1. Critical Review blog; CausesoftheCrisis. Vernon Smith and David Colander have posts up.
2. Boston Globe article on Hyman Minsky.
3. Arnold Kling: "One could argue that this country is on the verge of a crisis of legitimacy. The progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate, and vice-versa. I see the chances of both sides losing as much greater than the chance of either force winning."
4. 1990-2007: In which countries were health care costs rising the fastest?
5. Women with masculine names have better shots at judgeships.
Don’t bother reading Causes of the Crisis. The authors didn’t even bother to comment on or even critque Shiller’s second edition of Irrational Exuberance. Some items were dismissed with paragraphs of prose.
Looks like a blog which is set up as flypaper to attract like minded folks.
Masculine names don’t seem to help women get elected to Congress. The women now serving in the Senate are Barbara (x2), Dianne, Patty, Kay (x2), Olympia, Susan, Mary, Blanche, Maria, Debbie, Lisa, Amy, Claire, Jeanne, and Kirsten. Not a masculine-sounding moniker in the bunch. The same is true for almost all of the women in the House. Governorships too; the women now serving as state governors are Linda, Jennifer, Jodi, Christine, Beverly and Jan.
What I mean is read it, and ask yourself what data they offered to support their position.
When you read there was no irrational pricing in the housing market because Ben Bernanke said there wasn’t, and everyone thought the prices were right==da, what should I say. Great empirical observation…And, if it really is from Vernon Smith, where is the data. He’s not Jesus Christ. I do not believe in miracles, and you do have to show me the data. I didn’t sacrifice my mind on the altar of belief in someone just because they supposedly wrote a blog. They need to prove it.
I think Kling is mistaking novelty of feelings with novelty of awareness of feelings. The two parts of America he speaks of have always thought the other illegitimate, what has changed is the ease of the communication of these feelings, given that we have this internet thingy now.
I don’t think rural white America is being dismissed. I do think there is a segment of the right that behaves in illegitimate ways – birthers, “death panel” types, those who claim Obama is planning concentration camps, who wish for his death, etc. I wish that sensible conservatives would do more to separate themselves from this group, rather than defending them.
Vernon Smith did not write the article in Critical Review referred to in this post as Causes of the Crisis. It was written by the editor. Whew. I thought he was losing it. You can look at the comments to the article to see some of its flaws.
The comments on the link on health care is an economists nightmare. One person says just print money to pay. Of course the only response was that “we can print money because of the gold reserves”. Very Depressing.
Regarding Vernon Smith’s own comments, people should keep in mind that he has been studying bubbles
in laboratory experiments for over 20 years. He is very pro free market, but he also says that
bubbles are ubiquitous, almost impossible to avoid. Even when people are in markets that will last
only a short (and known) time with a known final return, they often engage in bubbling, although
repeated involvement in such experiments tends to lead them to do so less often.
Regarding the generally pretty good article in the Globe on Minsky, there is at least one minor flaw.
Sure, Samuelson is the father of the neoclassical synthesis and all sorts of things many of us like to
bash for this reason or that, including the random walk theory of asset price movements, more often
attributed to Fama, who wrote on it after Samuelson. However, Samuelson was also always aware of the
possibility of speculative bubbles, writing on them very insightfully in “Intertemporal price
equilibrium: A prologue ot the theory of speculation,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 1957, 79, 181-219.
More to the point, I would strongly disagree that “rural white America” isn’t being dismissed. Regardless of the sort of site I’m on – economics, chit-chat, general politics, sports, entertainment, even health-related boards – the venom and disdain for anyone right of center drips from every page. It’s not just aimed at ideology or politicians, it’s very pointedly personal. It’s frightening at times in the sense that so many Americans so despise their own countrymen individually, as people, and not just for their politics.
4. Yes, absolute matters, but 10% compound annual ain’t no joke, yo. In 14 years Korea will be paying what we are paying today.
no end of open glee at the prospect of prominent dead conservatives (including, obviously, Bush, Cheney, Rove and anyone else whose name was in the news)
I don’t think this is accurate. Yes, there was vitriol, though to a large degree it was based on actual policies and decisions, rather than imaginary ones. But I don’t recall this “open glee” you claim there was no end of.
I like all of the five blogs, really all the blogs are interesting and very nice.. I mostly like the blog of Arnold King for “Tea and Sympathy”..
“I do think there is a segment of the right that behaves in illegitimate ways – birthers, “death panel” types, those who claim Obama is planning concentration camps, who wish for his death, etc.”
You don’t think its conservatives who are making these people the “face” of the conservatism, do you?
There’s a reason the “face” of the left isn’t demonstrated by the pictures at zombietime, and it isn’t because there has been concerted effort to denounce these views.
http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621
It’s the simple rule of ‘pas d’ennemis a gauche, pas d’amis a droit’ the latter part of which is followed by both the right and the left.
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‘ 3. Arnold Kling: “One could argue that this country is on the verge of a crisis of legitimacy. The progressive elite is starting to dismiss rural white America as illegitimate, and vice-versa. I see the chances of both sides losing as much greater than the chance of either force winning.” ‘
“One” could, but one would be full of it. Progressives are, by definition, anti-elitist, and many are rural & white. Teabaggers, on the other hand, are an astro-turf clown show for the media, bought and paid for by the corporate elite.
If there really were a legitimate “conservative movement” in this country, you’d think they’d be concerned by the ongoing corporate takeover of the State, their plundering of our Treasury, and the marginalization of all legitimate non-corporatist points of view. But they’re too busy being race-baited.
Here’s some other blogs takes on this, for which we’ve given them “Cosies.”
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I love the argument that the cause of the bust could not be bonuses because bankers lost when the bust caused their stock holdings to tank.
To accept this argument you must assume that the banker knew their stocks would tank.
Does anyone believe this?
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