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Settling Up - Economic Principals
This is the final weekly edition of Economic Principals. A new monthly version will commence Sunday June 2, and thereafter arrive on the first Sunday of each month. The new letter will feel its way to a different form, longer and more expansive. Content? More of the same. This change creates a quandary for paid […]
Phase Change - Economic Principals
I have been writing once a week for forty years, and if I weren’t writing a book about some of the changes in economics that have occurred over that time, I’d keep writing it. Instead, I’ll wrap up the weekly in order to finish the book. The first twenty years were easy. With a thoroughly […]
It Is What It Is: The war in Ukraine did not have to happen. - Economic Principals
Economic Principals has followed developments in Russia at a distance since 1989; more closely since 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved; with active interest since 1996, when Boris Yeltsin was re-elected; with hopes since 1999, when Vladimir Putin was appointed; with curiosity since 2007, when Putin condemned America’s invasion of Iraq; with shock since 2008, […]
What Comes Next? Longevity leads to inattention. - Economic Principals
Last week Economic Principals emailed and posted an unedited version of A Doppelgänger for Keynes? The page was full of typos (since replaced on the Web by the edited version). EP had been distracted earlier in the day and wasn’t paying attention. Two good things emerged from the mix-up. The week before, I had compared […]
A Dopplegänger for Keynes? A scientist and culture entrepreneur in another field whose body of work resembles his. - Economic Principals
Economic Principals has become interested in the difference of opinion between Joh Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman with respect to their explanations for the causes of the Great Depression, Keynes blamed social aggregates within the economy itself for a sudden fall, Friedman blamed an inept Federal Reserve. History has shown that Friedman was right and […]
The Tenth Good Book - Economic Principals
From the beginning I have been convinced that Milton Friedman possessed a dual personality, somewhat like Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde: a strong economist by day, a weak citizen by night. Nothing I’ve read and written about in the last nine weeks has convinced me otherwise, not even Edward Nelson’s meticulous explication Friedmans’ professional life […]
Thanks to Them: We avoided a second great depression - Economic Principals
A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960 (National Bureau of Economic Research,1962) by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, is a most intimidating book. A heavy-lifting 860 pages, packed full of tables and charts, some of them old-fashioned fold-outs, as long as three pages off the book itself. It introduces itself as an “analytical narrative” […]
When Paul Samuelson Dropped Out: How did those famous Newsweek columns end? - Economic Principals
It was a transformative national debate, on the level of Hamilton and Jefferson, or Lincoln and Douglas: Paul Samuelson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, wrote dueling columns for Newsweek magazine from 1965 until May 1984. Then their arrangement ended abruptly, With no public explanation, Samuelson quit. […]
And Who, You May Wonder, Was Alec Cairncross? The exemplary applied economist was also a student of the beginning of things. - Economic Principals
Milton Friedman was recognized with a Nobel Memorial Prize in 1976, but something more important to economics happened that year, and I don’t mean the bicentennial of the American Revolution. The Glasgow Edition of the Works of Adam Smith appeared that year as well, timed to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of […]
The Influencers: To become iconic, Keynes and Friedman needed all the help they could get. It was of different sorts. - Economic Principals
John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman traveled different paths to become the dominant policy economists of their respective ages. In The Academic Scribblers, in 1971, William Breit and Roger Ransom invoked the motto of the Texas Rangers to explain Friedman’s success: “Little man whip a big man every time if the little man is right […]
Capitalism, Meet Cameralism: Economic ideas that developed very differently in Europe over two centuries have become an important part of American practice - Economic Principals
From its beginnings, in 1947, the Mont Pelerin Society sensed a problem, which its members understood better than most. In the aftermath of World War II, amid the smoldering ruins of Europe, it was impossible not to be repelled by the two familiar examples of government planning, Hitler’s National Socialism and Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution. But […]
The Floor Above: Before Friedman (and after), there was F.A. Hayek - Economic Principals
Milton Friedman may have been the face of neoliberalism familiar to most Americans. But the man who, in the 1940s and ‘50s, pioneered the dual role economist and cultural entrepreneur had an office on the floor above the economics department in the Social Science building at the University of Chicago. Friedrich Hayek may have had […]
Milton Friedman, Cultural Entrepreneur: to better understand his impact, compare him to the familiar figure he supplanted. - Economic Principals
It has been obvious for decades that there were two sides to Milton Friedman. Unlike Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, whose separate lives depended on secrecy, Friedman’s personality was not dual but fused, and this somehow reinforced his influence. How to characterize his twin aspects? In A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern […]
