The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    One of the advantages

    By Flavius on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 8:36am |

     of reading TPM was  being exposed to people who actually knew what they were talking about..

    The collapse of the housing market in 2008 was much less of a surprise to any of us who had for years been reading Dean Baker’s  repeated  explanations that housing had become a bubble which would go the way of all bubbles For example , in 2006.

    . "In the absence of any other credible theory, the only plausible explanation for the sudden surge in home prices is the existence of a housing bubble. This means that a major factor driving housing sales is the expectation that housing priceswill be higher in the future. While this process can sustain rising prices for a period of time, it must eventually come to an end"

    I have a mental picture of Baker holding up a sign saying  "The end is near".

    I was reminded of the up side of a forum grounded in expert testimony when  reading the impeccably conservative Samuel Brittan in  yesterday's FT 

    It is far too early for a final assessment of the relative behaviour of the different parts of the industrial world in the recent nearly unprecedented recession, but it is not too early for a preliminary examination.

    If we look at the fall in output from the peak quarter before the recession ..........to the recession trough and the recovery since then, the US emerges as the easy winner. The fall in output was slightly less ................... and the recovery has been much more impressive. It is the only one.......................... where output has recovered to above the pre-recession peak. You might think that the domestic American reaction would be one of rejoicing, but it is not.

    Hardly a day passes without warnings of doom from Republican politicians...etc

    To which I might add from others from Krugman to Des.

    Dagblog of course by and large dispenses with hired guns  and mostly consists of us  speaking to-or past- one another. Which leaves me  feeling some  nostalgia for the days when Baker was teaching me things sbout which Alan Greenspan was clueless

    Comments

    Don't know about 'much more impressive'. Adjusting growth for inflation and population growth, I get:

    real gdp per capita growth (2007-2010) of ... negative 0.83%.

    The US is outpacing Europe because the US population is growing 1% a year, whereas Germany, say, has 0% population growth, France 0.4%. So it's not because people are better off in the States.The economy hasn't kept pace with the population.

    That's not to say the EU aren't headed down the shitter, just putting things in perspective. Though of course it's much more appealing to ignore ... well ... the facts.

    ... WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!


    by Obey on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 9:17am

    And, since you won't listen to anyone other than Dean Baker, for some reason...

    Here ya go:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/nyt-misreports-european-growth-2011-5

    You're welcome.


    by Obey on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 9:20am

    I listen to Brad Delong and Krugman. Pretty much nobody in the Sunday Times Business Section.

    In foreign policy I feel I ought to get alternative view which is why I follow bitterlemons. In economics that's sort of like  believing 2+2=s 4 but then there's another way to look at it.

    A belated thanks


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 10:54am

    I like Krugman well enough, but was never much of a fan of DeLong.


    by Dan Kervick on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 12:57pm

    You raise an interesting point, Flav. We could possibly pull in feeds from expert bloggers. We might not be able to quote the whole article though.

    It's also occurred to me to incorporate the news link section more fully into the blog, since it's been so popular. That could serve the same purpose.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 9:26am

    I have been surprised by your IN THE NEWS section.

    Sometimes I catch something in latest comments and wonder whose blog it is.

    I like it and check it out all the time.

    Besides, you find a neat little piece that there is no reason to write an entire essay about.

    It is quick and easy.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 10:17am

    Personally I think the In The News section is great, and pretty much suffices for these needs to highlight interesting expert opinions. I think most of us are capable of surfing away from Dag ... at least once in a while ... to read the economics bloggers.

    ;0)

    Imho, it would clutter up Dag's already pretty busy front page to add an 'experts' feed - Baker, Delong, Thoma, Krugman, Cowen, for instance, all put up three or four posts a day,


    by Obey on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 10:27am

    You could omit Cowen.

    Actually someone could scan  them and select the greatest and latest for the dagblogers.


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 10:58am

    At the "In The News" section I can scroll across a topic with Firefox and get the pop-up window as well as a link  to/for comments. With Internet Explorer I get no pop-up and can only go to the original article and can only access comments at Dagblog by clicking on someone else's comment, if there is one in the comment section. Maybe there is a simple solution at Dagblog's end or at mine, Firefox solves the problem for me and I haven't persued it, but if others only use IE they may get less from ITN and therefore use it less.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 11:29am

    Maybe there is a simple solution

    Click on "more" to get and use the full "In the News" page, rather than trying to access "In the News" from the little box on the front page, which is basically just a teaser menu.

