Something’s right in the world and in this administration if the U.S. can have a President who makes a tape like President Obama’s Nowruz commentary. An unforgettably gracious bit of outreach that will have more effect than we can imagine.
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LinkedInDan Yergin is doing what he did for the oil topic — heavy lifting on the substance — and taking up the task of sorting out what happened in the Great Depression. His take on Chairman Bernanke, NEC Director Summers, and Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer here. It’s a rough load but if anyone can lift it, Dan can.
New Yorkers know their taxes are going up and are thinking about whether they can handle it. The professional crowd, especially, is concerned. Why not move out?
There’s a real power grab going on when it comes to Administration policy on charity.
Administration’s plan to curtail charitable deduction even as federal government gives “more” to charity.
Clive Crook of the FT and the Atlantic has sounded a welcome note of civility to the blogosphere. (If it’s all cacaphony, it won’t be useful.)
Over at econlib David Henderson has some great material on Harding and stimuli. Recall that in that era they let wages and prices fall. Ionides writes that more detail on this recession is in George Reisman, Capitalism. Got to check it out.
Here’s a picture of me by the water in Brooklyn, with Manhattan in the background. The Schechters walked near here while they were on trial for violating the NRA code for the poultry trade. Manhattan, where their lawyer Joe Heller worked, was mere backdrop for Brooklyn action.
One of the things we’ve been thinking about at the Council is the meaning of the New Deal and its impact on the Great Depression. We also talked a lot about it in my course at NYU/Stern. I get the impression some colleagues believe that the professional consensus is that the New Deal worked, economically. At Newsweek Daniel Gross sounds pretty certain of himself when he mocks those who are skeptical about the New Deal. Daniel writes that I, “George Will, and assorted libertarians cling bitterly to the notion that the New Deal didn’t work, that FDR’s policies of regulatory reform and sharply increased government spending were an abject failure, that the economy didn’t turn around until the day Japanese bombers dropped their payloads on Pearl Harbor. They believe Keynesian-style stimulus didn’t work in the 1930s, so it won’t work now.”
One reason the Obama stimulus package is less bad than many feared is that it is less random than expected. There’s lots to critique in an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, one of the changes the plan will spend on. But at least that forty percent of the stimulus package that is tax cuts will be identifiable and set. That leaves only sixty percent of unknowables, outlays that can be truly random spending by Washington — those bridges to nowhere.
Not to be outdone by the U.S. Treasury, the Financial Post has generated its own Stimulus Canada offer for interested parties. Chapeau bas to Terry Corcoran, Stimulus Czar.
