William A. Galston’s Wall Street Journal column today is on the political necessity for President Biden to take inflation seriously:

Tucked away in the latest NBC survey is a question that deserves the full attention of the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress: “Do you think that your family’s income is going up faster than the cost of living, staying about even with the cost of living, or falling behind the cost of living?” Only 7% of respondents reported that they were getting ahead and 31% that they were breaking even, while 61% said they were falling behind.

They are not mistaken and Mr. Galston’s concern is not misplaced:

A recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that while wages rose rapidly during 2021, overall prices rose much faster. On average, corrected for inflation, workers experienced a 2.4% drop in the purchasing power of their hourly wages. And because hours worked remained steady, this drop extended to weekly and monthly paychecks.

It is true, as the administration insists, that prices are rising rapidly throughout Europe as well. But as Obama administration veteran and Harvard economist Jason Furman points out, “The United States has had much more inflation than almost any advanced country in the world.”

It is also true that economic growth has been faster in the U.S. than elsewhere. But as the administration is finding out the hard way, aggregate growth isn’t a counterweight to declining real wages. Despite the sharp fall in unemployment, only 38% of Americans approve of President Biden’s handling of the economy, down from 52% in April of 2021.

Unfortunately, his suggestions for just what President Biden should do are pretty meager:

The Biden administration is stuck with a tough problem. If I were president, I would be attacking it head-on, beginning with a major speech explaining what is happening and followed by regular public events highlighting efforts to attack various dimensions of the problem, from reducing the backlog at ports to recruiting and training truckers to making sure grocery shelves are stocked.

In the short term, the news may not be good. For example, government statistics are lagging behind private surveys of rental costs, which are likely to apply upward pressure to official inflation statistics in 2022.

Fighting inflation will be difficult, but playing it down will make matters worse. Americans want to see their leaders working on what the people think are the most important problems, even if progress is slow.

I would suggest with emphasizing to our political leaders a very simple equation:

Inflation = Nominal GDP – Real GDP

The policies the administration has supported have boosted nominal GDP. There needs to be more emphasis on real GDP now rather than just in the long term. Infrastructure spending is a long-term matter. It won’t do much to reduce inflation now.

The alternative is to accept a lot less growth in nominal GDP.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal have found what is to my eye a pretty good summary of the 2020 presidential election:

If curious Republicans want to know what really happened in 2020, this is the best summation to date. Released Dec. 7, it was written by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a policy shop with conservative bona fides that supported many of Mr. Trump’s policies. A Wisconsin judge this month said ballot dropboxes are illegal under state law, in a challenge brought by WILL.

Its report on 2020 wallops state officials for bending election rules amid the pandemic. That mistake put ballots into legal doubt, due to no fault of the voter, while fueling skepticism. Yet the stolen-election theory doesn’t hold up. President Biden won Wisconsin by 20,682, and mass fraud “would likely have resulted in some discernible anomaly,” WILL says. “In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. ”

concluding:

“We do not believe the election was ‘stolen,’” WILL says. “But it was not adequately secure.”

and for the editors the moral of the story is:

The overall lesson is to run elections by the book.

That does raise the question what is “adequately secure”? It smacks of “no true Scotsman”. When only a minority of Americans have faith in American democracy, a narrow majority of Americans think that Joe Biden legitimately won the election, and 20% of Americans think a lot of fraud occurred in their own states in 2020, it suggests there’s quite a long way to go.

George Friedman considers Russia’s recent actions:

It’s possible, then, that Moscow wanted to float an impossible proposal for propaganda purposes. But the value of world public opinion compared to a successful military operation is minimal. After an invasion, public opinion would be against Russian aggression regardless of diplomatic niceties. The value of public opinion, in other words, only takes you so far.

