Friday, June 29, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Scanning Electron Microscopy
My advice for macroeconomic stabilization is precisely
the same as my advice for scanning-electron-microscope image focusing. Briefly,
it’s “Do something to fix it until it starts getting worse in the other
direction.”
Inexperienced SEM students will sit there with a blurry image and timidly roll the focus, getting nowhere nearer to a good image. The key here is timidly: the student rolls the focus knob so slowly, like Eddie Izzard’s safecracking shower-user, that it is unclear whether the image is getting better or worse. The better way to focus the image is to roll the focus back and forth in long, manly strokes, so that the change in the image is plain, and the optimum focus (both its quality and where the knob needs to be to get it there) can be ascertained.
Inexperienced SEM students will sit there with a blurry image and timidly roll the focus, getting nowhere nearer to a good image. The key here is timidly: the student rolls the focus knob so slowly, like Eddie Izzard’s safecracking shower-user, that it is unclear whether the image is getting better or worse. The better way to focus the image is to roll the focus back and forth in long, manly strokes, so that the change in the image is plain, and the optimum focus (both its quality and where the knob needs to be to get it there) can be ascertained.
As Matt Yglesias points out, the people in charge of our macroeconomy are being
excessively timid. Half of them are taking the conventional route, i.e.
pursuing looser monetary and fiscal policy in the face of a recession, but they
are doing it so timidly that as a result we don’t really have a good test of
those policies’ effectiveness. Did we really even fight the recession? On the
fiscal side, Paul Krugman says the gigantic stimulus really just helped fill in
the hole left by state and local budgets. On the monetary side, Scott Sumner
says that money is too tight, even at today’s low, low interest rates.
The other half of our leaders are suggesting we turn the
knob backwards, i.e. move towards tighter monetary and/or fiscal policy. They
think the SEM image will get sharper if we move in an unconventional direction.
I suggest what I would tell any timid SEM student: ROLL
THE GODDAMN KNOB until the image is clearly better, and keep doing it until it
gets worse—that’s the way you know when you’ve gone too far. Then go back. The
economic equivalent would be to try a two trillion dollar stimulus and QE 4, 5,
and 6. When we get full employment and then inflation, we’ll know it’s time to
cut back.
Or do what Republicans want and cut back now. But cut way
back—make the Social Security retirement age 75 and stop unemployment insurance
after three months (and see who votes for you). But only after moving decisively in one direction or the other will we gain some understanding of the dynamics of what's going on.