By: dave

dave — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:33:58 +0000

I’ll look more closely at this post later, but I note a few things right off the bat. The first is a more reasonable tone. More concretely
“But I’m not arguing that right now. Maybe I believe it, maybe I don’t — I’m still on the fence. In the long run I don’t think it will matter much, because in the long run I think we are in for a Japanese-style “Lost Decade“, due fully to the incompetence of the Obama administration. But only time will tell.”
The only thing I disagree here is is, really’ the adjective “fully”. That becomes more lausible if you consider continuing Bush policies as being “Obamas”. In particular, the post 1992 policy of letting Goldman Sachs and its alums run the economy, mainly for the benefit of GS but also othere large bankers (whom they do substantial business with). But he has some excellent economists with major influence on staff (as well as Volker, who seems to be ignored. Sadly.) Romer and Summers are both excellent economists- and neither is markedly liberal. Both have a high regard for merkets- as all serious economists doI think your worries about “who he’s listening to’ are over-played. Who he listened to in college isn’t nearly as important as who has his ear now.
As to the WSJ article you started with, I just read Brad DeLongs piece on it, where he bemoaned the reporting at WSJ these days: printing the official GOP response is not reporting. The WSJ has an excellent record of reporting. The opinion page is a different matter, where they routinely assert as uncontroverted fact things reported to be false on their own front page. (I’d have to dig a while to find actual citations on that, since I don’t read it regularly. But I’ve seen it and others have pointed to it frequently. Fine, don’t believe me! It’s your head in the sand.)
While I’m here, let me point out a generally excellent econ blog (and one with no political slant apparent to me):https://self-evident.org/

Comments on: Lagging Indicator

By: dave