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Arnold Kling: April 2010
An Author Archive by Month (68 entries)
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April 30, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Tim Carney likes my financial reform ideas, but Ken Rogoff does not. Rogoff writes, A surprising number of pundits seem to think that if one could only break up the big banks, governments would be far more resilient to bailouts,... MORE
International Macroeconomics: Exchange Rates, International Debt, etc.
Arnold Kling
Sebastian Mallaby and Paul Krugman explain that the PIIGS have monetary as well as fiscal problems. That is, their wages are too high, and there is not enough labor mobility to produce the needed adjustment (hence, as many economists argued,... MORE
April 29, 2010
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Megan McArdle is rationally pessimistic (apologies to Matt Ridley). But get this: Jürgen Stark, executive board member of the European Central Bank, said on Wednesday that restoring sustainability to the public finances was "even harder for the UK, the US... MORE
Martin Feldstein writes, In the end, Greece, the eurozone's other members, and Greece's creditors will have to accept that the country is insolvent and cannot service its existing debt. At that point, Greece will default. Feldstein points out that there... MORE
April 28, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Russ Roberts has a long narrative of the financial crisis. One excerpt: An unpleasant but unavoidable conclusion of this paper is that Wall Street was (and remains) a giant government-sanctioned Ponzi scheme. Homebuyers borrowed money from lenders who got their... MORE
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
Denationalize Housing Finance is a slogan I could get behind. The essay, by David Oedel and Ed Pinto, is timely and important. An update on the sovereign debt crisis in Europe. I know that the Senate and the mainstream media... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Charlie Rose interviews Michael Lewis, and the interview just gets better and better as it goes along. Here are some of the phrases that are used to describe the Outsiders, the money managers who were right about the subprime bubble:... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
The New York Times hosts me and two other participants discussing the social value, or lack thereof, of financial innovation. I like what I wrote, although it was hard to fit what I wanted to say within the suggested length.... MORE
April 27, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
I don't do well in back-and-forth blog spats, but I want to reply to the anonymous blogger at The Economist, who is jumping to the conclusion that I am ignorant, when I believe I know what I am talking about.... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Republicans are filibustering for this? Anyone who underwrites a mortgage which doesn't meet minimum underwriting rules would have to retain at least 5% economic interest in the trust. All of their proposals are variations on the ideas in the Democratic... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
He writes, John Paulson expected housing prices to go down. The ABACUS vehicle at the heart of the transaction allowed him to profit when they did go down. Who was on the other side of the transaction? Who lost the... MORE
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Sean Rushton writes, Part Two of Mundell's analysis is the most intriguing and least understood aspect. He argues that, as the real-estate bubble burst, large quantities of fresh liquidity were demanded by the public and banks. In summer 2007, the... MORE
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
1. Richard Epstein on the SEC suit against Goldman. the SEC complaint makes no mention that Goldman actually took the same side of the deal as ACA, which puts it in the unique position of defrauding itself. Read the whole... MORE
April 26, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
A reader asked me for this. 1. Extricate the government from the mortgage market as soon as is practical. I foresee reducing the maximum mortgage amounts that of Freddie and Fannie to zero in stages over a period of three... MORE
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Excellent discussion between Romer and Russ Roberts. Romer is quite aware that informal norms matter. In terms of my earlier discussion of law and order, he understands that order and law are different things. The question I would like to... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Steven Randy Waldman explains the infamous Goldman transaction. the notional CDO forms the basis for a thought experiment: Given any performance scenario for debt in the reference portfolio, we can compute the loss that would have been experienced by holders... MORE
April 25, 2010
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Country XCountry YFederal Debt$50$100GDP$100$100Debt to GDP50 %100 %State and Local Debt$0$0State and Local Taxes$20$0Federal Taxes$20$40Federal Debt to taxes250 %250 % Think of Country X as a simplified version of the U.S. and Country Y as a simplified version of a... MORE
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
In the Washington Post, Joel Achenbach writes, When I spoke to Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, he expressed optimism that the administration can balance the primary budget -- not including interest payments -- by... MORE
International Macroeconomics: Exchange Rates, International Debt, etc.