The only conclusion to be drawn is that Russia has no intention of invading Ukraine, as Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has repeatedly said. Given that Russia failed to act when it could and arguably should have, it seems to me that he might have been telling the truth. On the other hand, we have seen the Russians be active, albeit more subtly, in Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Logic dictates that Russia must rebuild its historic buffer zone and that Ukraine is essential in this regard. Moscow has done everything in its power to create an atmosphere of crisis. Perhaps it had intelligence that the U.S. and NATO would fold their cards. But the U.S. can’t afford to do nothing. President Joe Biden’s threat to the Russian banking system is either far more devastating than I can fathom or simply a cover for military action. So in this sense, the U.S. is being coy as well, just not nearly as confusingly as the Russians.

My best guess is the Russians have set up negotiation with the most extreme demands as a normal negotiating strategy. But the fact remains that Russian forces are deployed, and resistance is being strengthened. It may be that the Russians are simply confident that their force is still able to win. But a rule of war is that you strike at maximum advantage, and give away no advantage. The rule of diplomacy is to make a lot of threats before making a deal. Right now, it’s one or the other.

Or Putin could just be insane. I doubt it; I think he’s the ultimate realist.

In all of this commentary I’ve heard exactly one good reason for defending Ukraine in the event of a Russian incursion and it has nothing to do with Ukraine but with Taiwan. Note that everything Mr. Friedman says about Russia, Putin, and Ukraine applies just as well to China, Xi, and Taiwan.

In a post by Peter Beinart on the “generation gap” in attitudes about Ukraine he produces a litany of arguments against NATO expansion I to which I wish more people would pay attention:

Back to the generation gap over Russia and Ukraine. It sounds bizarre today but in the late 1990s, when the Clinton administration was considering expanding NATO to include merely Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—barely anyone at that time was proposing admitting Ukraine—titans of American foreign policy cried out in opposition. George Kennan, the living legend who had fathered America’s policy of containment against the Soviet Union, called NATO expansion “a strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions.” Thomas Friedman, America’s most prominent foreign policy columnist, declared it the “most ill-conceived project of the post-Cold War era.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, widely considered the most erudite member of the US Senate, warned, “We have no idea what we’re getting into.” John Lewis Gaddis, the dean of America’s Cold War historians, noted that, “historians—normally so contentious—are in uncharacteristic agreement: with remarkably few exceptions, they see NATO enlargement as ill-conceived, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world.”

I consider the notion of adding Ukraine or Georgia to NATO as bordering on the insane. Each additional member admitted to an alliance should strengthen the alliance not weaken it. This is the opposite of synergy.

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal Tom Rogan argues that Germany is not a “reliable ally”:

Berlin reveals a serious reality: Facing the two most consequential security threats to America and to the post-World War II democratic international order—China and Russia—Germany is no longer a credible ally. For Germany, cheap gas, car exports to China and keeping Mr. Putin calm seem to be more important than allied democratic solidarity. Ukraine’s fate will convey on Germany a heavy burden of responsibility.

Berlin refuses to supply Ukraine with weapons, and it is actively preventing Estonia from doing so. In recent days, Britain has airlifted antitank weapons to Ukraine and conducted Ukraine-related intelligence-gathering flights. But while the intelligence flights have transited German airspace—the most direct route between Britain and Ukraine—the weapons flights have been making detours around Germany. Britain’s Defense Ministry played down the detours, confirming that it didn’t seek overflight permission. But that’s the point: Britain didn’t ask because that would have forced Germany to grant or reject the request. Britain believed the decision would be difficult for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s new government.

Another illustration is Berlin’s approach to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will send gas to Europe from Russia. German regulators say the pipeline can’t start working until it meets corporate compliance standards. That has rankled Mr. Putin, who wants it pumping now. In turn, the Russian president’s Gazprom puppet company has reversed gas flows through the existing Yamal-Europe pipeline for more than four weeks. Russia also has cut off thermal coal supplies to Ukraine for more than three months. Mr. Putin’s message is clear: Ukraine better roll over, and Germany better approve Nord Stream 2.

