THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS….Paging Brad DeLong. I need your help in analyzing John Tamny’s piece in NRO today about the trade deficit:
Perhaps more importantly, it has to be remembered that we ultimately exchange products for products. Notwithstanding the media hand-wringing about the ?kindness of strangers,? no one in the real world is able to import something without exporting something first. In short, trade balances are logically illusory in that we only receive goods and services to the extent that we give something in return.
Trade balances are logically illusory? We have now reached a point where NRO’s financial writers aren’t even trying. They have simply decided ? by fiat ? that no event that takes place during the presidency of George W. Bush can possibly be bad. Even Louis XIV would be envious of such courtiers.
