I love reading conservative economist Greg Mankiw's blog. Sometimes he makes interesting points on economics, but sometimes he just puts up weird little discussion points that are very easy to rebut. Here, for instance, he and a colleague confused (deliberately?) the purpose of the TARP -- fixing the financial system -- with the economic stimulus legislation -- increasing aggregate demand. Here, he points out that in 1993 Larry Summers had a different view of unions than the president he works for has in 2009, continuing the conservative tradition of highlighting old quotes from Summers to make inane points about contemporary economic policy. But apparently Mankiw did not read the entire entry he linked to. Here is a little more from Summers that did not make it into Mankiw's post:
It is, however, a great mistake (made by some conservative economists) to attribute most unemployment to government interventions in the economy or to any lack of desire to work on the part of the unemployed. Unemployment was a serious economic problem in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries prior to the welfare state and widespread unionization. Unemployment then, as now, was closely linked to general macroeconomic conditions.
I'm sure that was just a mistake.
-- Tim Fernholz
