Brad DeLong's Morning Coffee Podcast

Jefferson spent 7% of his income as Secretary of State to purchase as much illumination as is provided by a 60 W incandescent bulbs burning for a week.

Should the U.S. fall Into recession soon, the Federal Reserve will have very little room to loosen policy to cushion the downturn. This is a large asymmetric risk. The right way to manage an asymmetric risk is to buy insurance: the Federal Reserve should be buying recession insurance. It is not. This is a substantial problem.

Economic History is definitely, IMHO, the queen if not of all the social sciences at least of all of the subdisciplines of economics. This is why.

Those of us who do digital economics owe Suzanne Scotchman a lot as we stand on her gigantic shoulders. Those of us who seek a free and equal society are deeply indebted to Suzanne along other dimensions as well.

By judiciously muting and blocking people you can create a truly useful individual Internet feed. The problem is that that does nothing to produce a truly useful functioning intellectual community. And that is what we really need.

No, the Roman Republic did not fall because its leaders like wild parties. Any further questions?

20th century British Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan is most known not for anything he did but for a witty letter that he wrote to Dick Cressman, Director of Psychological Warfare at Allied Forces Headquarters in the Mediterranean…

In Keynes’s General Theory the question of why “it seems unlikely that the influence of banking policy on the rate of interest will be sufficient by itself…” is left hanging. The question of how a “somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment“ is to be implemented is left hanging as well. There are remarkably a few references to “fiscal policy” in any form. So will somebody please explain to me why “fiscal policy” plays such a small part in the General Theory, while playing such a large part in mindshare perceptions of “Keynesianism”?

Professional Republicans are doing my discipline a world of hurt. Any more questions?

Do your arithmetic, Sheeple! 1500 generations since radiation from the horn of Africa is really very little indeed.