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Monetary & Housing Policy Thread: Fed Adopts Evans Rule

TuffaloDeac10 said:
Krugman actually uses "Lesser Depression", which I don't think has the same ring as Little Depression (that's not your point, though, is it?).

Obviously we can both be thankful that the period is not known as Lehmangate or HousingBubblegate.
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Really? His book is called End This Lesser Depression Now? That's news to me.
 
Krugman used "Lesser Depression" in a NYT piece which pre-dates the book. "End This Lesser Depression Now" makes no sense as a title; "this" identifies which depression he is talking about. Ed Glaeser didn't title his book "I Fucking Love New York City - Why You Should, Too" but that doesn't mean the whole thing is something other than a (beautiful, moving) loveletter to NYC.
 
Also, may I ask if you are pretty pumped about the fiscal cliff? We are about to take a HUGE bite out of the deficit. No more structural deficit.

I originally had "going over" in the question. But I think that is inappropriate. The fiscal cliff could be something our economy will crash into like a ship would, not something we're doing Red Bull Flugtag off of. Bernanke should have just called in an austerity bomb.
 
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TuffaloDeac10 said:
Krugman used "Lesser Depression" in a NYT piece which pre-dates the book. "End This Lesser Depression Now" makes no sense as a title; "this" identifies which depression he is talking about. Ed Glaeser didn't title his book "I Fucking Love New York City - Why You Should, Too" but that doesn't mean the whole thing is something other than a (beautiful, moving) loveletter to NYC.
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So you don't think the title "End This Depression Now" leads the average person to believe that we are in a depression?
 
TR1982 said:
So you don't think the title "End This Depression Now" leads the average person to believe that we are in a depression?
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So what? We have a really big long-term unemployment problem. It is NOT structural. It is demand-driven. Much of the popular press is shrieking about deficits or coming up with ways to worry about a debt crisis at a time of record low interest rates. To the extent that any writer is getting shrill talking J-O-B-S JOBS, that is a good and helpful thing.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
So what? We have a really big long-term unemployment problem. It is NOT structural. It is demand-driven. Much of the popular press is shrieking about deficits or coming up with ways to worry about a debt crisis at a time of record low interest rates. To the extent that any writer is getting shrill talking J-O-B-S JOBS, that is a good and helpful thing.
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We also have a really big debt problem, and it continues to befuddle me how some people will put on the blinders to deny this. Yeah, jobs are a serious issue, but overreacting with a gigantic stimulus program will do little to help. The amount of federal spending that would be required to keep the unemployed employed until requisite deleveraging has occurred would create yet another debt bubble, only this time it would be sovereign debt. As much as it pains me to say it, this is a much more serious problem than skill deterioration in the unemployed. Look at where we are today. Debt/GDP exceeds 100%. Our debt maturity structure is weighted heavily towards bills and notes, which is extremely dangerous. I want to see these people employed. I'm not evil. But you have to look at the cost benefit analysis. The potential growth from a gigantic stimulus package would be transient, but the debt would remain. We'd be looking at a debt/GDP ratio of around 135%. What's worse is that the vast majority of this debt is due to mature sometime within the next 2-10 years, precisely when the Federal Reserve will be hiking interest rates. There is no way the bond market will let us rollover all that debt at current rates, and then we'll face serious issues. And there will be absolutely no way to grow out of our debt load.

Oh, and the problem with this is that because Krugman's amazing powers of influence are so great, his book title will have extraordinarily deleterious effects on consumer confidence.
 
Your suggestion is to let the unemployed rot because there might be an bond market attack in 2-10 years time and you just spent the summer supporting a candidate who wanted a 20% across the board permanent tax cut and to blow military spending way way up and not make any changes in entitlements until 2022? You'll have to excuse my inability to take you seriously here.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
Your suggestion is to let the unemployed rot because there might be an bond market attack in 2-10 years time and you just spent the summer supporting a candidate who wanted a 20% across the board permanent tax cut and to blow military spending way way up and not make any changes in entitlements until 2022? You'll have to excuse my inability to take you seriously here.
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I supported a candidate, therefore I support everything he proposed. That seems to be a common theme in your posts, guilt by association. That and absurd reductionism, although those two dovetail nicely. You supported a candidate that proposed almost nothing to create new jobs. In fact, his only major economic proposals were an increase in taxes on the wealthy (an austerity measure), and a modest infrastructure improvement project. I'm almost surprised you didn't vote for Romney, whose plan would have undoubtedly been better for growth. And after all, a Republican president would be in a better position to increase spending (Nixon to China). But hey, it actually crossed my mind that you might have some disagreements with the President, and that you aren't a single-issue voter. Fancy that.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
You're a deficit chicken hawk. That's all there is to it.
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Being a chicken hawk entails claiming to be a hawk. I'm not even a deficit hawk. A deficit hawk is someone who complains every time we are in the red. I'm someone who complains when our deficit is 10% of annual output, and our debt is rapidly approaching unsustainable levels. Given the number of exchanges we've had on this board over the past few months, I'm pretty astonished that you haven't picked up on this by now. Yes, I was absolutely gung ho on tax cuts, but I was also gung ho on closing all tax loopholes and subsidies in the code. I was also gung ho on reforming entitlements. I was also gung ho on cutting some discretionary spending. I'm gung ho on a smaller government in general. This argument you're making is comical. "You supported Romney, and he proposed tax cuts, so you're a chicken hawk!" Is that honestly supposed to be a serious argument? Hey, you claim to be an unemployment hawk, but Obama has proposed raising tax. Chicken hawk! Let me know if you want to have a serious conversation. Otherwise, I'd prefer to stop wasting my time pointing out the obvious ways in which my beliefs can be reconciled.
 
