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Link 7/26/09

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Signs of life: Mammal tracks from 190 million years ago found at Dinosaur National Monument Associated Press (hat tip reader John D)

New Zealand Tree Stuck in a Time Warp ScienceNow

Alan Blinder Was Out of the Country During the Housing Bubble Dean Baker

June Exports Sustain Upward Momentum But Surplus Employment Rockets Japan Economy Watch

More Climatic Hockey Sticks… Brad DeLong

Antitrust Chief Hits Resistance in Crackdown New York Times

Why markets can’t cure healthcare Paul Krugman

FDIC Learns from Competitive Eaters FireDogLake (hat tip reader John D)

Animal Farm – 2009 Jim Quinn. I’m not in agreement with all the particulars, but this is still an interesting take.

The rich have never had it so good David Sirota, Salon (hat tip reader John D)

And That’s Not the Way It Is Frank Rich, New York Times

Antidote du jour (hat tip reader Barbara).

A young elk rescued from a flooding river by a farmer in Inje, Gangwon Province, South Korea. It was adopted by a female dog that breastfeeds and guards him:

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4 comments

  1. albie

    OT:

    I know that this is off topic, however, I thought that Geithner fans might find this interesting…..

    http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

    SUNDAY JULY 26, 2009 08:27 EDT

    The war being waged on the TARP watchdog’s independence

    “…Barofksy’s clashes with administration officials have intensified of late. Last week, he issued a report documenting that the actual amount of taxpayer money theoretically put at risk in the bank bailout — once Federal Reserve, FDIC and other programs are counted — is $23.7 trillion, not the widely cited figure of $700 billion, a report that prompted attacks from the White House and Treasury on his credibility….”

    “…Jake Tapper conducted a 20-minute podcast interview with Barofsky, and I really recommend that everyone listen to it (it can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below or can be downloaded here)….”

    Best regards,

    Albie

  2. Dave Raithel

    Re Krugman re Kenneth Arrow: What's it mean that between the near contemporaries, Friedman and Arrow, the latter is so little known in the same circles that "huzzah huzzah" the former?

  3. Hugh

    Like Dean Baker, I caught the NYT piece by Alan Blinder in which Blinder amazingly argues that if the Fed had been the systemic risk regulator back in 2005, the housing bubble/financial crisis would never have happened.

    Now there are only a couple of small problems with this. First, the housing bubble really took off in 2004 and a systemic regulator should have headed things off in 2003. Second, whatever the year, the Fed was around then and didn't see any of this coming. Blinder is implying that if the Fed had simply carried the name of systemic risk regulator it would suddenly have had X-ray vision and seen what no one else saw, except, of course, for all of us who did see the housing bubble and a lot of the subsequent financial consequences as well.

    The Fed could have and should have seen all this and more. That it didn't should disqualify it from being the systemic risk regulator, but not for Blinder. I don't know what it is about heading the economics department at Princeton and being a dumbass (Bernanke too was the head there) or possibly it was Blinder's time at the Fed but Blinder could not be more wrong.

    And that's the point. We have talked about how economics is in crisis. Except for a few hardy souls at the margins, it completely missed the biggest economics event of our times. Not only did it not predict it current economic theory had a critical role in creating and precipitating it. Yet the discipline remains in denial about pretty much everything that has happened. Yet despite this, a complacent, co-opted media continues to lend a prominent venue to these modern day economics Flat-earthers.

    I also wanted to briefly mention the OPEC story from yesterday. Being a writer on energy markets has got to be the easiest job on the planet. I mean you don't have to know anything. The oil glut has been obvious for months and yet only now are the two authors Spencer Swartz and Ana Campoy talking about it. I know I am one of the ones who has been pointing this out. But what is irritating in their article besides its belatedness is that they still don't put together that: oil glut + reduced economic activity = higher prices makes no sense. We are talking about speculative manipulation but even now they don't see it. Maybe they're economists too.

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