Mason also discusses how this program is radicalizing the public. Communists, Trotskyists and other extreme-left groups are polling at 43%. That’s a strikingly high number. This plus the level of dissent on the street suggests Greece is on its way out of the eurozone. But will the technocrats prevail? As Michael Hudson has stressed here and in other commentary, the banks are succeeding in stripping Greece of assets, an operation that used to be possible only via military force.

From Democracy Now (hat tip Philip Pilkington):

Mason also discusses how this program is radicalizing the public. Communists, Trotskyists and other extreme-left groups are polling at 43%. That’s a strikingly high number. This plus the level of dissent on the street suggests Greece is on its way out of the eurozone. But will the technocrats prevail? As Michael Hudson has stressed here and in other commentary, the banks are succeeding in stripping Greece of assets, an operation that used to be possible only via military force.

From Democracy Now (hat tip Philip Pilkington):

Christina and David Romer have a new paper (pdf), focusing on the interwar era:

This paper uses the interwar period in the United States as a laboratory for investigating the incentive effects of changes in marginal income tax rates. Marginal rates changed frequently and drastically in the 1920s and 1930s, and the changes varied greatly across income groups at the top of the income distribution. We examine the effect of these changes on taxable income using time-series/cross-section analysis of data on income and taxes by small slices of the income distribution. We find that the elasticity of taxable income to changes in the log after-tax share (one minus the marginal rate) is positive but small (approximately 0.2) and precisely estimated (a t-statistic over 6). The estimate is highly robust. We also examine the time-series response of available indicators of investment and entrepreneurial activity to changes in marginal rates. We find suggestive evidence of an impact on business formation, but no evidence of an important impact on other indicators.

For the pointer I thank Ilya Novak.  I have not yet read the paper.

Memo Question for February 29: The Uneven Spread of Industrialization:

By the end of the nineteenth century, the classic Industrial Revolution technologies of coal, steam, textile machinery, rails, locomotives, and precision metalworking–plus a large number of follow-on technologies, as witnessed by the growth of a Johannesburg centered around leading-edge organic chemicals–were or could be profitable pretty much everywhere in the world, if the organization and resources could be assembled. Why then did industrialization spread from Britain in the years up to 1900 only to western Europe, the temperate zones of the Americas and Australasia, and Japan? What answers do this week’s readings suggest to you?