Archive - Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality

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Brief Musings on Economists, Economic Ideas, & the Cold War

In the end George Kennan was right: containment was the way to win the Cold War because, ultimately, the really-existing socialist system inside the…

Oct 3 •

A Note of Puzzlement on Kevin McCarthy's Strategy

I read this as McCarthy tacking left while trying not to say so, and throwing Ukraine under the bus—for the moment at least—to give MAGA-heads & those…

Oct 3 •

September 2023

BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-09-30 Sa

Thomas Hirst on center-right politicians worshipping at cold altars; dueling estimates of the "neutral" interest rate r*; BPEA conference day 1; very…

Sep 30 •

It Appears We Are Almost at the End of the Glidepath to an Inflation Soft Landing...

& yet there does seem to be a very curious disjunction between chatter and current-data reality. A great deal of this is clickbait noise-and-fluff, …

Sep 29 •

1. Guesstimating Typical Living Standards in the Agrarian Age

For Econ 210a S 2024; time to apply all the lessons I have learned in the past decade to rejiggering how "Introduction to Economic History for Graduate…

Sep 29 •

BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-09-28 Th

Deaths of despair among the less well-educated; Harvard grade inflation; Fox News misinformation is not just political; very briefly noted; McCoy on…

Sep 28 •

Worth Teaching "Efflorescences & Dark Ages" in a History-of-Economic-Growth Unit?

& I, Somewhat Unexpectedly, Have Another Course to Teach in the Spring! Yes, I am picking up Econ 210a: Introduction to Economic History, for first-year…

Sep 28 •

PROJECT SYNDICATE: America's Broken Civic Bargain

I was going to write a review of Manville and Ober's brand-new survey of democracy in four societies, but I got sidetracked. So instead, I wrote about…

Sep 28 •

Reinvested-Portfolios Wealth Accumulations Starting in 1870

(No transaction costs, no taxes, annual January rebalancing at month average prices, diversified stocks vs. long-term Treasuries, stock leverage ratios…

Sep 25 •

Identity Politics:

Maybe it's what it sounds like, and maybe that's a good thing

Published on Yastreblyansky’s Substack • Sep 25

BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2023-09-25 Mo

1/50 of people who die are still dying of COVID; NBER conference on GPT-LLM-ML; US budget deficits; very briefly noted; & Baldwin & Grozoubinski on…

Sep 25 •

"Civic Friendship": The Baseline Requirement for Democracy, & Incompatible with the Financial Flows Underpinning the Republican Ecology

Thus what Manville and Ober's "The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives" has managed to do is to convince me that we are much more likely totally hosed…

Sep 25 •

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