November 6, 2009, 10:20 am
Nominally misguided (wonkish)
名目上の勘違い（理屈っぽい）
David Beckworth has been getting a lot of attention with this figure on nominal spending:
David Beckworthは、名目消費に関するこの図表で多くの注目を集めている。（図表は、ＮＹＴＩＭＥＳのサイトを参照）
And it’s certainly suggestive. But I disagree with the interpretation that this shows that the current slump is mainly about insufficiently expansionary monetary policy. And more broadly, I think that efforts to make sense of recent events in terms of money velocity — such as, in particular, Bruce Bartlett’s — aren’t helpful (although Bartlett’s actual policy conclusions are fine).
確かに示唆に富んでいる。 しかし、私は、現在の不況が主に不十分な拡張的通貨政策に起因しているという解説には同意できない。 はっきり言ってしまうと、貨幣の拡大速度の観点から現在の事象を理解しようとしても役に立たないと思う。
1106 Why not a WPA?
November 6, 2009, 10:44 am
Why not a WPA?
雇用促進局でいいんじゃない？
A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question.
常々、私が公演の時に受ける質問に「雇用促進局のようなプログラムで、我々は雇用を創出することができないのか？」というものがある。 良い質問である。
Why not a WPA?
雇用促進局でいいんじゃない？
A question I’m occasionally asked at public events is, why aren’t we creating jobs with a WPA-type program? It’s a very good question.
常々、私が公演の時に受ける質問に「雇用促進局のようなプログラムで、我々は雇用を創出することができないのか？」というものがある。 良い質問である。
1106 Obama’s trap
November 6, 2009, 9:50 am
Obama’s trap
オバマの罠
Back in the first few months of the current administration, when I was writing piece after piece urging the new administration to adopt a more aggressive economic policy, what I had very much in my mind — and wrote about on a few occasions — was the possibility of a sort of political economy trap. If unemployment continued to rise, I feared, Congress wouldn’t draw the right conclusion — that we needed more stimulus. Instead, the verdict would be that Obama’s economic policies weren’t working, so we needed to do less. And high unemployment would also lead to Democratic electoral losses, further undermining the ability to act (since the fact is that today’s GOP is the party of economic ignorance). The result would be a persistently depressed economy, and a fading out of Obama’s promise.
現大統領が就任した当初に、私は大統領により刺激的な経済対策を施すことを促すメールを書いていた。同時に幾つかの政治的な経済失策の可能性についても言及していた。仮に失業率が上昇し続けた場合、議会は正しい結論を出すことはできないだろう。一方、オバマの経済政策は機能していないという評価になったら、何もなすことができない。 高い失業率は、民主主義選挙の意味がなくなり、政治の活動能力を減退させてしまう（事実、現在のＧＯＰは経済の無知の仕業だ。）
その結果、経済は引き続き低調で、オバマのマニフェストも色あせてしまう。
Obama’s trap
オバマの罠
Back in the first few months of the current administration, when I was writing piece after piece urging the new administration to adopt a more aggressive economic policy, what I had very much in my mind — and wrote about on a few occasions — was the possibility of a sort of political economy trap. If unemployment continued to rise, I feared, Congress wouldn’t draw the right conclusion — that we needed more stimulus. Instead, the verdict would be that Obama’s economic policies weren’t working, so we needed to do less. And high unemployment would also lead to Democratic electoral losses, further undermining the ability to act (since the fact is that today’s GOP is the party of economic ignorance). The result would be a persistently depressed economy, and a fading out of Obama’s promise.
現大統領が就任した当初に、私は大統領により刺激的な経済対策を施すことを促すメールを書いていた。同時に幾つかの政治的な経済失策の可能性についても言及していた。仮に失業率が上昇し続けた場合、議会は正しい結論を出すことはできないだろう。一方、オバマの経済政策は機能していないという評価になったら、何もなすことができない。 高い失業率は、民主主義選挙の意味がなくなり、政治の活動能力を減退させてしまう（事実、現在のＧＯＰは経済の無知の仕業だ。）
その結果、経済は引き続き低調で、オバマのマニフェストも色あせてしまう。
1105 The lost generation
The lost generation
Matthew Yglesias catches Eugene Fama making a strange assertion:
And as Matt points out, the giant success story in the developing world was China, where the driver was the end of Communism — not modern finance. Actually, it’s even more absurd to give finance the credit than Matt realizes: China has not been experiencing net inflows of capital, partly because it has maintained capital controls, effectively insulating itself from the whole finance thing.
So why does Fama believe that something wonderful happened around 1980? Part of it, I suspect, is that in his milieu the politically correct thing is to pretend that nothing good happened until Reagan came along.
And this has a truly weird effect in the American context: the best quarter-century of growth America has ever experienced, the postwar generation — which happens to be the era during which many of the founders of neoconservatism came of age! — has gone down the memory hole. After all, it’s impossible that living standards would double under a regime of high marginal tax rates, generous minimum wages, and strong unions. So it just didn’t happen.
Beginning in the early 1980s, the developed world and some big players in the developing world experienced a period of extraordinary growth. It’s reasonable to argue that in facilitating the flow of world savings to productive uses around the world, financial markets and financial institutions played a big role in this growth.The assertion about developed countries is, of course, entirely wrong. From Angus Maddison’s dataset:
So why does Fama believe that something wonderful happened around 1980? Part of it, I suspect, is that in his milieu the politically correct thing is to pretend that nothing good happened until Reagan came along.
And this has a truly weird effect in the American context: the best quarter-century of growth America has ever experienced, the postwar generation — which happens to be the era during which many of the founders of neoconservatism came of age! — has gone down the memory hole. After all, it’s impossible that living standards would double under a regime of high marginal tax rates, generous minimum wages, and strong unions. So it just didn’t happen.
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