Everybody—in the sense of “economic geeks”—is buzzing about the IMF World Economic Outlook report (PDF). In it, they explain that they’ve been underestimating the economic multiplier effect.

Don’t click away! Really: this is interesting, and simple, and important. I promise you! Just give me one paragraph to explain.

Let’s suppose that the government decides to spend $100 million on starting a new program. This money will be paid out in salaries (it doesn’t matter and this makes it simpler). Let’s assume that 80% of this money earned is spent. Thus, just at this second level, $100 million spent results in $180 million dollars in economic activity. Of course, this continues on for an endless number of levels because that $80 million will be earned by others who will spend it and so on. This is the economic multiplier effect.

There are two aspects of underestimating the economic multiplier. First, it means that the positive effects of government spending are underestimated. Second, it means that the negative effects of government cuts are also underestimated.

So by noting that they’ve been underestimating the economic multiplier, the IMF is doing a Rick Perry, “Oops!” Traditionally the IMF has pushed countries to take on governmental austerity. This is what Paul Krugman refers to as belief in the Confidence Fairy. But over the last decade, the IMF has started to push the idea that maybe the Confidence Fairy doesn’t exist and that austerity is not the panacea that had been claimed.

This is an important reason why all of the austerity in Europe has been such a bust and why the United States (with much less austerity) is doing better. Unfortunately, the European Central Bank (and the whole of the Republican Party and much of the Democratic Party as well) hang on to the idea that it is only through austerity that we will flourish. This is the idea that is behind Romney’s statements that governments don’t create jobs and Ryan’s assertion that the stimulus is just a temporary “sugar high.”

It is good that the IMF is now on the right side of the facts and pushing for more expensive fiscal and monetary policy. Of course, it won’t really help. If facts mattered to the austerians, they would not—after 4 years of failed policy—continue to be austerians.

I’m going out of town on business for a few days. I don’t know how much blogging I will be doing. Maybe a lot. We’ll see. Regardless, I created this set of ten R&B songs from my childhood. When all the polls are going against you, you can always turn to this:

Update (8 October 2012 9:39 pm)

When Etta James died, I saw a lot of headlines that read, “At Last Singer Etta James Dead at 73.” Yes, they normally put quotes around “At Last” and a comma after “James.” But still, it is an annoying headline. Better would be, “Etta James, ‘At Last’ Singer, Dead at 73.” Unless you were really anxious for the old girl to die.

Fred Kaplan has a devastating article about Romney’s foreign policy speech today, Mitt Romney’s Most Dishonest Speech. You can get some idea of where he’s coming from in the subtitle, “When it comes to lies and half-truths, Romney saves his best stuff for foreign policy.”

Kaplan goes point by point in the speech and demolishes it. He admits that in a couple of cases—especially Syria—Obama’s performance could have been better. But as usual, Romney does not say what he would do better. It is the same old same old from Romney: “Trust me!”

Earlier today, I wrote about my frustration at having to defend Obama when I disagree with his policies. Kaplan discusses this in his article as well. You can’t not. No president is perfect; he will always do things that one disagrees with. But it seems particularly wrong that a liberal like me should have to defend Obama policies that Romney (if he weren’t running against Obama) would love.

Here is one example from Kaplan:

Of course, all of this is standard Republican macho foreign policy bullshit. But according to Romney, Obama should get no credit for it. No credit? Giving him credit for the drone strikes is key to my biggest disappointments about him.

The article next goes on to a very frustrating attack that Romney does all the time and almost never gets called on:

This is not likely to catch the eye of PolitiFact. You see, Romney is telling the truth: he will do these things. This is the same as his claim to cover pre-existing condition without explaining that his plan is to have things exactly the same as they’ve been for years.

The rest of the article chronicles all of the now well known ways that Romney deceives—this time on foreign policy. Will it matter? Probably not. After all, he was “aggressive” at the debate! If we end up with this fucktard as President, it will be thanks to the fact that we don’t have more journalists like Fred Kaplan who are willing to dig into what the candidates actually say and not focus on how they say it.

We have allowed the powerful, the rich, the Democratic and Republican Cheech-and-Chong machine… to define the political context through which we view the world… We need to remove 9/11 from our memories for a moment, and look at a perfect trajectory of mass slaughter in Iraq that extends back many decades, and extends to both the Democratic and Republican regimes that have ruled this country. —Jeremy Scahill, Socialist Worker, 2007

Matt Taibbi has an interesting take on the debate. He thinks that both Obama and Romney lost. But I suspect that he sees it pretty much the way everyone else does, because he spends most of the article attacking what Romney actually said.