Arnold Kling
In Rudi Dornbusch's international macro course, there was something called the world interest rate. If the interest rate in dollars is 5 percent, and the interest rate in yen is 2 percent, then to have a world interest rate the... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Kevin Drum writes, From a systemic point of view, the real issue is that predatory lending on a large scale helped to massively inflate the housing/credit bubble of the aughts. If the home loan market had been regulated stringently enough... MORE
April 24, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Paul Krugman writes, So I'd suggest that what we did between 1980 and 2008 was to replace a financial system in which profits were created by lack of competition with a system in which profits were created by misinformation and... MORE
April 23, 2010
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Pranab Bardhan writes, The Indian informal sector (including both farms and household enterprises outside agriculture), much larger than that in China, has been mostly privately owned; even now it employs nearly 94 percent of the labor force. But many of... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
But my lips don't move, in this interview. I don't have software on my computer to do web-cam-chat stuff. Anyway, it's five minutes of me talking about what breaking up banks would and would not accomplish.... MORE
Politics and Economics
Arnold Kling
David Brooks writes, In the first year of the Obama administration, the Democrats, either wittingly or unwittingly, decided to put the big government-versus-small government debate at the center of American life. I would put this somewhat differently. The left decided... MORE
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Bloomberg reports, "On any measure, Japan is the most indebted sovereign rated by Fitch," Colquhoun, Hong Kong-based director at the company's Asia-Pacific sovereign group, said in a conference call today. ...The yield on Japan's 10-year bond was unchanged at 1.315... MORE
April 22, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
My instinct is to call the proposed legislation a "blame deflection bill" rather than financial reform. But I admit that I have not read the whole bill. Has anyone? My impression is that the following things are not in it.... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, I'm too young to remember much about the politics and economics of the Seventies. From books, though, I get the impression that American political economy was in complete disarray The first thing that I would say is that... MORE
April 21, 2010
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
In my recent paper, I started with budget projections that had debt held by the public reaching 78.8 percent of GDP by 2020. In fact, the most recent CBO projection of the Administration's Budget offers a forecast of public debt... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Steven Randy Waldman writes, A CDO, synthetic or otherwise, is a newly formed investment company. Typically there is no identifiable "seller". The investment company takes positions with an intermediary, which then hedges its exposure in transactions with a variety of... MORE
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, It's clear that many existing laws have little or no effect on behavior. An even larger class of laws have little or no effect on most people's behavior. What are the main mechanisms of legal irrelevance? In this... MORE
April 20, 2010
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
In this paper, I describe an approach that relies on cuts to future entitlement spending. The most important idea is to transform Medicare into a combination of a voucher and extreme catastrophic insurance. Under the proposal here, as the U.S.... MORE
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
Arnold Kling
My talk, given at the U. of Tulsa. Perhaps a bit too wide-ranging, but you decide. The main theme is trial-and-error learning, as opposed to central planning. It was supposed to be a house concert, but the host was afraid... MORE
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, There's a different way to think about the bailouts, namely that the U.S. government stands at the center of a giant nexus of money raising, most of all to finance the U.S. government budget deficit and keep... MORE
April 19, 2010
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Steven Malanga writes, Consider the California Teachers Association...Soon after Proposition 13 became law, the union launched a coordinated statewide effort to support friendly candidates in school-board races, in which turnout is frequently low and special interests can have a disproportionate... MORE
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
The April 14 hearing on the HAMP program (modifying loans for troubled mortgage borrowers). I start some time after 1:31 (that is, one hour and 31 minutes into the hearing). I also got some questions at about 1:53. I actually... MORE
April 18, 2010
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, when I look around the globe for episodes of successful spending restraint I see Canada, Finland, Sweden, and now possibly (probably) Ireland, which is in the midst of fiscal restructuring. I see change coming from elites and... MORE
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
The CEA Chairwoman does not take on anyone by name, but She writes, in my view the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the current very high -- and very disturbing -- levels of overall and long-term unemployment are... MORE
April 16, 2010
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
Again, I am pressed for time, so not many comments. 1. Tyler Cowen points to a story about an LSU professor teaching a biology course for non-majors who gave bad grades and was removed from teaching the class. LSU cited... MORE
April 14, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
I would comment more on the following links: WSJ blog post about a warning that the average ratio of government debt to GDP could top 100 percent in Europe in the near future. That's ok. They can fix the problem... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Nick Timiraos writes, "If we modify loans and we have not yet reached a bottom, what we are doing is setting up borrowers and lenders to fail once again," said Arnold Kling It was late in the day when my... MORE
Some time around this is posted, I will be testifying at a Congressional hearing on mortgage modifications. You know how I feel about the subject. Of course, my testimony will have no effect on anyone in Congress, or anyone likely... MORE
April 13, 2010
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
David Henderson's synopsis of Tyler Cowen's speech brings up two key factors in the long-term outlook. I want to resurrect a table from one of my classic essays, called The Great Race. Four ScenariosMoore's Law FailsMoore's Law SucceedsMedicare is ReformedLow... MORE
April 12, 2010
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
A friend writes to say that Recalculation sounds like an interesting theory, but he finds it hard to explain to others. Below are some thoughts.... MORE
Economic History
Arnold Kling
