Links of the Week - 26 April 2013

A slow week for curated news:


Why gold and bitcoin make lousy money
David Andolfatto

Inside the offbeat economics department that debunked Reinhart-Rogoff
Dylan Matthews

'Unemployment and the Free Market'
Chris Dillow, via Mark Thoma

Quote of the Day - Michael Lewis on Capital

"I also found myself thinking: the English may finally have decided they have had enough of their experiment with the American financial way of life. If what happened in the Western world financial system had happened at another time in history, there would have been an obvious political response: a revolt against the Roger Younts of the world and, more generally, the grotesque inequities spawned by the putatively free financial marketplace. If the memory of British socialism wasn’t so fresh—if people didn’t still recall just how dreary London felt in 1980—they’d be pulling down the big banks, and redistributing the wealth of the bankers, and it would be hard to find a good argument to stop them from doing it. The absence of the satisfying political response to the financial crisis is due, at least in part, to the absence of an ideological vessel to put it in. No one wants to go forward in the same direction we’ve been heading, but no one wants to turn back either. We’re all trapped, left with, at best, the hope that our elites might experience some kind of moral transformation."

-Michael Lewis, on Capital, by John Lanchester


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Links of the Week - 19 April 2013

Kind of a big week for links, but then it was kind of a big week for news. There was such a big pile of links this week that I put them into categories. This may become a trend, but no promises yet.

Gold:

The Gold Bubble Is Bursting: Who’s To Blame? - David Glasner 

12 Rules of Goldbuggery - Barry Ritholtz

Bitcoin:

Bitcoin is ludicrous, but it tells us something important about the nature of money - Neil Irwin 

Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin - Paul Krugman

Thatcher Roundup:

David Corn 

Wonkblog 

Paul Routledge

General Macro:

Milton Friedman, Currency Debaser - Paul Krugman

Empirical Methods and Progress in Macroeconomics - Mark Thoma

Getting Back to Full Employment - Jared Bernstein 

U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion - The Onion

Marathon:

‘If you are losing faith in human nature, go out and watch a marathon’ - Ezra Klein

Please, Listen to Ruslan - William Saletan (video)

The Rest:

Why doing your taxes is much harder than it ought to be - Neil Irwin 

The Limits of Good Faith - Ta-Nehisi Coates 

What are some of the most ridiculous startup ideas that eventually became successful? - Michael Wolfe

Why I Don't Love Frederic Bastiat - Matthew Yglesias

How a student took on eminent economists on debt issue - and won - Edward Krudy

Quote of the Day - Chris Hayes

"My disposition as a human being is kind of a go-along-to-get-along person. I tend to trust authority. I tend to think people in charge broadly know what they're doing, don't lie to you, aren't going to start wars for no reason, and, you know, watching Iraq happen and then watching the financial crisis happen and then Katrina in the middle of that, you know, you turn around and you think, 'Wait a second: No one is on top of anything. Who the heck is in charge here? These people who say that they know what they're doing don't know what they're doing. I'm not going to trust them the next time they tell me they know what they're doing.' It's a radically unmooring feeling to recognize that people that you just figured kind of had it under control don't have it under control and might be totally incompetent or completely corrupt or totally self-dealing."-Chris Hayes

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Links of the Week - 12 April 2013

Haircuts on Intrade - Rajiv Sethi (via Mark Thoma)


The nihilism of David Stockman - Neil Irwin

Michael Lewis on the King of Human Error

Will Bitcoins Make Me Rich? - Farhad Manjoo

Two versions of Goodhart's Law - Noah Smith

Fool's Gold - Eric Posner

Inside the Bitcoin economy - Free Exchange

Quote of the Day - Matt Yglesias

"The concept of "redistribution" falsely implies that the existence of property is prior to the existence of the state."

-Matthew Yglesias


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Links of the Week - 5 April 2013

Is "Intellectual Property" a Misnomer?
Tim Taylor

The choice between debts and austerity
Larry Summers, via Jonathan B. Wight

The problem with Twitter
Ezra Klein

The Rewards of Being Very Serious
Paul Krugman

The Price Is Wrong
Paul Krugman

Jack-booted Insurance-bringing Thugs
Paul Krugman

Soup Kitchens Caused the Great Depression
Jonathan Wight

Stockman, Morality Plays, and Wishful Thinking

An excellent video here on the David Stockman kerfuffle. The most important takeaway for me was the idea, previously articulated elsewhere, that macroeconomics is not a morality play. That is to say, if the answer to a macro problem is normatively pleasing, that fact is a coincidence.

Many of us have normative views about 'what ought to be.' These views may differ from person to person; that's ok. Views on 'how the world works' are of a different genus. These things are testable. Disagreements of this nature are resolvable through empiricism, if the data exist.

A related idea: if your theory of how the world works is untestable, it's not really a theory; it's probably just a wish.



**UPDATE: Neil Irwin disassembles Stockman's argument, looks around inside, and doesn't find much.

Quote of the Day - Martin Luther King, Jr: I've Been to the Mountaintop

3 April 1968
I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
Memphis, TN

audio

Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. [Laughter] It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you, and Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world.

I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined [Audience:] (Right) to go on anyhow. (Yeah, All right) Something is happening in Memphis, something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt (Yeah), and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather, across the Red Sea, through the wilderness, on toward the Promised Land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there. (All right)

Quote of the Day - Martin Luther King, Jr: Beyond Vietnam

4 April 1967
Beyond Vietnam
New York, NY

audio

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the most distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it’s always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

Links of the Week - 29 March 2013

The Economics of Evil Google: Paul Krugman


Attacking Success: Paul Krugman


Markets in almost nothing: Noah Smith


Three Cheers for the Nanny State: Sarah Conly


The Unnatural Rate Hypothesis: Paul Krugman


Crying Wolf, Bear, Lion -- Whatever It Takes: Mark Thoma