Milton Friedman, Monetarist: the jury is still out on his reputation as scientist - Economic Principals
John Maynard Keynes died in 1946, still in the boost phase of a career as a cultural entrepreneur that began, in 1919, with The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The work of articulating what came to be known as the “Keynesian revolution” was taken over by others. They included theorists on both sides of the […]
Who Was Milton Friedman? From Keynes to Friedman in ten good books - Economic Principals
The appearance of a long-awaited biography of Milton Friedman has afforded just the opportunity for which Economic Principals has been looking. Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (Farrar, Straus, 2023), by historian Jennifer Burns, of Stanford University, offers a chance to turn away from the disagreeable stream of daily news, in order to think a little […]
Home Cooking: the economists' meetings on Zoom - Economic Principals
Economic Principals stayed home from the Allied Social Science Association meetings in San Antonio, Texas, because he had other things to do. Then the other things multiplied – it is that time of year – so he decided to wait until next week to begin a project he planned. So, what are we missing in […]
Towards a national referendum: Next year’s loser is hidden in plain sight. - Economic Principals
Economic Principals began forty years ago in The Boston Globe with a commission to write about goings-on within and around the economics profession. It didn’t take long to discover that few readers were sufficiently curious to warrant a sustained diet of economics with a capital E, and so a second column was added, this one […]
Leave the Opinion Pages Behind: at least one matter, perhaps two, on which the Supremes may all agree. - Economic Principals
As is well known, Colorado’s highest court last week decided 4-3 that former President Donald Trump was disqualified from holding office again, under terms of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. By encouraging his supporters to storm the capitol in an attempt to prevent certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory, the court ruled that Trump […]
Seduced and Abandoned: Russia, Ukraine, and the Monroe Doctrine. - Economic Principals
Two hundred years ago this month, the fifth president of the United States delivered his next-to-last State of the Union Address – long enough ago that the circumstances have been forgotten by nearly everyone but high school students preparing for advanced placement exams. Even the Cuban missile crisis unfolded sixty years ago. That means you […]
Strictly Personal: farewell to the “Judaic-Christian ethic” - Economic Principals
Is it possible to criticize Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank without being anti-Semitic? The question seems worth asking, even if it almost certainly means being called anti-Semitic by some. Surely it is possible to deplore Hamas without being called anti-Palestinian. I don’t know what to do with this except to be personal […]
Polycrisis Man: a superb historian tackles the Middle East War. - Economic Principals
Adam Tooze, an economic historian, is less well known today than he will be in the future. Never mind this first-rate cover story by Molly Fischer in New York magazine from last year, which explains all the background in detail. Now, Tooze has tackled the Israeli-Palestinian war. Born in 1967, into a family whose background […]
Deliverance? Joe Manchin offers President Biden an off ramp - Economic Principals
No more pressing question faces America than next year’s presidential election. Given Joe Biden’s low approval ratings in the polls, and the growing list of splinter candidates, Donald Trump looks surprisingly electable. Last week Sen. Joe Manchin announced he would not seek re-election next year as West Virginia’s only state-wide Democratic Party officeholder. Instead, he […]
Fifteen Weeks? A bold gamble on “common sense” on abortion in Virginia. - Economic Principals
A parlay, says Wikipedia, is a single bet that links together two or more individual wagers. The practice is familiar enough in horse racing and sports betting, but the life of politics is riddled with multi-stage bets as well. Winning the parlay depends on winning all the wagers involved. If any of the bets in […]
Enough Said - Economic Principals
At 46, he is the youngest National Security Adviser to serve since McGeorge Bundy held the position from 1961 through 1966. Jake Sullivan told The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser in a recent interview: As a child of the Eighties and “Rocky” and “Red Dawn,” I believe in freedom fighters and I believe in righteous […]
In Time of War, Prepare for Peace: A wise assessment by a veteran Mideast correspondent. - Economic Principals
The public message that Biden delivered to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the part the world heard, was crystal clear. Don’t act in haste. Remember the mistakes America made by reacting in rage after 9/11, specifically the occupation of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Equally powerful was the message that wasn’t briefed to the […]
A Life for Our Times: Claudia Goldin’s Nobel Prize was overdetermined. - Economic Principals
The award of any Nobel Prize is an invitation to go prowling through the past. In the case of Claudia Goldin, of Harvard University, born in 1946, the history on offer is that of an entire generation – not just one crucial generation, in fact, but three. Hers is the first fifty-year career by a […]
