1
Business Day
War on Leaks Is Pitting Journalist vs. Journalist
The recent security and military leaks have received predictable criticism from the government, but a number of journalists have also lashed out at those who are closest to the stories.
2
Business Day
Canadian Documents Suggest Shift on Pipeline
Papers released to an environmental group say Canada’s government once viewed Keystone XL as important to oil sands development, in contrast to a United States assessment.
3
World
Fighting Education Overhaul, Thousands of Teachers Disrupt Mexico City
A radical teachers’ group mobilized thousands of members in Mexico City last week, threatening to bring an already congested city to a halt in the coming days.
4
Business Day
Leslie Land, a Food Writer Who Liked What Grew Nearby, Dies at 66
Ms. Land, with the British horticulturist Roger Phillips, wrote “The 3,000 Mile Garden,” which became a PBS series.
5
Your Money
Taking an Invention From Idea to the Store Shelf
Building a better mousetrap may be the easy part. After that comes patent, production and marketing, and missteps along the way can be costly.
6
Health
Faster Assistance for Medicare Patients
More on what Medicare quality improvement organizations can do for older patients and their caregivers.
7
Opinion
We’re All Still Hostages to the Big Banks
Financial institutions must be forced to rely less on borrowing.
8
Health
In These Salads, Grains Sometimes Play a Supporting Role
Five vegetable and grain salads that make for perfect dishes on hot summer days.
9
U.S.
Court Is ‘One of Most Activist,’ Ginsburg Says, Vowing to Stay
Amid calls from some liberals that she step down in time for President Obama to name her successor, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she was fully engaged in work.
10
Technology
The Rise and Fall of Windows Mobile, Under Ballmer
Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system is hardly relevant compared with its desktop counterpart. And now that Steve Ballmer has announced plans to retire, it is easy to point fingers at the Microsoft chief for the lackluster success of the company’s foray in mobile.
11
Opinion
What Is Economics Good For?
A Fed leader has to know that economics is not yet a science, and may never be.
12
Opinion
What’s Ailing the Airlines, and Us
Readers discuss the Justice Department’s opposition to a proposed merger between American Airlines and USAirways.
13
U.S.
Under a New Law, the Police Can Act as Gun Dealers
A new Texas law will allow the state’s law enforcement agencies to bolster their budgets by selling confiscated guns to licensed weapons dealers.
14
Movies
What Happens When You’re Repeatedly Hit in the Head
The documentary “The United States of Football” follows retired players dealing with dementia and depression after a career of hard knocks.
15
Business Day
The Audacious Pragmatist
Ben Bernanke was a shy, methodical academic. But he turned out to be one of the most daring leaders in the Fed’s history — even if his goals have not been fully realized.
16
U.S.
Pennsylvania: Mistaken Identity at Funeral
A Philadelphia woman has turned up alive nearly two weeks after her family held a funeral and burial for her.
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18
Opinion
The Problem That Has Two Names
Like others wanting it both ways, I held on to my professional name while also taking on my husband’s.
19
Opinion
A Federal Prod to Lower College Costs
President Obama’s proposal for a rating system, if properly designed, could make the cost of college more affordable.
20
Opinion
Sacrificed on the Altar of Innocence
The murder of Paula Loyd by an Afghan man shows that taking along civilian academics while we engage in military action is simply wrong.
1
Opinion
Papers Find Mixed Impacts on Ocean Species from Rising CO2
A new collection of scientific papers provide fresh insights on how the ecology of the oceans is being affected by the global buildup of carbon dioxide released by human activities.
2
Crosswords/Games
Daniel Finkel's Pilgrim's Puzzle
Can you help a nun successfully complete her pilgrimage?
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4
Business Day
Justice Dept. Again Signals Interest to Pursue Financial Crisis Cases
The United States attorney general is likely to pursue charges under a civil statute that has become the Justice Department’s favorite tool of late. It remains to be seen whether the public will be satisfied with such action, the author writes.
5
Business Day
Canadian Documents Suggest Shift on Pipeline
Papers released to an environmental group say Canada’s government once viewed Keystone XL as important to oil sands development, in contrast to a United States assessment.
6
Business Day
Growth in Global Disputes Brings Big Paychecks for Law Firms
Some legal heavyweights in the United States are benefiting from a growing number of clashes over complex international deals.
7
Business Day
Leslie Land, a Food Writer Who Liked What Grew Nearby, Dies at 66
Ms. Land, with the British horticulturist Roger Phillips, wrote “The 3,000 Mile Garden,” which became a PBS series.
8
Opinion
Voting On Russia's Scorched Political Earth
The Moscow mayoral election isn’t really an election, but then what is it?