The main point of the article is that the media should not elevate style over substance. They already know that they work in a medium that distorts politics in a very bad way. But instead of pushing back against this, they just pile on more.

Taibbi discusses this as it related to the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates:

Indeed, they should be ashamed. But they aren’t. This reminds me of when Bill O’Reilly is on The Daily Show claiming that he’s just an entertainer. I’m inclined to believe him. But it isn’t just him. It is most TV news people. Hell, it is most newspaper people.

Taibbi ends:

Of course they did. You know why? Because there’s no business like their business:

[1] I’ve always wondered about this. Isn’t it likely that the in 1960, the radio-listening public skewed conservative? I don’t know, but it’s a reasonable question.

This is how the presidential race works. We start with a policy of Obama’s that I don’t like. Then Mitt Romney, who very much likes the policy, lies and says the policy doesn’t exist. And then Obama defends doing something that I don’t like. Meanwhile, of course, the media are at the point where Mitt Romney’s lies are just given, and therefore: dog bites man—nothing to see here—no news.

Anyway, Obama lied too when he said Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes by $5 trillion in the next ten years; he should have noted that Romney is going to pay for those cuts by… Magic! It is a given in the mainstream that Democrats are supposed to give a thorough analysis of their opponents’ policy plans while Republicans are expected to lie. Balance!

The Maddow Blog is reporting on Mitt’s Mendacity on trade agreements. According to Mitt Romney, Obama has not passed any new free trade agreements. In fact, he’s passed 3, but who cares? If Mitt Romney were a Democrat, well then, he would be expected to get that number right. In fact, if he had said 2 or 4, major portions of the fact checking industry would have been mobilized to bring this shocking lie to the attention of the public. But Romney isn’t a Democrat; he’s a Republican. Dog bites man; nothing to see here; no news.

Of course, free trade agreements are bullshit. They are designed to fuck workers and destroy the environment—all in the name of greater profits for corporations. Here’s the thing about these things. They are always justified by noting that they’ve increased productivity or GDP. But how long are we going to accept these reasons when over the last 3 decades huge increases in productivity and GDP have provided works with almost no gains whatsoever? But as every newspaper in the nation can tell you: labor reporting just isn’t interesting. No news there.

So here I am in the position of defending a repugnant policy of Obama against an outright lie from Mitt Romney. This is what comes from supporting a candidate and a party that really doesn’t have my interests at heart. It’s like choosing a mother who beats me over a father who rapes me. And yet, I don’t want to see America raped by Mitt Romney and the Republican party. So I support the very conservative Democratic Party. But how long can America deal with this situation? And how long can I?

Dog bites man; nothing to see here; no news.

Mister Kenneth W. Krause, ambushed while heading to his car after a solid 3 hours at the gym, gallantly apologized to Jennifer Livingston for indelicately addressing her weight condition; he had no idea she was so damn sensitive.

I would like to apologize to Mister Krause for insinuating he may have, at one time, looked like a retarded Chinese Crested dog. He just looks like some guy.

I guess her wish was what told the doctors she needed a new heart:

Anthropologists the world over are trying to figure out when man discovered the secret of fire. Now by the secret of fire, we don’t mean, “Lightning therefore: fire!” We mean the Boy Scout (or any other fascist youth organization) idea of creating fire by rubbing sticks together, or otherwise creating a spark. It appears that long before this secret was learned, men would “harvest fire” from those that naturally occurred. And then they would try to keep the fire going for as long as possible because it was a major new technology. Imagine if every time there was a storm, iPhones rained down on us and we could use them until we (Inevitably!) dropped them in the toilet. You get the idea.

There are three camps of anthropologists when it comes to this issue. First, there are those who think that fire was discovered very early: 1.8 years ago by H. erectus. Or it could have been later: 400,000 years ago by the Neanderthals. This would mean that we humans stole it from them, patent protection being very weak in Europe at that time. But others think that the secret of fire came about quite recently: about 12,000 years ago—basically when we started farming.

The reason fire is so important is that we couldn’t live without it. At some point, we evolved bodies that need meat to be cooked. We just don’t have very good digestive systems. This probably has something to do with the ridiculous amount of energy that our over sized brains require. This fact probably shows the way forward, because this question of when we were able to harness fire will likely never be answered by anthropologist.

Eventually, geneticists will figure out when we evolved to require cooked food. And there’s only one way for us to have changed in this way: by eating all of our meat cooked. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have evolved this way. So the time when we only could survive on cooked meat must be sometime after we cooked most of our meat.

And as for all of you raw food buffs out there: fuck off!