    (There's only so much any website can fit on a single page, sometimes you have to go to another section. A good example would be Reader Blogs at TPMCafe. It did not feed on any main page, you had to go there. Here at least, Genghis has a global feed of all comments on the site which you can use to bounce around to dfifferent sections, all comments on the site being posted everywhere. At TPM, they got rid of that in like 2006, it was a bummer, mho.)


    by artappraiser on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 1:21pm

    I appreciate your point.

    But what does the relative performance of different countries in overall fall of output have to do, specifically, with what lies ahead in re to the housing markets and the financial sector? Are you suggesting that, since the US output performance as a whole has not been as poor as that of other countries, therefore we are out of the woods?  

    I think a lot of the folks at dag who you may disagree with--in thinking they are far too hard on this Administration particularly--are huge fans of Dean Baker.  And Stiglitz and Simon Johnson, and maybe Rajan and Roubini and Yves Smith, among others who were well ahead of the curve in warning of serious trouble down the road in these sectors. This White House?  Not so much, it would appear.  Not because folks just *want* to be ornery and obstreperous, etc.  But based on choice of senior economic policy advisors and actual policy decisions so far.

    I don't have the sense folks around here are just making up the stuff they are expressing deep concerns about.  Typically they appear to be getting that from reading Baker or others among the above-named folks, as well as some of the numerous books that have been written on these topics for lay audiences that want to be educated.  I know that's the case in my situation--I readily acknowledge not knowing enough myself to be able to spot the kinds of problems and issues Baker and other leading experts with good track records write about.  

    They--we--are worried because people who have been right on some really important things continue to be deeply worried worried and believe what has been done so far--not nothing--is nonetheless not nearly adequate.  


    by AmericanDreamer on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 9:26am

    I agree completely with the last paragraph and appreciate the two above that.

    As to the first paragraph I clearly caused confusion by joining an old  opinion of Baker's with a current one of Brittan's. .  It was my shorthand for saying  we  benefit of being exposed to people who know what they're talking about whether it's  a leftish Baker wisely  warning about an impending disaster or a conservative Brittan looking backwards.

    We don't benefit from econowhores  being paid to say that the Administration is doing well or poorly.. 

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 4:22pm

    Er...I'm having trouble with your implication that dagblog doesn't provide enough expert's blogs.  You can access Baker daily (still The Prospect?) or Newdeal 2.0, with an array of liberal/progressive experts, or any number of sites you like.

    My biggest chich with FDL's front page is that it alnost seems like a majority of the commenters rarely go to other sites, and depend on Dayen, et.al. to do the searching for them. I do think that DD and Marcy are good at analysis, but the reader diaries folks seem to read more widely, and dig up gems to post about.

    As far as TPM, they also had some Crap expert bloggers, IMO.  It'd be hard for Genghis to do much more than extend the blogroll, IMO; make it easier for you than hitting your browser's drop-down menus.  (I use two different ones so most of the stuff I read is covered in the 30 or so on each one.)


    by we are stardust on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 9:58am

    Oops; sorry; looks like the blogroll might have been Xed for the In the News section.


    by we are stardust on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 9:59am

    The blogroll only shows on the home page.


    by Michael Wolraich on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 11:20am

    I seem to love looking like an idiot, don't I?   ;o)


    by we are stardust on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 12:00pm

    I like dagblog because it allows regular folks to write about topics and to draw on sources, some expert and some not, and to throw it into the mix.  I also like the way the creative stuff and the news are in separate sections.  I'm not sure how well it would work if experts were featured, because I think that draws in more folks and it becomes harder to do the fairly effective unregulated regulation that goes on here.  Of course, I wouldn't blame the powers that be if at some point they decided that maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to receive some compensation for the time they spend on this thing, and then of course that might cause things to change.  In the meantime, take your shoes off, post, schmooze, discuss, quibble, shout, and enjoy.  


    by Bruce Levine on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 11:34am

    Baker's pieces are all easily accessed at either the CEPR site, http://www.cepr.net/, or at TPM Cafe.  Anyone can read one and then blog about it here.  So I see no need for nostalgia about anything.


    by Dan Kervick on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 12:56pm

    Yeah, nostalgia's overstating it.Idly speculating about  would be closer. As I idly speculate about your reaction occasionally to stuff I read in the Guardian or the FT

    To be even more unrealistic I speculate about  how some of the dagbloggers would   respond to comments  appearing  on  the right wing blogs. For the first time in  5 years I checked out Just One Minute last week to see how it was  covering  the  Bin Laden affair. Answer: by essentially ignoring it.  But what particularly  struck me about JOM's one post on that affair were the  comments in response.Pretty similar to the ones here..

     


    by Flavius on Sat, 05/14/2011 - 5:05pm