9
Technology
The Rise and Fall of Windows Mobile, Under Ballmer
Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system is hardly relevant compared with its desktop counterpart. And now that Steve Ballmer has announced plans to retire, it is easy to point fingers at the Microsoft chief for the lackluster success of the company’s foray in mobile.
10
Opinion
We’re All Still Hostages to the Big Banks
Financial institutions must be forced to rely less on borrowing.
11
Opinion
What Is Economics Good For?
A Fed leader has to know that economics is not yet a science, and may never be.The Real Trouble With Economics
I’m a bit behind the curve in commenting on the Rosenberg-Curtain piece on economics as a non-science. What do I think of their thesis?
Well, I’m sorry to say that they’ve gotten it almost all wrong. Only “almost”: they’re entirely right that economics isn’t behaving like a science, and economists – macroeconomists, anyway – definitely aren’t behaving like scientists. But they misunderstand the nature of the failure, and for that matter the nature of such successes as we’re having.
Let’s start with the giveaway passage:
In other words, far from acting as a free-spirited improviser, Bernanke has been largely implementing recipes developed in the academic literature years before.
So Rosenberg and Curtain completely misunderstand what’s been going on at the Fed. They also misunderstand the nature of economists’ predictive failures. It’s true that few economists predicted the onset of crisis. Once crisis struck, however, basic macroeconomic models did a very good job in key respects — in particular, they did much better than people who relied on their intuitive feelings. The intuitionists — remember, Alan Greenspan was supposed to be famously able to sense the economy’s pulse — insisted that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring, that the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet would be inflationary, that fiscal austerity would strengthen economies through “confidence”. Meanwhile, wonks who relied on suitably interpreted IS-LM confidently declared that all this intuition, based on experiences in a different environment, would prove wrong — and they were right. From my point of view, these past 5 years have been a triumph for and vindication of economic modeling.
Oh, and it would be a real tragedy if the takeaway from recent events becomes that you should listen to impressive-looking guys with good tailors who stroke their chins and sound wise, and ignore the nerds; the nerds have been mostly right, while the Very Serious People have been wrong every step of the way.
Yet obviously something is deeply wrong with economics. While economists using textbook macro models got things mostly and impressively right, many famous economists refused to use those models — in fact, they made it clear in discussion that they didn’t understand points that had been worked out generations ago. Moreover, it’s hard to find any economists who changed their minds when their predictions, say of sharply higher inflation, turned out wrong.
Nor is this a new thing. My take on the history of macro is that the notion of equilibrium business cycles had, by the standards of any normal science, definitively failed by any normal scientific standard by 1990 at the latest. The original idea that money had real effects because people were surprised by monetary shocks fell apart in the face of evidence of business cycle persistence; the real business cycle view that nominal shocks didn’t actually matter after all was refuted by decisive evidence (pdf) that, in fact, it did. Yet there was no backing off on this approach. On the contrary, it actually increased its hold on the profession.
So, let’s grant that economics as practiced doesn’t look like a science. But that’s not because the subject is inherently unsuited to the scientific method. Sure, it’s highly imperfect — it’s a complex area, and our understanding is in its early stages. And sure, the economy itself changes over time, so that what was true 75 years ago may not be true today — although what really impresses you if you study macro, in particular, is the continuity, so that Bagehot and Wicksell and Irving Fisher and, of course, Keynes remain quite relevant today.
No, the problem lies not in the inherent unsuitability of economics for scientific thinking as in the sociology of the economics profession — a profession that somehow, at least in macro, has ceased rewarding research that produces successful predictions and rewards research that fits preconceptions and uses hard math instead.
Why has the sociology of economics gone so wrong? I’m not completely sure — and I’ll reserve my random thoughts for another occasion."
Seventy five years of constant effort.
Well, I’m sorry to say that they’ve gotten it almost all wrong. Only “almost”: they’re entirely right that economics isn’t behaving like a science, and economists – macroeconomists, anyway – definitely aren’t behaving like scientists. But they misunderstand the nature of the failure, and for that matter the nature of such successes as we’re having.
Let’s start with the giveaway passage:
An effective chair of the central bank will be one who understands that economics is not yet a science and may never be. At this point it is a craft, to be executed with wisdom, not algorithms, in the design and management of institutions. What made Ben S. Bernanke, the current chairman, successful was his willingness to use methods — like “quantitative easing,” buying bonds to lower long-term interest rates — that demanded a feeling for the economy, one that mere rational-expectations macroeconomics would have denied him.Whoa! They apparently imagine that QE was an intuitive reaction by Bernanke, one that academic macroeconomics would never have suggested. Nothing could be further from the truth. By the time 2008 came along, the issue of how to conduct monetary policy at the zero lower bound had been extensively discussed, notably in Krugman 1998 (pdf), Eggertsson and Woodford (2003), and, yes, Bernanke-Reinhart-Sack 2004 (pdf). Indeed, the Fed’s QE policies initially followed the latter paper closely; its more recent shift to a greater emphasis on forward guidance is a move in the direction of the Krugman-Eggertsson-Woodford approach.