Burt Folsom, Jr. and Anita Folsom write, [President Roosevelt's] key advisers were frantic at the possibility of the Great Depression's return when the war ended and the soldiers came home. I mentioned this in my post on Roger Farmer's book.... MORE
April 11, 2010
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Andrew Haldane writes, Complex control of a complex system is a recipe for confusion at best, catastrophe at worst. Complex control adds, not subtracts, from the Knightian uncertainty problem. The US constitution is four pages long. The recently-tabled Dodd Bill... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
How the Economy Works, by Roger Farmer. The publisher sent me a review copy. Farmer seems to be trying to accomplish what I have tried to do with a series of blog posts on macroeconomics. That is, he wants to... MORE
April 9, 2010
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
David Boaz wrote, we'd better stop talking as if we think the straight white male perspective is the only one that matters. For the past 70 years or so conservatives have opposed the demands for equal respect and equal rights... MORE
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Paul Krugman writes, Greece's public debt, at 113 percent of G.D.P., is indeed high, but other countries have dealt with similar levels of debt without crisis. For example, in 1946, the United States, having just emerged from World War II,... MORE
April 8, 2010
Institutional Economics
Arnold Kling
Clay Shirky writes, Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn't these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is... MORE
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
Paul Krugman writes, why isn't there similar unemployment during the boom, as workers are transferred into investment goods production? He says he has asked this before, and he has. I have answered it before, and he has never responded. The... MORE
April 7, 2010
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Richard Thaler writes, we advocate policies that maintain people's freedom to choose at as low a cost as possible. My question is this: why is it that soft paternalism is always applied to areas where the nudgers want more government... MORE
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
Another survey available here allows us to look at income from work in 2002 by undergraduate major for graduates in 1993. Here are the 25th and 50th percentiles, respectively: Major50th percentile25th percentileHumanities3800024500Social Science4500029764History3960025000Biological Sciences4300030000Math5000035400Public Affairs3900029500Engineering6900053000Education 3400022500Business5100034100Health4700031000Psychology3800024000other4250027700overall4499829764 Note that income from... MORE
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
Following up on a suggestion by Fabio Rojas, I went to this page and selected the study that looked at college graduates from 1999-2000 and interviewed them in 2001. I just did a simple table of annual job income by... MORE
April 6, 2010
Upcoming Events
Arnold Kling
I will be speaking on April 15th at the University of Tulsa, in Lorton Hall 207 at 7 PM. The address is 2820 E 5th Place. I don't have a clever title for the talk, but I plan to bring... MORE
April 5, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Responding to my break up the banks piece, Andrew Redleaf and Richard Vigilante write, The credit system -- not surprisingly, given its name -- operates on trust. The government's bizarre position has been that this trust rests more securely on... MORE
Central Planning vs. Local Knowledge
Arnold Kling
My first thoughts were here. Below are some further thoughts.... MORE
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
Recently, I wrote about market socialism. Why don't individual firms use market socialism? That is, instead of managing through command and control, senior management could set shadow prices for various inputs and outputs, and then allow the managers of individual... MORE
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Peter Berkowitz writes, Given the importance that the French Constitution attaches to liberty and the seriousness of the threat to peace and public order posed by the large, restive and nonassimilating portion of its Muslim population, the veil represents a... MORE
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
I am reading a draft of The Clash of Economic Ideas, by Lawrence H. White. (Googling for it landed me here). One of its topics is the socialist calculation debate, which revolved around the idea of "market socialism," an idea... MORE
April 4, 2010
Austrian Economics
Arnold Kling
1. A New Web Site, launched by Jeffrey Friedman. 2. Glenn Harlan Reynolds writes, The United States Code -- containing federal statutory law -- is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Austin Bramwell writes, Cowen's Influential Books Game gave bloggers an excuse to promote themselves by composing lists designed to excite the maximum of reader admiration. Which is not to say that any lists were insincere: on the contrary, the top... MORE
Politics and Economics
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson analyzes the generation gap. I suspect that the more strongly certain libertarian ideas and tendencies are associated with the cultural politics of Baby Boomer conservative Republicans, the more strongly young people with libertarian inclinations will tend to identify... MORE
April 3, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Steven Randy Waldman writes, he capital positions reported by "large complex financial institutions" are so difficult to compute that the confidence interval surrounding those estimates is greater than 100% even for a bank "conservatively" levered at 11× tier one capital.... MORE
April 2, 2010
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
My National Review article is now online. I've been getting some love from leftwing blogs and some pushback from right-wing blogs. A few points 1. I don't want to bring back the 1920's, or even the 1950's, with all of... MORE
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
Mark Thoma piqued my interest in a new paper by Jenny E. Brand and Yu Xie. For some individuals from socially advantaged backgrounds, college is a culturally expected outcome. For this group, college is less exclusively and intentionally linked to... MORE
April 1, 2010
Social Security
Arnold Kling
As I mentioned, I have been reading Social Security, by Jagadeesh Gokhale. He has developed a forecasting model for Social Security that is more fine-grained than the one used by the system's own actuaries. Some excerpts below.... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Venture Beat reports, Dodd's bill would require startups raising funding to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and then wait 120 days for the SEC to review their filing. A second provision raises the wealth requirements for an "accredited... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Phil Izzo of the Wall Street Journal's blog mentions a study showing that much of the country was insulated from the housing boom and bust. We like to mock the finance industry folks who said that a nationwide housing bust... MORE
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