I would go farther. I think that Germany’s sole interest is Germany. It’s an ally in name only—the Germans will do nothing that bears costs for Germany. I think they’re going to get a big surprise as China increasingly succeeds in doing to them what they did to us 20 years ago but that’s a topic for another post.

I honestly don’t understand why internationalism has been construed as a) being interventionist and b) adopting the policies of our notional allies, e.g. Germany, Israel, Poland, which do not benefit us as though they were our own.

The lengthy profile of economist Lawrence Summers by Eric Levitz in New York Magazine’s “Intelligencer” feature concludes with this passage:

Ironically, if the left’s most cynical reading of Summers’s career is correct — if his ideological evolution traces shifts in Washington’s balance of power, not changes in available evidence — then his analysis would merit little more criticism than the reading of a weathervane. In a world where the views of “insider” economists bend with the political winds, tomorrow’s supply of progressive policies will be determined by the strength of demand.

I’m not entirely sure whether the profile is intended to be a defense of Dr. Summers, an indictment of him, or an objective analysis. I have three observations about the piece. First, the Biden Administration would be much better off with Dr. Summers pissing out than with him outside pissing in.

My second observation is that it supports a point I’ve made here from time to time:

The lone D.C. outsider on Obama’s team, the economic historian Christina Romer, had calculated that nothing short of $1.2 trillion in deficit spending could fill the gap in private demand. Yet Summers, the master briefer, had final authority over the team’s memorandum to the president in December 2008. He left Romer’s proposal on the cutting-room floor, opting to make a $890 billion stimulus the president’s most ambitious policy option. Thus, Summers personally ensured the inadequacy of the administration’s fiscal response.

This narrative is not entirely fair. Judging by subsequent accounts from both Summers and Romer, Obama’s NEC director favored $1.2 trillion of stimulus spending on the merits but believed that a trillion-dollar package would be dead on arrival in the Senate. Given that Summers ultimately recommended an $890 billion stimulus — only to see the White House propose just $775 billion and Congress authorize $787 billion — his presumption that politics placed a hard cap on the package’s size looks plausible, in retrospect.

while my third observation is related to it. I would suggest that we consider the possibility that the reason for the failure of the ARRA to provide stimulus for the U. S. economy sufficient to pull it out of the doldrums in which it found itself after the end of the 2008-2009 recession was not that it was too small but that while Dr. Summers and other economists weren’t looking the U. S. economy had changed to the point where convention “pump-priming” stimulus was no longer effective.

Imagine a completely closed system. Everything within it including heat, air, and so on stays within it. Now imagine that system is exposed to the exterior. You apply heat and it may get a little hotter for a while but ultimately the heat radiates away. Air leaks out. And so on. That’s a simple model of the difference between an economy which exists almost entirely within our shores and a globalized one. Stimulus stimulates the economy all right—it stimulates the U. S. economy, the German economy, the Chinese economy, the Indian economy, and on and on. There is little or no Keynesian multiplier because increased consumption (and rising prices) does not incentivize increased production in the United States.

Now the secret to stimulating the economy resides in increasing production more directly, with fewer regulations or incentives or outright trade barriers to goods produced outside. It’s not your grandfather’s pump-priming any more.

Following up on my post about the greatest Hollywood movies, who fits into that category of actor—unable to turn in a bad performance? In the post or in comments I pointed to two: Claire Trevor, Claude Raines, and Edward G. Robinson. If you don’t believe it just watch a few of their movies. They elevate everything they’re in simply by being in it.

That isn’t true of some of the biggest stars. Take Spencer Tracy, one of my favorite movie actors. He turned in a lot of fabulous performances but he also turned in some lousy ones. Ironically, one of his Academy Award-winning roles fits into that latter category: Captains Courageous. He should have taken the dialect coach’s advice. Or have you ever seen Plymouth Adventure?