In other words, far from acting as a free-spirited improviser, Bernanke has been largely implementing recipes developed in the academic literature years before.
So Rosenberg and Curtain completely misunderstand what’s been going on at the Fed. They also misunderstand the nature of economists’ predictive failures. It’s true that few economists predicted the onset of crisis. Once crisis struck, however, basic macroeconomic models did a very good job in key respects — in particular, they did much better than people who relied on their intuitive feelings. The intuitionists — remember, Alan Greenspan was supposed to be famously able to sense the economy’s pulse — insisted that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring, that the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet would be inflationary, that fiscal austerity would strengthen economies through “confidence”. Meanwhile, wonks who relied on suitably interpreted IS-LM confidently declared that all this intuition, based on experiences in a different environment, would prove wrong — and they were right. From my point of view, these past 5 years have been a triumph for and vindication of economic modeling.
Oh, and it would be a real tragedy if the takeaway from recent events becomes that you should listen to impressive-looking guys with good tailors who stroke their chins and sound wise, and ignore the nerds; the nerds have been mostly right, while the Very Serious People have been wrong every step of the way.
Yet obviously something is deeply wrong with economics. While economists using textbook macro models got things mostly and impressively right, many famous economists refused to use those models — in fact, they made it clear in discussion that they didn’t understand points that had been worked out generations ago. Moreover, it’s hard to find any economists who changed their minds when their predictions, say of sharply higher inflation, turned out wrong.
Nor is this a new thing. My take on the history of macro is that the notion of equilibrium business cycles had, by the standards of any normal science, definitively failed by any normal scientific standard by 1990 at the latest. The original idea that money had real effects because people were surprised by monetary shocks fell apart in the face of evidence of business cycle persistence; the real business cycle view that nominal shocks didn’t actually matter after all was refuted by decisive evidence (pdf) that, in fact, it did. Yet there was no backing off on this approach. On the contrary, it actually increased its hold on the profession.
So, let’s grant that economics as practiced doesn’t look like a science. But that’s not because the subject is inherently unsuited to the scientific method. Sure, it’s highly imperfect — it’s a complex area, and our understanding is in its early stages. And sure, the economy itself changes over time, so that what was true 75 years ago may not be true today — although what really impresses you if you study macro, in particular, is the continuity, so that Bagehot and Wicksell and Irving Fisher and, of course, Keynes remain quite relevant today.
No, the problem lies not in the inherent unsuitability of economics for scientific thinking as in the sociology of the economics profession — a profession that somehow, at least in macro, has ceased rewarding research that produces successful predictions and rewards research that fits preconceptions and uses hard math instead.
Why has the sociology of economics gone so wrong? I’m not completely sure — and I’ll reserve my random thoughts for another occasion."
Seventy five years of constant effort.
12
Autos
Chrysler Recalls 491 Fiats Over Separating Driveshafts
Nearly 500 Fiat 500e E.V.’s from the 2013 model year are subject to a recall after Chrysler received a report of power loss from driveshaft fasteners coming undone after a factory repair.- Pricing
13
Health
In These Salads, Grains Sometimes Play a Supporting Role
Five vegetable and grain salads that make for perfect dishes on hot summer days.
14
Health
Faster Assistance for Medicare Patients
More on what Medicare quality improvement organizations can do for older patients and their caregivers.
15
Technology
Malicious Software Poses as Video from a Facebook Friend
Attackers are using built-in features of the Chrome and Firefox Web browsers to install malicious software that can see everything stored in the browser, including saved passwords for e-mail and social network accounts, according to Italian security researchers.
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17
Opinion
The Problem That Has Two Names
Like others wanting it both ways, I held on to my professional name while also taking on my husband’s.
18
Opinion
Suing the I.R.S. Back to Basics
A lawsuit aims to end the charade that gives tax exemptions to partisan political groups posing as social welfare organizations.
19
U.S.
Iowa’s G.O.P. Fears Its Role in Presidential Selection Is Diminishing
In Iowa, which prides itself on its pivotal role in presidential campaigns, Republicans worry that the growing dominance of the conservative wing could render it less relevant.
20
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