What Americans Don’t Get about Putin: Continuity in Russia is obvious, but there have been important changes there as well. - Economic Principals
To remind myself of the hatred I felt for the Soviet Union while it existed, I re-read last month Smiley’s People, the third and final novel of “Karla Trilogy,” John le Carré’s saga of the monumental struggle of British spy chief George Smiley with his KGB counterpart Karla, director of Moscow Centre’s Ninth Directorate. The […]
“It’s Worth What You Pay for It:” The secret of for-profit news resides in its dynasties. - Economic Principals
Rupert Murdoch is stepping down as chair of Fox and News Corp, having built the little Australian newspaper he inherited at the age of 21 (The News of Adelaide, circulation 75,000) into a global multi-media complex of enormous political influence. He is to be succeeded by his elder son. Myself, I have been preoccupied recently […]
Who’s Next? In economics, too, the Swedes stick to their knitting. - Economic Principals
The Nobel Prizes in science always produce interesting stories. Take the medicine/physiology award announced last week, which recognized the science that led to the Covid-19 vaccine. Vaccines are nothing new, but they used to take years to develop, always from killed or weakened viruses: smallpox, measles, yellow fever, polio. In the early Nineties, molecular biologist […]
One Step at a Time: Things aren’t necessarily as bad as they seem. - Economic Principals
Thundery times! Government shutdown, House Speaker revolt, freak storm floods, automotive strike, antitrust ventures, immigration turmoil, Xi Jinping bullying, war in Ukraine. Senior statesman Robert Gates wrote last week in Foreign Affairs, “The United States finds itself in a uniquely treacherous position: facing aggressive adversaries with a propensity to miscalculate yet incapable of mustering the […]
On Turning around American Opinion: What if we’re wrong in Ukraine? - Economic Principals
By far the fairest of the material EP reads on the war in Ukraine is Johnson’s Russia List (JRL). Three or four times a week, David Johnson assembles and links material from all sides of the war, twenty or thirty items a day. These are raw files, blog entries and Russian and Ukrainian news reports […]
Looking ahead: Get ready for a long five years. - Economic Principals
So Joe Biden is sticking with his bid for a second term. Labor Day was the president’s last chance to bow out. Economic Principals expects Biden to win. Get ready for the hardest four years in the White House since Lyndon Johnson lived there, 1965-1969. That is the implication of a view of American history […]
Suzerains and Sovereigns: As Robert Solow turns 99, long live Angus Deaton! - Economic Principals
When I was a young journalist, just starting out, the economist whose writings introduced me to the field was Gunnar Myrdal. He hadn’t yet been recognized with a Nobel Prize, as a socialist harnessed to an individualist, Friedrich Hayek. That happened in in 1974. But he had written An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944) , about […]
Big Myth Stories: and narrower forms of argument. - Economic Principals
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Nami Oreskes and Erik Conway, was a hard-hitting history in 2010 that catapulted its authors to fame – Oreskes all the way to Harvard University; Conway remained at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. Their […]
Ned le Flâneur: What do we learn from autobiography? Plenty! - Economic Principals
It is not easy to convey what is so interesting about Edmund (Ned) Phelps to the kind of readers for whom Economic Principals is intended. I have tried several times, and never came close. There was, for instance, “the Phelps volume,” Inflation Policy and Unemployment Theory (1970), a collection of essays which organized the still […]
A Chance Not Worth Taking: The collapse of his son’s plea-bargains agreement underscores Joe Biden’s vulnerability to unwelcome surprises. - Economic Principals
Last-minute news can determine the result of a close-run election campaign, especially when an Establishment candidate runs against a populist outsider with an enthusiastic base. The experience of 2016 made that abundantly clear. FBI director James Comey’s impulsive announcement that a small trove of unexamined emails had been discovered on a laptop computer probably cost […]
Wishing Won't Make It So: But thinking out loud might make a difference. - Economic Principals
What are the chances that Joe Biden will take himself out of the 2024 presidential campaign, perhaps with a Labor Day speech? Not good, based on what EP reads in the newspapers. Yet I have begun hoping that Biden just might. Here’s why. It is not because Biden would fail to win re-election if he […]
Mentioned in Dispatches, and Photographed Too: A wide-ranging photo essay by Mariana Cook and Robert Solow about what economists study. - Economic Principals
It defies credulity to say that Robert M. Solow most recent book is his best book to date, but, at least for certain practical purposes, this is the case. He will turn ninety-nine next month. His four earlier books were written for other economists, beginning with Linear Programming and Economic Analysis, with Paul Samuelson and […]
The Making of a Quagmire: Little remembered and still less understood is the role that George W. Bush played in setting the stage for the war in Ukraine. - Economic Principals
A week after putting down Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion, Vladimir Putin seems more in control of Russia, not less. EP arrived at that judgment after a week of daily reading Johnson’s Russia List e-mail newsletter, which offers a more comprehensive and therefore better balanced account of events surrounding the war in Ukraine than any single newspaper […]