Here are some items I've been meaning to post:
(1) ASSA Protests: My last post mentioned the planned protests at the ASSA; there was a bit of a buzz about the protests at the conference, and there was pretty impressive coverage in the Washington Post: The protesters who are trying to upend the ‘fantasy world’ of economics, with the subtitle: At a gathering of America's top economists, a small group of students is battling for the soul of economics. The protesters, mostly grad students in economics, did projections like the one in the image above, and did aim to "disrupt" some of the sessions, including some involving Greg Mankiw, Larry Summers, and Carmen Reinhart. (It's pretty hilarious to read Reinhart claiming that her session was heterodox in the Post article.) Mankiw's blog had an odd post titled "An Odd Question," in which he spoke of hecklers, one of whom apparently asked a question about Mankiw being funded by the Koch brothers. But one of the organizers of the protests, Keith Harrington, said that the hecklers weren't from the protesters. Mankiw's blog doesn't take comments, so Keith emailed him this:
Thank you for sharing the Washington Post article about our initiative on your blog. Since there is no place to leave comments on any of your posts, I just wanted to send this quick note pointing out that the heckler that you mentioned was not a part of our group. We made a point to only challenge you and your colleagues on the substance of your work and viewpoints, and to avoid any purely provocative, conspiratorial commentary such as the Koch Brothers remark.Sincerely,Keith Harrington
Mankiw's response:
Greg
Polite, but not so self-reflective. Reminds me of the response I got when I emailed James Poterba about a weird remark he made at an American Academy of Arts & Sciences event in 2010 (recounted here).
(2) Let Us Now Praise Corporate Persons, by Kent Greenfield in the Washington Monthly. ARthur MacEwan raised some of the same issues on corporate personhood in an "Ask Dr. Dollar" column a couple of years ago: How Important Is Citizens United?.
(3) Political Cartooning Is Almost Worth Dying For, by the wonderful Ted Rall in the LA TImes, about the horrific Charlie Hebdo attack. (Hats off to all the Twitter folks who have been pushing mainstream outlets to cover the #NAACBombing.)
(4) Piketty Responds to Criticisms from the Left, an interview by Potemkin Review.
(5) Several Items on #BlackLivesMatter and the NYPD that I'd meant to mention here but hadn't had time: Andy Cush at Gawker, The NYPD Is an Embarrassment to the City of New York; Ari Paul at Jacobin, Smash the Lynch Mob; Corey Robin at his blog, A Weimar-y Vibe (about the NYPD and PBA/Patrick Lynch after the shooting of two NYPD officers); Max Blumenthal at Alternet (nice redesign!), Emails and Racist Chats Show How Cops and GOP Are Teaming Up to Undermine de Blasio; and flawed, but worth reading, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone, The NYPD's Work Stoppage Is Surreal (<--this one from Taibbi was itself kind of surreal, for his saying he "understood" (i.e., sympathized with?) why the cops are mad at de Balsio, and that de Blasio's reference to his son Dante was "clumsy"--which led to an unfortunate Twitter fight between Taibbi and Blumenthal). And two segments from Doug Henwood's wonderful Behind the News have been great on the Ferguson/#BlackLivesMatter protests: the interview with Alex Vitale (second half of the December 4 show), and the interview with Kevin Alexander Gray (first half of the October 30 show).
That's it for now.