Debt & DataCenters: CHART OF THE DAY
FaceBook bankrupt in one scenario in fifteen in five years? SpaceX & Oracle one in six? That appears to be what those willing to lend to FaceBook right now are thinking...
Economics
Grasping Reality.
Brad DeLong on economic history, political economy, and the long arc of growth and policy.
Recent essays
30 of 144CROSSPOST: STEVE VLADECK: 250. What We Learned from USPS v. California
Steve’s subheadline is: “ In refusing to put the USPS mail-in ballots rule into effect, the majority didn’t say very much. I still think there are (at least) three important lessons...”;
(SEMI-)CROSSPOST: JACOB LEVY: Conceptualizing Academic Freedom
Jacob begins: “Academic freedom is an unusual and complex set of norms and practices. It arises out of... corporate self-governance of medieval universities and... disciplinary scientific inquiry...”
The Feminization of Employment Growth During Trump II: CHART OF THE DAY
Trump nuked male employment-heavy green-tech infrastructure, nuked reshoring, damaged our manufacturing firms’ abilities to be efficient producers in the modern globalized value-chain economy.
CROSSPOST: ANDREW GELMAN: “Replication Crisis”, Dan Ariely Files
Andrew’s title: “I am shocked, shocked to learn that this 2002 paper by Dan Ariely is based on dubious data & doesn’t replicate”; but in addition to frauds, there are the honest but non-robust too...
SubTuringBradBot & Parasocial Sociability: SUNDAY SPECIAL: MAMLMS & SOCIETY
Since Gutenberg, most intellectual relationships have involved running an author-instantiation n your own wetware; compared to that, the coming of a subtturing ‘bot is small potatoes, I think
CROSSPOST: ROY EDROSO: Tubby, Hero & Victim of 9/11
Roy’s subheadline: “The one thing Trump didn’t try to dominate and why that changed”; sanewashing Donald Trump continues to be common, & is becoming even more contemptible with each passing day...
CROSSPOST: DAN DREZNER: The Trump Administration Strategy Fail
Dan’s subheadline: “They have no idea what they are doing in Iran or Canada”; it’s Trump who draws parallels between Canadian clown-show-tiff-of-choice & killing nearly all of Iran’s leaders...
CROSSPOST: JOHN QUIGGIN: US Navy Defeated Again
John Quiggin’s subheadline: “But that won’t change any minds”; When finding the large floating target is easy and stopping the missile is hard, naval capital is a liability, not an asset...
Interest Rate-Hike Expectations: CHART OF THE DAY
Expected short-term interest rates in 2028 are one percentage-point higher than they would have been otherwise because of Trump’s war on Iran. Is that a big shift or a small one?
J. Bradford DeLong: Professor of Economics, Emeritus
But Now I Need to Figure Out How Not to Eat My Brain in "Retirement"
CROSSPOST: RILEY CEDER & J.D. SIMKINS: Navy Not Returning to Damaged Bahrain Base ‘Anytime Soon,’ Top Officer Says
Admiral Daryl Caudle: “We’re not getting back in there” to Naval Support Actiity Bahrain “anytime soon. I want to be completely honest with that...”; the U.S. Navy was not prepared for Drone-Age war..
Elon Musk & His DOGE & DogeCoin Adventure: CHART OF THE DAY
I Am Become Meme, Destroyer of USAID: is the journey the reward: looking back at DOGE, DogeCoin, & chaos-monkey grifterarithmetic
(NOT A) CROSSPOST: HALINA BENNET: The Return of Institutional Purpose [to Academia]
Halina’s subheadline: “Generative A.I. gives institutions the chance to re-evaluate their values”, &, I would add, their value propositions as well...
In Memory of Jeffrey Williamson: SATURDAY “SLOUCHING” & FRIENDS
Economic history & related topics: The man who woke up eager, and the discipline of working as hard as you can to get the numbers right...
Looking Askance Yet Again at MuskWorld: WEIRDNESS OF THE DAY
Musk torched one of his two profitable businesses and Starlink can’t carry anything like a $3 trillion valuation alone—so what’s holding the valuation of MuskWorld up?
ThothBot Makes an Appearance in My RA-Group Telegram Chat: FRIDAY FOG & FLATLANDS
Living & working in Berkeley, California: An AI writes an introduction to my research assistants, & PanGram/SubStack grades it 100% not-slop; or, what happens when the “Phaidros” wish is granted...
CROSSPOST: PAUL KRUGMAN: Imperialist Delusions & the Price of Fuel
Paul’s subheadline: “Trump & Bessent tried to betray Ukraine. Now they don’t have any cards”;
Retraining Workers for “AI”: CHART OF THE DAY
Firms are using AI as an excuse for layoffs, but when the New York Fed asked them if that was what they were really doing, they said: no, we are retraining workers instead...
READING: LEWIS CARROLL (1895): What The Tortoise Said To Achilles
I have always found this fascinating, and I do not know what I should think about it...
The Viking Alliance Is Coalescing: CHART OF THE DAY
NATO is getting a second locus of initiative, and Washington’s power is no longer automatically multiplied to the strength of a billion by NATO, but finds its leadership of the alliance now contested.
CROSSPOST: JUSTIN WOLFERS: Did Trump’s Tariffs Achieve Trump’s Goals?
Justin’s subheadline: “I didn’t grade the trade war against an economist’s ideal. I graded it against Trump’s own promises.” F. Justin says due to wrong beliefs about how world trade works. I disagree
How Special Is Programming as a Token-Infall Attractor?: CHART OF THE DAY
Software coding burns tokens like a quasar burns infalling particles’ gravitational potential energy, but will any other white-collar occupation every do the same?...
The Fed Chairman Who Would Prefer Not to Say: Warsh’s Silence as a Position, Not a Puzzle: TUESDAY MACRO OUTLOOK
A Fed Chair who sets out four different “preferred” measures of underlying inflation in four months? What is he doing? I think: creating strategic ambiguity...
CROSSPOST: DAVID ALBOUY, JONATHAN PARKER, STEPHEN DURLAUF, JON STEINSSON: On Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson’s “Colonial Origins...”
The scatter and the hypotheses of Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson’s “Colonial Origins...” paper are very interesting and important; but the IV statistics are, as David Albouy says, a dumpster fire...
CROSSPOST: EMILY BENDER: “Stochastic Parrots”
Her current views on: how language really works, what LLMs are actually doing, what “stochastic parrots” really mean, and why doomers and boosters are two sides of the same, misleading coin...
Heading for a Large, Rapid Fall in Interest Rates?: CHART OF THE DAY
Torsten Slok says both an AI boom and an AI bust push long interest rates down substantially, and the market is very likely to decide one way or another in the next six months...
CROSSPOST: GÉRARD ROLAND: The Berkeley years. Part XXII
Gerard’s subheadline: “Being department chair (2008-2011)”; fundraising through the Great Recession, financing David Card’s Labor center, throwing the Oliver Williamson Nobel party...
The U.S. Federal Fiscal Flow Deficit Problem: CHART OF THE DAY
Republican tax cuts for the rich created the problem; please name and shame; restoring the Clinton-Gore tax rates and tax base is the solution; pass it on...
CROSSPOST: JUSTIN WOLFERS: Good News. There’s Already a U.S.-Canada Trade Deal
Justin’s subheadline: “You’ll never guess who signed it”; and now Trump wants to burn it, and reinforce everyone’s knowledge that his word is simply not good for anything...