They really shouldn't say such things out loud.

Funny, though: U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion. The Onion truly is America's finest news source. My favorite paragraph:

As news of the nation's collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings.

Voting and class

Another great post from Andrew Gelman on whether or not people vote against their own interests (spoiler alert: they don't). Written in reaction to this awful BBC article, it serves as a useful reminder to check the occasional fact.

Update: on a related note, this from factcheck.org, on non-elder health insurance coverage rates.

Tim Pawlenty dishes just what Tea-partiers want to hear

Bruce Bartlett has an excellent take-down of Presidential wannabe, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. I agree completely, except for the conclusion:

Tim Pawlenty is not ready for prime time. He may think he has found a clever way of appealing to the right wing tea party/Fox News crowd without having to propose any actual cuts in spending, but it isn’t going to work. It’s too transparently phony even for them.

The first sentence is fine. I don't think that last part is true: Pawlenty's reason-free rhetoric is just what many of the Tea-party types seem to want to hear.

Quicker growth? first estimate of fourth quarter GDP growth released

Catherine Rampell reports based on a BEA release that in the 4th quarter real Gross Domestic Product (sometimes referred to as 'the economy') grew at an annual rate* of 5.7%. Since this is a first estimate, Rampell rightly points out that the first estimate for 3rd quarter annual growth rate was 3.7%, which has since been revised downward to 2.2%. Less encouraging still is the fact that more than half of the reported growth is increase in inventories, meaning businesses didn't sell as much stuff as they were planning to, or are building up inventories in expectations of a return to higher consumer spending. But the latter added only 1.44% to the overall growth rate, half a percent off from its 3rd quarter showing. Given the continuing job losses last quarter, inventory increases coupled with a consumer spending slow down looks to me like a bad situation for employment in the near future.

* Annual growth rate here means that if the economy grew as fast as it did in the 4th quarter all year, the economy would grow by 5.7%.

Facts versus Other Facts About the Chicago School's Influence

John Taylor, in a post entitled Opinions versus Facts About the Chicago School, tries to make the case that blaming Chicago School economics for the financial crisis just isn't fair, because Chicago PhDs haven't been in the president's Council of Economic Advisers. He even has a graph that proves it's a TRUE FACT. Maybe. Maybe.
However, the CEA isn't the only important player in the world of financial regulation. Take these guys, for example:

What are these guys doing? Read more about it in this WaPo story. Which school of thought do YOU think those guys wielding chainsaws and pruning shears menacingly over that defenseless pile of financial regulations are from? I lean towards Friedman more than Samuelson on that question.

Economic Theory Throwdown

Check out the Keynes vs. Hayek rap video. Hilarious, at least for an economist like me.

Something I like about Paul Krugman

While Krugman agonizes over the Bernanke Conundrum, he says Bernanke has been assimilated by the banking Borg. Gotta love a geek, I say in an entirely self-serving way. I don't agonize over the decision of whether or not to keep Bernanke. I don't trust him to take the right side between bankers and workers (in other words, I think he's been assimilated by the banking Borg). Krugman himself would be better, as Simon Johnson argues. I think he's probably the best of the could-happen category. My favorite in the wish-it-could-happen category is Jim Crotty.