Protecting whistleblowers? Or prosecuting them?

Gov't obtains wide AP phone records in probe. If this is part of an investigation into that particular case, it may not be a violation of President Obama's campaign promise, since it isn't clear that any waste, fraud, or abuse was being leaked to the press. However, conducting a spying operation on the Associated Press seems to be a little too close to violating the First Amendment. I thought corporations were people? Don't they have a right to privacy? No more than you or I do, it appears. Not even the press.
This, by the way, is the Obama transition team at change.gov's statement about whistleblowers on the "ethics" page under "Spending Taxpayers' Money Wisely":

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

I guess the part about aggressively pursuing and prosecuting whistleblowers was left out of the final draft.

Levy Hipster T-shirt ideas

I was into financial instability before it was cool Minsky: You've probably never heard of him

Economics wins the internet today

We win! Only major with TWO panels!!!! W00T!! Every Major's Terrible

Econ 101: Speaking of Monopoly

Here's a video of the TED talk by Rob Reid, founder of the company that created the Rhapsody music service. Reid makes some interesting and funny points, in describing the exciting new field of "copyright math," to destroy the economic arguments of the advocates of intellectual property in music and video (primarily the MPAA and the RIAA, the movie and music industry associations that were such boosters of the SOPA/PIPA legislation). Those of you coming to this page because you're in my micro class will no doubt recognize the simple economic mistakes he makes. These don't negate the basic point he's making: that industry claims about losses resulting from piracy are wildly inflated and/or come from shaky reasoning if not thin air.

Is growth what we want?

I got an email from a participant at the Center for Popular Economics 2011 Summer Institute, which I was fortunate enough to be able to teach. It was, as always a crazy busy, exciting week. The question concerned growth: whether I thought growth was necessary, and how it is related to employment. It's a pretty big question. In economics, the questions don't get much bigger. So I promised to write a blog post to give my answer. And this is that blog post. I will do my best to answer broadly, simply, and, I hope, intelligibly for any audience no matter how much or how little economics they may have been subjected to previously.

Nice piece on Mankiw's response to his students on Econospeak

Peter Dorman at EconoSpeak makes some good points about Mankiw’s Reply to the Walk-Out. Long story short: Mankiw is respectful, but wrong on some points and unfortunately right on others. Includes link to Mankiw's op-ed.

This about sums it up

Via DeLong: Matthew Yglesias's Theory of the Obama Administration in 2010: Excessive Reliance on the Second Derivative. Long story short: the Obama administration saw that it's intervention had stopped the employment free-fall of and concluded that it would just turn itself around. Wrong. That was the point at which more help was needed to reverse the damage. I would add that the Obama administration also under-estimated the extent of the damage that was already done when they came into office.