Clive Crook

My column for today's FT looks beyond the stimulus to what comes later. It is safe to assume that in his address on Tuesday, Barack Obama will invoke the need for shared sacrifice. The idea is a banker, forgive the expression, for any inaugural, but especially now. Equally predictable is that he will develop the theme with a certain inattention to detail. It is inspiring to call for sacrifice but something of a downer to tell people too precisely what that… More »

What an extraordinarily awful bunch of portraits of "Obama's People" in the NYT's magazine. They look far worse in the actual magazine than on the website. I urge you to obtain a copy. It is a historical artifact. There is an accompanying article on the background to the project. It paraphrases Roland Barthes, as one would, but it doesn't tell me what I mainly wanted to know: which ointment did the make-up person smear on each subject before they were posed? They… More »

My instant reaction to Tim Geithner's embarrassment over his taxes was that it would not stop the appointment going forward, but I am beginning to wonder. The hostile editorial in the NYT certainly did not help. As much as Mr. Obama and his team may wish it, however, the disclosures cannot be dismissed so easily, or papered over. The just-the-facts report of Mr. Geithner's tax transgressions, compiled and released by the Senate Finance Committee, paints a picture… More »

A word of praise for The Economist's coverage of the fighting in Gaza in the current issue. It is the magazine at its brilliant best: editorial opinion that is wise, well-informed and dispassionate, supported with excellent reporting. After reading masses of tendentious axe-grinding blather in the previous few days, how welcome this was. I would feel the same way even if I disagreed with the magazine's line, but it doubtless helps that I think it is right. Taking… More »

Like most others I take it for granted that the multiplier effect of tax cuts is weaker than that of (well-designed) increases in public spending. But the question leaves room for doubt and has not been discussed as throroughly as it should have been. Greg Mankiw has drawn attention to an oddity in the Obama team's thinking on this. Its analysis of tax and spending multipliers, by Christina Romer (the new CEA chairman) and Jared Bernstein, comes up with numbers… More »

From today's FT.Despite his clear electoral mandate and big Democratic majorities in Congress, politics is already blocking Barack Obama's efforts to deliver a fast fiscal stimulus. The country's political system was designed to force debate and delay action, and it works. Even when all of Washington agrees that speed is crucial - which it does - getting anything done is still difficult. Mr Obama has clout and his party is pretty much in control. But these factors… More »

Obama's speech this morning said nothing really new about what he intends. Earlier this week he said he was looking at proposals that would inject $800 billion or more into the economy over two years, a mixture of infrastructure and other spending, together with tax cuts for the low-paid and for businesses. It's bold, all right, with the CBO announcing a expected deficit of $1.2 trillion in 2009 without the new boost (and that is an underestimate in any case… More »

Market crashes are inevitable, but financial innovation and globalization have massively increased our vulnerability to them. Unless we make big regulatory changes—changes on a global scale—we should prepare for more years like this one.

Have a peaceful Christmas. More »

This essay by Stanford's John Taylor is well worth reading. In this paper I have provided empirical evidence that government actions and interventions caused, prolonged, and worsened the financial crisis. They caused it by deviating from historical precedents and principles for setting interest rates, which had worked well for 20 years. They prolonged it by misdiagnosing the problems in the bank credit markets and thereby responding inappropriately by focusing on… More »

This column for National Journal [link expires in a fortnight] looks at an international dimension of the economic emergency: Even weeks ago, the orthodox and unorthodox measures that the Federal Reserve is now resorting to would have seemed scarcely thinkable. The same goes for the fiscal stimulus of $500 billion or more that the Obama administration is preparing. Whether these amazingly bold interventions succeed is another matter, but nobody can question the Fed… More »

Yasheng Huang's book on China's economic miracle went on to my reading list when I saw it reviewed in The Economist earlier this year. I promptly forgot about it. This article [registration required] in the McKinsey Quarterly tells me to bump it to the top. (Above "Outliers"? Perish the thought.) The credibility of American-style capitalism was among the earliest victims of the global financial crisis. With Lehman Brothers barely in its grave, pundits the world… More »

[This review ran in the FT earlier in the week and I forgot to post it here. Sorry.] Robert Samuelson, who writes for Newsweek and the Washington Post, has for years been one of the most interesting economic commentators in the US. He stands for independence and lack of agitation, real or synthetic. He has no time for exaggerated alarms and enthusiasms. He is steady in a boom and steady in a crisis. Except that he writes too well, he might have been a good central… More »

More rivals? It seems that Obama has chosen Ron Kirk as his USTR and Hilda Solis as his labor secretary. Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, is said to be a supporter of NAFTA in particular and free trade in general. Solis is apparently a labor advocate and friend of the unions, and not so keen on liberal trade; read Harold Meyerson's endorsement: What does Rep. Hilda Solis, Barack Obama's selection for secretary of labor, bring to the job? Only a record of… More »

I am steeling myself to approach "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell's latest. I am not an admirer, but I can hardly complain about this further contribution to the culture--as I hope to in due course--without having read it.Since the first chapter of "Tipping Point" I have been enduring Gladwell out of an increasingly weary sense of professional obligation. This is what they pay me to do, I tell myself. The man has a nose for interesting tales, I grant you, but his… More »

A new column for the FT on Tom Daschle's chances of reforming the health system:He is a good choice. He combines years of experience in Washington with longstanding expertise in health policy. He watched at close hand as the last big effort to reform US healthcare - the project led by Hillary Clinton in 1993 - came to nothing. He thinks he knows why that project failed and how to do better next time. And he has just published a book on the subject: Critical: What… More »

An interesting post about political corruption on Larry Sabato's site. Though not instantly germane, I thought this was a particularly good point: A system of government or politics can be at least as corrupting as human nature itself. We have studied politicians in close proximity for years, and as much as it may disappoint the cynics, we have not found politicians to be venal as a class. While there are a number of individual exceptions, most professional… More »

The criminal complaint against Rod Blagojevich, Democratic governor of Illinois, is well worth skimming. You have to read this stuff for yourself to believe it. 90. Later on November 3, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with Advisor A. By this time, media reports indicated that Senate Candidate 1, an advisor to the President-elect, was interested in the Senate seat if it became vacant, and was likely to be supported by the President-elect. During the call, ROD… More »

If you are interested in photography (as I am) you will have noticed that the launch of the Nikon D3x has met with a mixed response. More »

My latest FT column looks at the design of the forthcoming fiscal stimulus:"Rule one: never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things." Rahm Emanuel, who will be chief of staff in the Obama White House, made this observation to an interviewer recently. The big things he has in mind include comprehensive healthcare reform and a greener energy policy to make the US less dependent on foreign oil.With a lot of luck, he could be right - and… More »