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We can find posts where I disagree with Obama and/or the Democrats from both the right and left. I've praised the GOP. I don't think I've seen any posts where you do anything besides toe the GOP line.
 
TuffaloDeac10 said:
We can find posts where I disagree with Obama and/or the Democrats from both the right and left. I've praised the GOP. I don't think I've seen any posts where you do anything besides toe the GOP line.
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Reductionism strikes again! You can't find any posts where I disagree with the GOP, therefore, I don't disagree with any GOP policies. Actually, that's not really reductionism. More of a fallacy of extrapolation or interpolation. I don't have some overwhelming need to boost my bipartisan credibility. I don't subscribe to the belief that people will be more likely to accept my arguments if I am moderate on some issues. I believe that people will be more likely to accept my arguments if they are logical, grounded in fact, and are backed by both theory and empirical evidence. So I don't always declare it to the boards when I disagree with the GOP on something. But, since you went through the trouble of looking (I assume), I'll let you know that I disagree with the GOP on immigration, the death penalty, and I thought that whole Benghazi witch hunt was absurd. There are other things as well, but those are the ones that come to mind first. If you want to continue believing that I am some GOPbot just because I voted for Romney, be my guest. Otherwise, I would suggest you stop assuming things, and argue against other people's arguments. Stop wasting time trying to catch me in a million "Gotcha" moments. Those are RJKarl tactics, and it's just weak. I enjoyed our back and forth when it actually involved critiquing theory and discussing policy. When it got to the point where you triumphantly declared victory over me because I had ranked JFK #15 among presidents on one thread, and then months later said he didn't deserve to be in the top 15, it became demonstrably less fun. You got me on that one. Congratulations. I hope it felt good, despite the triviality of the whole thing. Seriously, I don't want to spend all my time explaining why two things I said months apart are not mutually exclusive. When people start trying to catch me in gotchas, I start doing the same thing to them, and then it ends up with me wasting hours on a pointless argument that is in no way, shape, or form edifying. I'd be more than happy to debate monetary or housing policy, or even just economics in general. Otherwise, I'm done on this thread.
 
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It's not so much that you come off as a GOPbot because you voted for Romney as it that maybe half the threads in which you're the OP are WSJ op-ed links and that JFK is a better President than Nixon until it's time to explicitly compare Team GOP to Team Dem. Shooting from the hip on RATM and whether Morello might ever have actually read Marx. That's the behavior of a GOPbot. But that is obviously only what you put on OGBoards and it's my fault for assuming that is representative. It's probably biased towards things you want to discuss rather than the entire set of things you believe. That's my B.

As far as gotchas, I think we can both fuck right off if either of us really wants to claim the high ground. Neither of us has tried (at all) to be the bigger man. Let's just get back to housing and not Presidential rankings or Krugman's (or his editor's?) titling choices. I suspect we'l have some agreements and then we can move towards being disagreeable.

I want for Darryl Issa to get the Height Act repealed and then Obummer should do a Race to the Top for housing policy.
 
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TuffaloDeac10 said:
It's not so much that you come off as a GOPbot because you voted for Romney as it that maybe half the threads in which you're the OP are WSJ op-ed links and that JFK is a better President than Nixon until it's time to explicitly compare Team GOP to Team Dem. Shooting from the hip on RATM and whether Morello might ever have actually read Marx. That's the behavior of a GOPbot. But that is obviously only what you put on OGBoards and it's my fault for assuming that is representative. It's probably biased towards things you want to discuss rather than the entire set of things you believe. That's my B.

As far as gotchas, I think we can both fuck right off if either of us really wants to claim the high ground. Neither of us has tried (at all) to be the bigger man. Let's just get back to housing and not Presidential rankings or Krugman's (or his editor's?) titling choices. I suspect we'l have some agreements and then we can move towards being disagreeable.

I want for Darryl Issa to get the Height Act repealed and then Obummer should do a Race to the Top for housing policy.
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Fair enough. Wasn't trying to claim the high ground.
 
TR1982 said:
Most important thing in the U.S. economy? Man, and here I thought the macroeconomy wasn't a morality play.
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Mea culpa. I think there are good reasons to think a more equal distribution of income would lead to a stronger recovery, but obviously the most important chart would have to be one showing the ZLB on nominal rates.
 
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