGENDA.... A couple of months ago, Jonah Goldberg argued that it's time for the GOP to go beyond the "party of no" approach, and "call Obama's bluff and offer a real choice." James...


September 1, 2010, 6:19 pm, 758718
WEDNESDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits: * The first peace talks in nearly two years: "President Obama on Wednesday began the arduous process of coaxing and pressing the main Middle East participants to define and embrace a comprehensive peace...


September 1, 2010, 6:18 pm, 758716

Christina D. Romer says goodbye to Washington:

Not My Father’s Recession: The Extraordinary Challenges and Policy Responses of the First Twenty Months of the Obama Administration: The first recession I really remember was that in 1981-82. I began graduate school just as the economy peaked. Over the ...


September 1, 2010, 6:18 pm, 758717

Three audio files of the first Econ 1 lecture: Lecture 1, August 30: Introduction to Macroeconomics.

One at:

Economics 1, 001:

The others at:

Download 20100830 Econ 1 LS | Download 20100830 Econ 1 SP

Comments on audio quality?

The consensus seems to be ...


September 1, 2010, 4:19 pm, 758637
John

This poll finding is not just stunning, but important: if you run a presidential race between Barack Obama and George W. Bush in Ohio, it's Bush by 50-42:

We'll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there's one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it ...


September 1, 2010, 4:19 pm, 758638
John

It is remarkable how little it takes, on the Left, to earn a reputation for intellectual acuity. Stanley Fish is an academic of some renown, although I'm vague as to what he has actually written or accomplished. Now he has an occasional op-ed column at the New York ...


September 1, 2010, 4:19 pm, 758636
DEGREES OF ACCURACY, DEGREES OF ERROR.... The debate over the efficacy of last year's stimulus doesn't produce two clear camps: supporters and critics. Paul Krugman and John Boehner may both offer scathing criticism of the Recovery Act, but for very...


September 1, 2010, 4:19 pm, 758635
COMPARING COSTS.... In his Oval Office address last night, President Obama explained, "Unfortunately, over the last decade, we've not done what's necessary to shore up the foundations of our own prosperity. We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed...


September 1, 2010, 2:19 pm, 758552
THEY'RE IN NO POSITION TO BOAST.... With President Obama ending combat operations in Iraq, the Republicans who got every aspect of this conflict wrong from the start have decided that we owe them our thanks. Indeed, GOP leaders and neocon...


September 1, 2010, 2:19 pm, 758551
BIRTHERS PICK UP A CRAZED RETIRED GENERAL.... Dave Weigel has one of the day's more head-shaking stories. I try to ignore the birther movement unless it inducts someone important -- a congressman, for example. The (sigh) American Patriot Foundation's announcement...


September 1, 2010, 2:19 pm, 758550
SELECTIVE OPPOSITION TO 'DEMONIZING'.... The party that apologized to BP after its oil spill disaster still believes those mean ol' Democrats should leave the oil industry alone. President Obama and Democrats in Congress should stop demonizing the oil industry, a...


September 1, 2010, 2:18 pm, 758549

Courtesy of Brian Caplan:

Bill Dickens versus the Signaling Model of Education: I take it that you think that nearly all of the value of schooling is signaling? I used to take that view too, but the accumulation of evidence that I've seen leads me to believe ...


September 1, 2010, 2:18 pm, 758548

Economics of Contempt:

The Unofficial List of Pundits/Experts Who Were Wrong on the Housing Bubble: 1. Alan Reynolds 2. Kevin Hassett 3. James K. Glassman 4. Jude Wanniski 5. Jerry Bowyer 6. Nicolas P. Restinas 7. Jim Cramer 8. Christopher Flanagan 9. Neil Barsky 10. Chris Mayer ...


September 1, 2010, 12:19 pm, 758489
MAYBE ALAN SIMPSON SHOULD ENJOY A LITTLE QUIET TIME FOR A WHILE.... It was encouraging to see the Obama administration make it easier for veterans affected by Agent Orange to receive disability payments. This is a worthwhile move, and it...


