Wednesday, December 31, 2008  Happy New Year!  Remarkable
article by Mark Ames on why the New York Times' coverage of the
Georgian invasion of South Ossetia was ultimately retracted.
Friday, December 26, 2008  State of the Union  This post by Mark
Thoma (econ, U Oregon) reflects the typical thinking in academic
econ: Keeping the budget in balance while the economy is
struggling is not good policy. If the goal is to stimulate the
economy and to create new jobs, then the "clear" lesson - the
advice to pay for the spending on infrastructure by raising
taxes - is wrong. The new infrastructure does need to be paid
for, but the time to do that is when the economy is healthy, not
when it is under performing. The "clear" lesson is, when the
private sector deleverages, to maintain money supply, the
Federal Government has to leverage up by running a larger
deficit. In some ways, you can think of this as reversing the
disintermediation between money creation (Fed) and money
allocation (banks). You only want to run down