Recent Blog Posts
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The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
Apr 27 20099:04am EDT -
Sinking Animal Spirits
Apr 27 20098:04am EDT -
Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
Apr 26 200910:04am EDT -
Be Your Own Counterfeiter
Apr 26 20099:04am EDT -
Being Tim Geithner
Apr 25 200912:04pm EDT -
Notes From a Press Conference Naif
Apr 25 20099:04am EDT -
What Good is the News?
Apr 25 20098:04am EDT -
Stressful Enough
Apr 24 20092:04pm EDT -
Not Regretting the Pound
Apr 24 20091:04pm EDT -
Introducing the New Ford Squeeze
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
Non-Economic Questions of the Day
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
The Stress Test Blind Alley
Apr 24 20098:04am EDT -
Happy Hour
Apr 23 20099:04pm EDT -
Recovery Without Rebalancing
Apr 23 20096:04pm EDT -
The Shape of Your Recession
Apr 23 20095:04pm EDT
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Clinton vs the Economists
From the Strange Bedfellows department: Mark Thoma and Greg Mankiw on one side, versus Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen on the other. The issue, in a nutshell: does it matter if politicians ignore economists? Thoma and Mankiw say yes, if they're willing to ignore the experts on one of the few areas where the experts agree with each other, then you can't trust that they will ever make good use of advice. Krugman and Cowen say no, there are bigger fish to fry, and economists tend to overrate their own importance.
For me, personally, this gas-tax episode has changed my opinion of Hillary Clinton quite dramatically. Yes, I've been an Obama supporter for a while, but I've been less opposed to Clinton than most Obama supporters, until now. But the gas-tax proposal reminded me of the way that she described the proposed Dubai Ports deal as a threat to national security, and I realized that I just couldn't trust her assertions. I'm pretty sure she's smart enough to know that she's pandering - what Mankiw calls "mendacity with a dash of condescension". Which means that Clinton considers working-class votes to be more important than working-class voters. And that's not a claim I'd make about either of the other two candidates.
