Please-let-this-be-an-April-Fools-joke-so-I-don't-have-to-lose-some-respect-for-Bob.
Please-let-this-be-an-April-Fools-joke-so-I-don't-have-to-lose-some-respect-for-Bob.
Please-let-this-be-an-April-Fools-joke-so-I-don't-have-to-lose-some-respect-for-Bob.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
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I probably should not be blogging at 2 in the morning when my stupid cat wakes me up... I'm not even sure now if that's the one he asserts he got wrong. It turns on what exactly "higher inflation" means.
ReplyDeleteI am awaiting further confirmation/elaboration. I'm not quite clear on what's being said.
One thing that remains ridiculous is to act like Brad DeLong doesn't change the way he thinks about things when events prove him wrong.
He is one of the only bloggers that admits on a regular basis that he's wrong.
He is one of the only bloggers that elaborates in great detail what he thought before, how he changed what he thought, and what he thinks now.
No one else comes to mind that does that regularly. No one.
DeLong is a prince. :)
DeleteThe "I thought higher inflation would follow rather than precede recovery" is one of the 2 of 8 that I think I got right...
ReplyDeleteYours,
Brad DeLong
That doesn't make any sense, the way you presented the 8 predictions, and the way you formatted the 8 predictions.
DeleteYou said you batted 2 for 8, meaning you got 2 out of 8 right. I see two indented bullets, which of course suggests those two are the right predictions:
1. TBTFs knowing they had a backstop and would use it aggressively (which turned out true), and
2. No run on Treasuries until higher inflation appeared (which also turned out true).
That means that the other 6 predictions turned out wrong, and those 6 include "I thought higher inflation would follow rather than precede recovery"
But if you're now saying that "I thought higher inflation would follow rather than precede recovery" is one of the two predictions you claim to have gotten right, then that means you have to exclude one of the two predictions above, which means one of them is regarded by you as being wrong.
So that means either you believe that the TBTFs did not know they had a backstop and did not use it aggressively, or you believe that there was a run on Treasuries. But both of those are incorrect beliefs! The TBTFs did know they had a backstop and they did aggressively use it ($9 trillion cumulative total in loans from the Fed), and there was no run on Treasuries.
Something is amiss here...
"aggressively" and "higher" aren't particularly clear words.
DeleteI was going off of Bob's post (again, I should not be posting at 2 in the morning when I'm not investigating in detail...). When I read the list this morning I realized that those indented bullets looked an awful lot like sub-thoughts to the prior bullet.
And I thought - have we really had higher inflation? - kinda depends on what you call "higher inflation".
Yep. The indentations indicate that these two out of the eight points are dependent on the ones above them.
ReplyDeleteThe two I think I got right are: "I thought higher inflation would follow rather than precede strong recovery" and "I thought no run on Treasuries possible until higher inflation appeared".
The six I think I got wrong are: "I thought subprime was too small to take down the U.S. economy, even if the housing bubble did crash hard'; 'I thought, after Bear-Stearns, that we were in liquidation-quasinationalization mode rather than uncontrolled bankruptcy"; "I thought the TBTF institutions knew they had a government backstop, and would use it aggressively"; "I thought that the Federal Reserve would make stabilizing nominal GDP growth in order to avoid prolonged high unemployment its principal priority"; "I thought the Obama administration would apply the lessons of the RTC and the S&L crisis"; and "I thought the Obama administration would husband its resources to act--via Reconciliation, FHFA, TARP, infrastructure banks--if needed, even if Congress proved dysfunctional".
Brad DeLong