Outside The Beltway | OTB

Don’t Forget Rent Seeking

Steve Verdon — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:04:49 +0000

Greg Mankiw looks at an article by Paul Krugman on the current economic problems. The essence of Paul’s argument is that the economy of the Great Depression was in a liquidity trap, which implies that the AD curve is vertical, which in turn implies that policies that adversely shift the AS curve do not affect equilibrium output in the short run. Thus, a policy that under normal...

Iraq WMD’s Revisited

James Joyner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:53:32 +0000

Bernard Finel, to say the least a fan of neither the Bush Administration nor the Iraq War, throws cold water on the Bush Lied, People Died meme that refuses to die: I’d like to urge folks to think through what standards should be applied to inherently ambiguous information. Here is what we knew in 2002: (1) Saddam had a WMD program in the early 1990s. (2) Saddam had not fully cooperated with...

Chrysler Goes Shrill

Steve Verdon — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:48:20 +0000

Failure of one of the auto manufacturers could spark a depression. Jim Press, Chrysler’s vice chairman, said the U.S. automakers were “down to months left,” as industry officials ratcheted up a fierce lobbying push to persuade Congress to approve as much as $34 billion in emergency aid. “We’re on the brink with the U.S. auto manufacturing industry,” Press...

Extreme Beer

James Joyner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:20:57 +0000

Gordon Biersch Somerfest pints Burkhard Bilger explores the rise of craft beers for The New Yorker. “When you’re trying to create new brewing techniques and beer styles, you have to have a certain recklessness,” Jim Koch, whose Boston Beer Company brews Samuel Adams, and who coined the term “extreme beer,” told me. “Sam has that. He’s fearless, but he’s also got a good palate. He doesn’t put...

Twitter Revolution Will Not be Televised

James Joyner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:44:28 +0000

Kathleen Parker seems vaguely annoyed by the Twitter phenomenon. Shorter than a blog posting, a “tweet” consists of a concise sentence or two and essentially answers the question: What are you doing? [...] On Planet Facebook, nothing in one’s life is not worth mentioning. To what end, one can only surmise. I am, therefore I am, therefore I am. But what are friends for, if not...

The Mumbai Terrorist Attacks and “Open Source” Warfare

Dave Schuler — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:37:15 +0000

We still don’t know for certain yet why the attacks in Mumbai took place or who the perpetrators were and we may not know for quite a while if ever. There are lots of speculations and accusations but precious little hard data. We don’t even know for certain how many were in the group that attacked Mumbai last week. The Indian government says ten, presumably because nine were killed...

Obama Gets High Marks

James Joyner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:58:41 +0000

A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows that Americans think Barack Obama is handling the transition well and picking an outstanding team. Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones: Americans widely approve of Barack Obama’s decisions, announced on Monday, to name Hillary Clinton secretary of state and to ask Robert Gates to stay on as secretary of defense. [...] During the recent period of speculation...

More Franken Ballots Found!

James Joyner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:47:51 +0000

Election judges Willy Lee (L) and Joanne Caspersen recount marked ballots cast for the 2008 Minnesota U.S. senate race between former Saturday Night Live comedian Al Franken (DFL-MN) and incumbent Norm Coleman (R-MN) at an elections warehouse in Minneapolis November 19, 2008. REUTERS/Eric Miller (UNITED STATES) Since the initial counting of ballots on Election Day, caches of new Al Franken...

Chambliss Wins Runoff, Denies Democrats 60 Seats

James Joyner — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:25:28 +0000

Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss easily won his runoff against Democrat Jim Martin, 57.4 to 42.6 according to the current uncertified totals. NYT notes, Senator Saxby Chambliss and his wife, Julianne, celebrating his victory on Tuesday in Atlanta. (Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times) The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4...

Voting Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

James Joyner — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:11:36 +0000

Phillip Goetz demonstrates out that voting is both dangerous and irrational: According to a recent study, on the day of a US presidential election there are, on average, an extra 24 auto-accident fatalities. The study covered the past 32 years, not including this year. The number of times that a single vote has affected the outcome of a US presidential election is, so far, zero. [...] So,...

Better Off than 40 Years Ago?

James Joyner — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:09:46 +0000

Veronique de Rugy asks, “Are You Better off Than You Were 40 Years Ago?“ Well, she notes, our standard of living is wildly higher: Wealth expands people’s choices, and Americans are fabulously more prosperous than they were in 1968. According to the Census Bureau, income per capita adjusted for inflation has doubled in the four decades since 1968, from $13,374 to $26,804. Non-wage...

$9 Billion of “Just In Case Money”

Steve Verdon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:44:34 +0000

Ford Motor Company wants a $9 billion line of credit with the government…just in case it needs it. Hey, here is stimulus package idea, how about I decide to pay my taxes or not. You never know I might just need it…like Ford might need that $9 billion. Is it too late to call Congress a canker on our society?

More on Fiscal Policy

Steve Verdon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:31:24 +0000

In my post on fiscal policy and why it tends not to be so great at working to counter-act a recession there was extensive discussion on why. Although I laid out the case for crowding out as one of the reasons this was met with considerable skepticism. In a rather nicely timed post we have Greg Mankiw summarizing several studies on this very topic. The Keynesian model has some clear, practical...

No Coherent Plan

Steve Verdon — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:54:09 +0000

Sounds like government as usual. The congressional panel to oversee the bail out says that the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis. Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an...

Holder and the Rich Pardon

James Joyner — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:35:18 +0000

Richard Cohen and Ezra Klein are very disturbed by Attorney General-designate Eric Holder’s role in Bill Clinton’s 11th hour pardoning of Marc Rich. Kevin Drum finds Holder’s role “disturbing” but not disqualifying and hopes he’s learned his lesson. I’m by no means a Clinton fan but the idea that Holder should be held accountable for Clinton’s...