Links for today

Ned Phelps has an interesting article in the FT that criticizes both Keynesians and neoclassicals. He blames speculation for the housing crisis, not incentives.

The WSJ has an article (subscription required) on John Geanokopolos's work on leverage. I think that theorists will be interested to learn that they were on the margins:

Mr. Geanakoplos is among a small band of academics offering new thinking about those cycles. A varied group ranging from finance specialists to abstract theorists, they are moving to economic center stage after years on the margins.

Hard to see what margins they were on, but then we also learn that traditional macroeconomics had been relegated to second class status:

Traditional macroeconomics, such as practiced by John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, was relegated to second-class status.

So I guess any comment about economics is possible in the WSJ. But despite these complaints, the article is interesting.

Everyone wants to make their work seem more revolutionary than it was, and reporters need it to be so, else why report it.