Clive Crook

I refuse to give up on a carbon tax. In a new column for National Journal (the link expires at the end of next week), I explain why, and criticize the approaches of both Obama and McCain to energy policy. Much the most important part of [their] programs is the seemingly brave commitment both have made to a long-term cap-and-trade regime for control of carbon. This could indeed be, to use Al Gore's favorite word, a "transformative" undertaking. Obama sets a goal… More »

On the question of America's diminishing skills (see my earlier column, blog post), here is a reading by Peter Wood (via Arts and Letters) on why students are turning away from science. The precipitous drop in American science students has been visible for years. In 1998 the House released a national science-policy report, "Unlocking Our Future," that fussily described "a serious incongruity between the perceived utility of a degree in science and engineering by… More »

I went to my first gun show recently--part of my ongoing remedial education in American cultural literacy, which my (American) wife has lately taken in hand--and I have been turning the experience over in my mind these past few days. As a Brit, of course, I was conditioned to expect that the first time I saw an unholstered pistol would be when a mugger stuck one in my face. That is how it works in a civilized country. So for me it was passing strange to see many… More »

Not with a bang but with a whimper. The failure of the latest efforts to revive the Doha Round hardly came as a surprise; the fact that farming (what else?) was the sticking point was not exactly shocking either. And you could argue that little was immediately at stake. The talks were partly about tariff and subsidy limits, as opposed to tariffs and subsidies actually in place (these are typically well inside their WTO bindings). The breakdown does leave the system… More »

Barack Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East did what it was supposed to. It untapped a stream of presidential images: the candidate addressing 200,000 delighted Berliners; the candidate mingling comfortably with American soldiers, riding in military helicopters like a commander-in-chief; the candidate dealing with foreign leaders as an equal. For most voters, it is the images that will stick - what else was there? - and they are priceless. John McCain's chief… More »

I thought his speech was disappointing. He played it very safe. What he said was insubstantial even by his standards, and sometimes painfully banal. And it seemed to me to lack the flair in delivery that usually makes up the deficit. There were no memorable lines. All that stuff about tearing down (metaphorical) walls was predictable and lame. It was a mistake to evoke memories of "Tear down this wall," an unrepeatably dramatic stroke. And who thought it was a good… More »

Peter Orszag's short letter to Congress on the cost of the proposed help for Fannie and Freddie is well worth reading in full. It is a bit misleading to say, as most reports did, that the Congressional Budget Office believes the bail-out "could cost $25 billion"--a less scary figure than many on Capitol Hill had apparently been expecting. This is a probability-weighted average of two more likely, but very different, scenarios. One (rated a better-than-50 percent… More »

A word of congratulations to Vox, a most successful cross between a blog and an economics journal, which has recently been celebrating its first anniversary. The site is published under the auspices of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (a Eurocentric research network not unlike the NBER) and headed by Richard Baldwin, a professor at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. Vox has a starry cast of contributors from around the world, but as you would expect has a… More »

[Apologies for the delayed posting of this. A technical glitch. As if MobileMe weren't enough to contend with...]Head-to-head polls show McCain in with a fair chance of winning--despite a political and economic context which is about as unfavorable to Republicans as it could be. How come? The simplest explanation may be that the head-to-head polls (especially with more than three months to go) tell you very little, and are best ignored. According to political… More »

And speaking of satire... When I read Al Gore's latest speech on global warming, my reaction was much like my initial response to that New Yorker cover (see previous post): What am I supposed to make of this? The call to produce "100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years" is off the charts. To blandly claim that this is both "achievable" and "affordable" is a typical Gore touch--as is the hyperbole… More »

I would be happier with the idea that the New Yorker’s cover was satirical, as editor David Remnick claimed, if it was funny. Isn’t satire supposed to be funny? (Jeffrey Goldberg alerts me to the fact that an editorial writer at the New York Sun chuckled over it for several minutes. I didn’t chuckle even for a moment. It wasn't that I was offended. I was just puzzled. What am I supposed to make of this, I wondered?) Imagine the cartoon were not on the cover… More »

Hank Paulson's Sunday evening announcement on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the two gigantic pseudo-private enterprises that own or guarantee about half of the country's mortgages, and whose shares investors have been dumping) was mostly a request to Congress for temporary permission to act "if needed". He wants the Treasury to be able to lend to them, and to provide them with new capital (by buying equity or some kind of preferred stock). Meanwhile, the Fed has… More »

The so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, together with the Federal Home Loan Bank, have played a central role in shoring up the housing-finance market since the sub-prime meltdown began. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that they have become the entire market. But the more money they have pumped into housing, the faster their own financial condition has deteriorated. Now investors are ditching Fannie and Freddie stocks; on… More »

Even by the dismal standards of these events, this year's G8 summit in Japan was a wearisome spectacle. I cannot think that what was achieved--nothing--justified the meeting's doubtless impressive carbon footprint. I think I will remember it mainly for the quotation from IPCC head, R.K. Pachauri, who told reporters (according to the BBC) that the developed countries "should get off the backs of China and India" (and Pachauri wasn't even at the summit; he was… More »

My column on America’s educational assets—diminishing relative to those of other countries, and maybe in absolute terms as well—yielded some suggestions for further reading. Of the ones I've had a chance to look at so far, I recommend the following. Roger Pielke Jr (author of “Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics”) directs me to his observations on a new Rand report on competitiveness, which suggests that the situation is far… More »

Austan Goolsbee (a senior economic adviser on the Obama team) and Jack Kemp talked about the economy, under Walter Isaacson’s direction. Kemp returned again and again to taxation, accusing Obama of planning a big tax increase. Goolsbee said no, almost all taxpayers will get a tax cut—and the proposed rise in capital gains tax, especially deplored by Kemp, would still leave the rate in the low twenties, which had been consistent with rapid growth and a booming… More »

David Kennedy and John Yoo, with Jeffrey Rosen moderating, discussed "The Presidency and the Constitution". It was brave of Yoo--a principal architect of the Bush administration's constitutional-law doctrines--to appear in front of an audience as hostile to the White House as the liberal Aspen crowd. He did well, partly I think through seeming like a normal, even likeable, human being, something few in the audience were prepared for. As one questioner put it… More »

On the Creative Capitalism website, Brad DeLong attacks Milton Friedman's position on the social responsibility of business as "weak toast"--an expression I was unfamiliar with, but a good one which I intend to start using. Friedman famously argued that it was better for shareholders to decide what good causes to support than have managers of the companies they own decide for them. Brad asks, why? This is weak toast. This is thoroughly unconvincing. What reason is… More »

In a new column for National Journal, I discuss an article by Isabel Sawhill and Emily Monea of the Brookings Institution, which calls for America's "intergenerational contract" to be rewritten: The current contract, Sawhill and Monea say, was written in the 1930s when Social Security was born, revised in the 1960s with the addition of Medicare and Medicaid (which pays nursing home benefits), and then revised again in the current decade with passage of the… More »

I meant to say something about Walt Mossberg's session (on Tuesday) on "The Future of the Internet and the Rise of the Cell Phone"--though I acknowledge a slight impediment, having arrived late to find the session packed out and impossible to get into. Sources tell me it was about how devices like the iPhone constitute an entirely new computing platform, and are as momentous a turning point as the PC was in its day. Well, sure. As a devoted reader of Mossberg's… More »