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. 

Brad DeLong's Morning Coffee Podcast

The Lighting Budget of Thomas Jefferson

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. 

The Fed Needs to Be Buying Recession Insurance—But Is Not

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. 

Why Economic History?

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. 

Remembering Suzanne Scotchmer

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. 

Your Own Private Intellectual Elysium

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

Misapplied History: Aye Yie Yie!

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… 

"Greeks to their Romans...”: The 20th Century Superpower Succession

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”? 

Keynes’s General Theory Contains Oddly Few Mentions of Fiscal Policy

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

A Longer Version of a Question I Asked About Berkeley About the Dark Age of Economics We Are in: DeLong Morning Coffee

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

The “Let’s Be Agnostic About Race Science” Clowns Are In My Twitter Timeline Again: Delong Morning Coffee

Whether American growth was much faster because of slavery is a third order issue in the history of slavery. Nevertheless, it is one I talk about because I know something about it. I think that the overwhelming beneficiaries from slavery were slaveowners and the consumers of slave-produced goods, not those of us further down the timeline who would have benefited from faster economic growth. 

Do We Really Care Whether Profits from American Slavery Were Reinvested to Spur Faster Economic Growth?: DeLong Morning Coffee

Why don’t Republican plutocrats, and the senators and representatives they have bought, recognize that plutocrats are not the allies of kleptocrats but rather the prey of kleptocracts? 

Trump’s Tariffs: DeLong Morning Coffee

Joseph Schumpeter was wrong in his claim the depressions were things to be suffered rather than cured. But how much smarter Schumpeter was than our modern day austerians!! 

Joseph Schumpeter’s Liquidationist Errors: DeLong Morning Coffee Podcast

Paul Krugman has a very nice short “framework for thinking about globalization and the world” piece derived from a talk he gave at the IMF last fall. But… 

Globalization: What Did Krugman Miss?: DeLong Morning Coffee Podcast

Test of Podcast

Macroeconomics, Economic History, Political Economy, and MOAR!