- Tea Party Pick [Rand Paul] Causes Uproar on Civil Rights. More here. Here’s a comment I sent to the NYT: “I have followed this whole controversy reasonably closely (i.e., I watched the interview twice online) and so I was surprised to see this statement in the NYT: Asked by Ms. Maddow if a private business had the right to refuse to serve black people, Mr. Paul replied, “Yes.” If you look at the video (posted at the link above, the relevant part goes from minute 8:00 to 8:20), I don’t see any way that the “Yes” reported in the NYT is an accurate representation of what Paul actually said. I have little doubt that in his heart of hearts his answer to that question actually is “Yes”, but he worked very hard to not say it on-air, and for the NYT to take a “Yeah” that came at the end of a confusing bit of cross-talk and turn it into a firm “Yes” in response to a clear question is IMHO not accurate. PS. There are transcripts of the interview online (e.g., here) that also have the “Yes” in it, but the NYT should have gone to the original video and not relied on transcripts.”
- The Academies’ March Toward Mediocrity. Interesting in light of my recent visit to West Point, but I don’t have enough information to comment otherwise.
- Is a VAT good for exports? “The real exchange rate adjusts to keep the present discounted value of exports and imports equal.”
- Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons. The Economist was less keen.
- The Temporary Vegetarian: A Vegan Main Dish of Indian Green Beans
- Peak oil production coming sooner than expected.
- Modern Macroeconomic Models as Tools for Economic Policy by Narayana R. Kocherlakota – President of the MN Fed. “By and large, journalists and policymakers—and by extension the U.S. public—think about macroeconomics using the basically abandoned frameworks of the 1960s and 1970s.”
- Argentina: Greek Financial Rescue Doomed to Fail
- We’re Not Greece
- In a Job Market Realignment, Some Left Behind
- A Bad Bet on Carbon [Sequestration]
- The Economics of Happiness, by Ben Bernanke
- Finding Humor in the Dismal Science. Me in the Reed alumni magazine 🙂
Leave A Comment