Who else fits into that category? I would name:

1. Paul Muni
2. Fredric March
3. Many, many Brits including Robert Donat, Victor McLaglen, Sidney Greenstreet, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett (Aussie), Alec Guiness, Ralph Richardson, and too many others to name
4. Tom Hanks
5. Olivia DeHavilland
6. Paul Henreid
7. Gene Wilder

What other actors never turn in a bad performance, always elevating whatever they appear in?

Not Marlon Brando, Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Marilyn Monroe, any Fonda, Jimmy Stewart (much as I love him), John Wayne. Each of those actors turned in some fine performances but they also turned in some real dogs.

Kevin Drum has what to my eye is a pretty good post on the relative effectiveness of different mask types in preventing COVID-19. The types he considers are:

• fabric 2-layer
• fabric 3-layer
• surgical
• N95 non-fitted
• N95 fitted

If you’re wearing a surgical mask and everyone else is wearing cloth masks, it provides about 3x the protection of doing nothing.

Just generally, I’d beware of the N95 numbers. You should probably assume that even if you’re being careful, your spiffy N95 mask isn’t all that well fitted. The “N95 non-fitted” line is probably the most accurate for real life.

This is the best I could come up with doing a non-expert review of the literature. Don’t take it as gospel, but as a rough estimate. If better data comes my way, I’ll let you know.

I really wish the experts were doing this sort of explanation and analysis rather than relying on laymen to do it for them. I wonder about how much of these are a priori assumptions and how much are measured results. Note, too, the discrepancy in Koh which shows no benefit between wearing fabric 2-layer masks and N95 non-fitted masks. I also wonder about some of the qualitative assumptions built into analyses of this sort but at least it’s a start.

You might be interested in reading this fascinating analysis at Financial Times by Gideon Rachman on how Russia and China are positioning themselves and not merely positioning themselves but cooperating in bringing about a “new world order” to supplant the old “new world order” of a hegemonic and aggressive United States:

Two features of the current world order that the Russians and the Chinese frequently object to are “unipolarity” and “universality”. Put more simply, they believe that the current arrangements give America too much power — and they are determined to change that.

“Unipolarity” means that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was left with only one superpower — the US. Fyodor Lukyanov, a Russian foreign-policy thinker who is close to President Putin, believes that unipolarity “gave the United States the ability and possibility to do whatever it saw fit on the world stage”. He argues that the new age of American hegemony was ushered in by the Gulf war of 1991 — in which the US assembled a global coalition to drive Saddam Hussein’s Iraq out of Kuwait.

The Gulf war was followed by a succession of US-led military interventions around the world — including in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. Nato’s bombing of Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, in 1999, has long formed part of Russia’s argument that Nato is not a purely defensive alliance. The fact that Nato bombs also struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade has not been forgotten in Beijing.

After the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, Nato invoked Article 5 — its mutual-defence clause — and invaded Afghanistan. Once again, according to Lukyanov, America had demonstrated its willingness and ability to “forcefully transform the world”.

But America’s defeat in Afghanistan, symbolised by the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul in the summer of 2021, has given the Russians hope that the US-led world order is crumbling. Lukyanov argues that the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was “no less historical and symbolic than the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

Influential Chinese academics are thinking along similar lines. Yan Xuetong, dean of the school of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing (Xi’s alma mater), writes that “China believes that its rise to great-power status entitles it to a new role in world affairs — one that cannot be reconciled with unquestioned US dominance.”

The fly in this Sino-Russian ointment is that the interests of Russia and China are not aligned. Russia sees the emergence of a multi-polar world with spheres of influence; China on the other hand sees itself as supplanting the United States as global hegemon. There can be only one.

It should be obvious to anyone with a globe that while a Russia-Chinese alliance makes sense tactically it is senseless strategically. Further, although Russia seems to have entered a tenuous stability, there is every likelihood that China is at the peak of its power right now. Both countries may see benefit for themselves in expeditious action but Russia may well be more reluctant than China is likely to be.

Interesting times.