Won To 3 Fore

Krugman: Where Are The Deficit Celebrations?  →

For three years and more Beltway politics has been all about the deficit. Urgent action was needed to avert crisis. A Grand Bargain absolutely had to be reached. Fix the Debt, now now now!

So where are the celebrations now that the debt issue looks, if not solved, at least greatly mitigated? And it’s not just recovering revenues: health costs, the biggest driver of long-run spending, have slowed dramatically

Maybe they didn’t actually care about debt and deficit? Maybe the people who said nothing while W grew the debt don’t care about fiscal issues at all. They care about cutting the parts of the state that provide services for the bottom 99% and transferring that wealth to the top 1%

Krugman: Not Everything Is Political →

in practice it turns out that many conservatives are unwilling to concede that Keynesian macro has any validity to it, or that you can sometimes run the printing presses without unleashing runaway inflation, because they fear that any such admission would open the doors to much wider government intervention. But that’s exactly my point! They’re letting their views about how the world works be dictated by their vision of the kind of society they want; they’re politicizing their economic analysis. And that’s why they keep getting everything wrong.

This is why we can not have a policy discussion. Because one side doesn’t care about how the world actually works, only the kind of world they wish to live in.

Conservatives Had Better Hope George W. Bush Was a Dummy  →

if conservatives want us to believe that the United States blundered through a major terrorist attack, two major failed military adventures, dismal economic performance, and then finally an epic economic collpase all while under the watch of a very bright and attentive leader then it seems like a much deeper failure of the movement.

What's the Best Way to Help the Long-Term Unemployed? Full Employment. →

Worth a read.

Bitcoin represents what ought to be the final refutation of the efficient-markets hypothesis →

But in the case of Bitcoin, there is no source of value whatsoever. The computing power used to mine the Bitcoin is gone once the run has finished and cannot be reused for a more productive purpose. If Bitcoins cease to be accepted in payment for goods and services, their value will be precisely zero.

According to the efficient-markets hypothesis (EMH), which still dominates the analysis of financial markets, this should be impossible. The EMH states that the market value of an asset is equal to the best available estimate of the value of the services or income flows it will generate. In the case of a company stock, this is the discounted value of future earnings. Since Bitcoins do not generate any actual earnings, they must appreciate in value to ensure that people are willing to hold them. But an endless appreciation, with no flow of earnings or liquidation value, is precisely the kind of bubble the EMH says can’t happen.

Quiggin hits the nail on the head with this one. Bitcoin should be called bubblecoin.

When interest rates are close to the rate of economic growth, Gagnon continues, you can run a budget deficit forever as long as the primary deficit is balanced. The debt load as a share of the economy won’t increase over time. And if interest rates are lower than the pace of growth — as they are now — the load will actually shrink while you run those smaller deficits.

— Why do people hate deficits? | Wonkblog

Rortybomb: What Does the Leaked Brown-Vitter Bill on Too Big To Fail Do? →

It gets very technical, but the 1st third of the article is an easy read and worth reading. Explains what is and what is not in Brown-Vitter and has an easy to understand chart.

with Hayek, as with Reagan, the truly amazing thing is that we have people citing as a source of wisdom someone who has been as thoroughly refuted by history as anyone can be. Three generations into the modern welfare state, and western democracies look less Stalinist than ever.

— Jack-booted Insurance-bringing Thugs

What Problem Are DC's New Food Truck Regulations Trying To Solve? →

I know some people of a market urbanist persuasion take the view that trucks’ very existence is a sign of the failure of zoning codes and regulations, but I actually think trucks are an important lunch solution on the merits.

I would not be surprised if these regulations are being pushed by the fast food industry.

Prices out of Park Slope: America needs more filtering and less gentrification. →

it’s still possible to step back from the distributive conflict, and say that as long as we’re parceling out a fixed supply of Park Slope someone is going to get stuck with that longer subway ride. But if you can actually make more Park Slope—either by building more houses there or improving the quality of subway access to other parts of Brooklyn—then you’re making progress on a more fundamental level.