I swear, Milton Friedman is spinning in his grave... The debate over at the website of The Economist is even more horrifying than I thought it would be, as Luigi Zingales simply does not appear to have thought any of the issues through at all. I think that his views are what Steve Sheffrin calls the...

Over at http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/03/10/this-house-believes-we-are-all-keynesians-now/?disqus_reply=7087846#disqus-claim, Will Wilkinson writes: Brad DeLong and Luigi Zingales debate it at Economist.com. DeLong’s opening statement too effectively arrays a huge amount of intel...

A very smart middle-aged Washington economic policy bureaucratic hand emails me his reaction to the New York Times's "When Will the Recession Be Over?": Whoa. Just realized. Kevin A. Hassett is now sounding more coherent and sensible than William Poole. Dear god. Not only does the Emperor have no cl...

...

What relevance and use does a work like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848), "Manifesto of the Communist Party" have to twenty-first century economists today? ---- Remember: Two hard copies, and one soft copy emailed to me at delong@econ.berkeley.edu...

Some guy once said that Hegel said somewhere that the World-Spirit leads all things to happen, as it were, twice--but that Hegel forgot to add that the first time it happens is tragedy, the second time farce. When Rudolf Hilferding endorsed the "Treasury View" and vetoed Wladimir Woytinsky's plans f...

Part of my continuing attempt to think through the Decline of the Chicago School--here I try to argue that Milton Friedman tried too hard to sell a stable nominal money growth rule as a laissez-faire policy, and thus undermined the ability of his students' students to actually say anything coherent ...

Matthew Yglesias agrees that Kevin Murphy gives the: Best Anti-Stimulus Argument I’ve Seen: Kevin Murphy’s slides here. I think he overstates the deadweight loss effect and is working with the wrong conception of “efficiency” for these purposes when he claims that government ...

I am reminded of this piece by Michael Berube and my recent thoughts about the decline of the Chicago School--the fact that nobody in residence there appears to have understood the economics of Milton Friedman, and so they try to do macro by deriving false conclusions from accounting identities and ...

Justin asks: The Curious Capitalist Must a journalist listen to the true believers in Austrian economics? The answer is "No." An Austrian perspective should be part of everybody's diversified intellectual portfolio. But engaging with the true believers is a fruitless task. Justin goes on: Greg "Pres...