September 1, 2010, 12:19 pm, 758488
DOBSON'S GROUP: ANTI-BULLYING PROGRAMS PART OF ELABORATE PLOT.... If a group is committed to focusing on families, it stands to reason it would support school efforts to combat bullying. Regrettably, Focus on the Family, religious right pioneer James Dobson's conservative...


September 1, 2010, 12:19 pm, 758487
WEDNESDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP.... Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers. * Florida's competitive gubernatorial race will apparently drop from three candidates to two when Bud...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758486

George performes a great service here, and so does Mark Thoma by putting it up on his Economist's View:

Economist's View: The Dynamic Properties of New Keynesian Models with Learning: [This one is, as they say, wonkisk.] As James Bullard noted in the previous post, we "have ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758485

Air Vice Marshall Keith Park:

September 1st 1940: Contrary to general belief and official reports, the enemy's bombing attacks by day did extensive damage to five of our forward aerodromes and also to six of our seven sector [radar] stations. There was a critical period when the ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758484

The first in a new cycle of Spain economy related podcasts I am doing with Matthew Bennett is now up.

Here’s a sort of summary from Matthew of what goes on.

The short version: market reaction so far this year has, as always, been irrational, underlying indicators are not in a ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758483

In a recent FT Op-ed, entitled “Estonia’s recovery defies economists and academics“, columnist John Dizard argued that “the “internal devaluation” policy, which means cuts in nominal costs such as wages and rents, was very hard on the population, but appears to have worked ahead of even the Estonian ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758482

Not seen on the newswires from the Federal Reserve retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming –

“The world of economics was rocked to its foundations yesterday when European Central Bank President Jean Claude Trichet urged countries to run huge structural budget deficits and massively pro-cyclical fiscal policy while creating huge contingent liabilities ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758481

Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen was a German baron born in Bodenwerder in the eighteenth century. Made famous by the Hollywood director Terrence Gilliam, the baron first came to public attention for his ability to recount outrageously tall tales about his adventures while fighting abroad in the Russian army. ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758480

Well, having just posted a lengthy study of the German economy on this blog, I started to lazily browse my way around today’s economic news headlines, and Lo & Behold, what did I find over at the FT, a contrarian voice. That of Wolfgang Munchau. In his comment ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758479

Not only is the French economy the grateful recipient and beneficiary of sustained German export growth, so too is Poland (I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear that in Warsaw!). According to the FTs Jan Cienski:

German recovery boosts Polish GDP

Poland’s economy grew by an unexpectedly strong 3.5 per cent ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758477

The current generation of policymakers seem to be like Captains of large ocean liners, out there on the high seas, bereft of either compass or adequate charts, trying hard to calm there worried passengers by telling them nothing is amiss. But the charts are there, if only they would look ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758478

Well, as we all well know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and one data point doesn’t swing an argument one way or another, but the latest retail sales PMI reading for Germany is far from being either uninteresting, or (for my part) surprising. Basically after only two months (in ...


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758476

Spain’s EU harmonised seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate (which is the interesting number) went up again in July, according to the latest data from Eurostat. It rose to 20.3% from 20.2% in June.


September 1, 2010, 12:18 pm, 758475

The modern world moves at a breathtaking pace, even when most of us find ourselves on holiday. No sooner do we receive, read and start to digest one set of economic data than we find ourselves pushed to think about what the next set will look like. The clearest recent ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758383
Paul

Gallup's weekly tracking poll of 2010 congressional voting preferences for August 23-29 has Republicans leading Democrats by 51 percent to 41 percent among registered voters. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest of the year and, in fact, is its largest lead in Gallup's history of tracking ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758382
Scott

At a charity auction in 1994 or so I won the opportunity to have Mark Dayton take me and a friend to "power lunch for two" at the Minneapolis Club. The lunch occurred toward the end of Dayton's tenure as the Minnesota state auditor. The lunch was extremely unpleasant because ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758381
John

It wouldn't be fair to say that President Obama is dumb, but I think it is accurate to say that he is a goof. Thus his style, formerly described as analytical...cerebral...aloof...now appears deer-in-the-headlights clueless. The Drudge Report, in the unfair but funny style that it sometimes adopts, contrasts ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758379
Paul

Like most nostalgia, the excessive coverage this weekend of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina signified a yearning for happier days from the past. In this case, it was the yearning of the MSM and President Obama for the happy days when Republicans were the ones having their competence ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758380
Paul

As John has noted, America remains unclear about President Obama's religious affiliation. Thus, in a Pew Research survey, 43 percent (a plurality) said they don't know which religion Obama practices.

