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In which Noah Smith & Brad DeLong wish Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson had written a very different book than their "Power & Progress" is...Key Insights:* Acemoglu & Johnson should have written a very different book—one about how some technologies complement and others substitute for labor, and it is very important to maximize the first.* Neither Noah Smith nor Brad DeLong is at all comfortable with “power” as a category in economics other than as the ability to credibly threaten to commit violence or theft.* Acemoglu & Robinson's Why Nations Fail is a truly great book. Power & Progress is not.* We should not confuse James Robinson with Simon Johnson* Billionaires running oligopolistic tech firms are not trustworthy stewards of the future of our economy.* The IBM 701 Defense Calculator of 1953 is rather cool. * The lurkers agree with Noah Smith in the DMs.* The power loom caused technological unemployment because the rest of the value chain—cotton growing, spinning, and garment-making—was rigid, hence the elasticity of demand for the transformation thread → cloth was low.* We need more examples of bad technologies than the cotton gin and the Roman Empire.References: * Acemoglu, Daron, & Simon Johnson. 2023. Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity. New York; Hachette Book Group. * Acemoglu, Daron, & James A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. New York: Crown Publishers. * Besi. 2023. “Join us Tues. Oct. 10 at 4pm Pacific for a talk by @MITSloan's Simon Johnson…” Twitter. October 9. .* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2024. “What To Do About the Dependence of the Form Progress Takes on Power?: Quick Takes on Acemoglu & Johnson's "Power & Progress”. Grasping Reality. February 29.* DeLong, J. Bradford; & Noah Smith. 2023. “We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-Replacing”. Hexapodia. XLIX, July 7. * Gruber, Jonathan, & Simon Johnson. 2019. Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream.The book is available on the Internet Archive: .* Johnson, Simon, & James Kwak. 2011. 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. New York: Vintage Books. .* Smith, Noah. 2024. “Book Review: Power & Progress”. Noahpinion. February 21. * Walton, Jo. 1998. “The Lurkers Support Me in Email”. May 16. .+, of course:* Vinge, Vernor. 1992. A Fire Upon the Deep. New York: TOR. . Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe
[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is an outspoken critic of the US government response to the financial crisis. Now he takes on the “too big to fail” banks which continue to threaten our economy. In his latest book, called 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Pantheon, 2010), which he co-wrote with James Kwak, Simon argues that if the biggest banks aren’t cut down to size, it’s only a matter of time before we face another financial crisis. And once again, the government – aka the taxpayers – will be obliged to step in and bail out these behemoths. In Simon’s words, if they’re too big to fail — they’re too big to exist! Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And he’s the co-author, again with James Kwak, of the influential economics blog The Baseline Scenario. Simon spoke with ThoughtCast at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is an outspoken critic of the US government response to the financial crisis. Now he takes on the “too big to fail” banks which continue to threaten our economy. In his latest book, called 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Pantheon, 2010), which he co-wrote with James Kwak, Simon argues that if the biggest banks aren’t cut down to size, it’s only a matter of time before we face another financial crisis. And once again, the government – aka the taxpayers – will be obliged to step in and bail out these behemoths. In Simon’s words, if they’re too big to fail — they’re too big to exist! Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And he’s the co-author, again with James Kwak, of the influential economics blog The Baseline Scenario. Simon spoke with ThoughtCast at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[Re-posted with permission from Jenny Attiyeh’s ThoughtCast] Simon Johnson, the Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is an outspoken critic of the US government response to the financial crisis. Now he takes on the “too big to fail” banks which continue to threaten our economy. In his latest book, called 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Pantheon, 2010), which he co-wrote with James Kwak, Simon argues that if the biggest banks aren’t cut down to size, it’s only a matter of time before we face another financial crisis. And once again, the government – aka the taxpayers – will be obliged to step in and bail out these behemoths. In Simon’s words, if they’re too big to fail — they’re too big to exist! Simon Johnson is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And he’s the co-author, again with James Kwak, of the influential economics blog The Baseline Scenario. Simon spoke with ThoughtCast at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Simon Johnson argues that the fundamental causes of our financial crisis are still with us and that a second financial shock is inevitable. He makes the case that until recently President Obama has been more aligned with bankers than consumers and that there has been a complete breakdown of consumer protection regarding mortgages and other financial products. He joins the Council to argue that the six largest banks comprise a powerful and dangerous oligarchy, and that the regulatory agencies in charge of policing financial institutions have been co-opted by the banks and now act in their interests. Breaking up the big banks, he asserts, is essential for any meaningful financial reform. Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF and now co-author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, is one of the most authoritative voices on world economics.
Aired 04/18/10 SIMON JOHNSON, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is currently Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. He is the co-author of STARTING OVER IN EASTERN EUROPE and co-founder of the blog site THE BASELINE SCENARIO with James Kwak, with whom he also co-authored the new book, 13 BANKERS: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. http://baselinescenario.com/ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04162010/profile.html
Since the devastating economic crisis of 2008, new regulations have aimed to reign in the big banks that helped bring down the world economy. But six “megabanks” still rule the financial markets. They are bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever before. They control assets amounting to 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. And their rise from the ashes of the Great Recession is only the latest Wall Street triumph in a long history of showdowns between American government and finance, dating back to Thomas Jefferson. How did this come to be? Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, visited Zócalo to explain why big banks and the ideology of unfettered finance still endangers us today, and what we can do to avoid another meltdown.
The EU deals with big problems in Greece. Google announces big plans for broadband. And U.S. retailers report better than expected January numbers. On this week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show, we discuss those stories, debate the relative merits of Coca-Cola v. Pepsi, and share three stocks on our radar. We also talk with MIT Professor and former IMF economist Simon Johnson, co-creator of the economics website baselinescenario.com and co-author of the upcoming book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.