John has offered some good explanations for this uncertainty, especially the misperception that Obama is a Muslim. But ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758378
Scott

The video below is an investigative report on the the June 2009 fundraiser for Hamas held at Masjid Al-Rahman mosque in Orlando, Florida. Featuring "that tool" George Galloway, the fundraiser was intended to raise money for Galloway's Viva Palestina, then funneling money openly to the Islamist terrorist movement ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758377
Scott

Last year I went to New York to take my daughter to see Steely Dan perform The Royal Scam and selected favorites at the Beacon Theater. My attorney friend Kirk Kolbo ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758376
Scott

Sarah Palin celebrated the Jewish sabbath among friends Friday night before her appearance at the Restore Honor rally on the Washington mall on Saturday. Benyamin Korn reports:

By evening, the halls of the Hershey Lodge were filled with the aroma of chulent, the traditional Sabbath stew....My colleague Sheya, director ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758374
Paul

Many people view Republicans and especially their leaders as being fixated on the past, and that perception is not entirely unjustified. Just last week, at the Lincoln Memorial, Sarah Palin spoke of the need to restore America rather than to transform it. And not that long ago, as ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758375
John

We have been reporting on the Minnesota gubernatorial race among Tom Emmer, a solid conservative; Mark Dayton, a deeply flawed and wackily liberal Democrat; and tax-raiser Tom Horner playing the traditional spoiler's role as the representative of the Independence Party. Republicans have been dispirited by an early poll showing ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758373
Paul

President Obama's speech from the oval office, only the second of his presidency, was surprisingly limp. With three momentous subjects to cover - Iraq, Afghanistan, and the U.S. economy - Obama struggled to say anything new or interesting. It isn't just that the soaring rhetoric of ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758372
Scott

Yesterday Van Morrison -- singer, songwriter and world-class artist -- celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. Van is an artist who has absorbed all the strains of American popular music and recapitulated them in his own unique voice. As such, he stands shoulder to shoulder with the greats in the ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758370
Scott

President Obama's Oval Office speech on the termination of combat operations in Iraq was so half-hearted and detached, it was a little hard to discern its true meaning. I don't think anyone has captured the nature of Obama's discussion of President Bush better than Paul Mirengoff. Paul ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758371
Scott

Haley Barbour is the Governor of Mississippi, now serving his second (and final) term in office. Governor Barbour distinguished himself for his leadership in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Earlier this week, Ellen Ratner saluted Governor Barbour as one of the heroes of Katrina. "I've been ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758369
Paul

As I see it, the nation's current economic woes translate, under normal political practice, into a net gain of roughly 50 House seats for the out-of-power party. The perception that President Obama won the presidency on false pretenses, is governing from too far to the left, and needs to ...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758368
MURKOWSKI CONCEDES, EXTREMIST WINS ALASKA PRIMARY.... Eight days ago, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) was in terrific shape. She was poised to easily win a GOP primary against a bizarre opponent, and was considered a lock to win a third...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758367
IF ONLY MINNESOTANS WERE AS IMPORTANT AS PAWLENTY'S AMBITIONS.... As implementation of the Affordable Care Act proceeds, the law extends subsidies to states to help early retirees -- folks who leave the workforce before they're eligible for Medicare, but who...


September 1, 2010, 10:19 am, 758366
A NEW ECONOMIC PACKAGE?.... I've had a few posts lately, suggesting the White House would be wise to push a new economic package with an emphasis on job creation. With the recovery stalling, hoping that the status quo will improve...


September 1, 2010, 8:19 am, 758261
TURNING THE PAGE TO NEW BATTLES.... There was a certain awkwardness underscoring last night's Oval Office address. President Obama wanted to mark the milestone of ending combat operations in Iraq, while the public's focus remains on the economy. The result...