On Mathew Yglesias, Slate's Financial Journalist

Back in the dark ages of 2004, early blogger Mathew Yglesias seemed to be reviled by everyone populat in the still nascent political blogosphere.  Conservative war-bloggers like Allah Pundit, liberals on Daily Kos, and everyone in between seemed to have it in for him. In fact, Andrew Sullivan, then supposedly a conservative, even adopted a derogatory “Ygelias award” – an action indicative of Sullivan’s future devolution.

Not knowing any better, I reflexively adopted this pervasive Ygelias disdain -- which reach its most disturbing pinnacle  in the near-celebration that met his report of being assaulted while walking home in D.C. -- while reading him maybe once a year.

Fast forward two presidential terms, and I now discover Ygelias has become a surprisingly competent financial columnist for Slate.

Consider the evidence, drawn mostly from very recent work:

•    He seems to have a solid understanding of fiat money. (here)

•   He recognizes that because debt is denombinanated nominally, it affects behavior, erasing the veil of money.  

•    He seems to advocate tax cuts for the poor. (if you think about it, this amounts to giving those with income tax obligations a check)

•  He repeatedly draws attention to the on the real crisis of our times – long-term, mass unemployment (multiple pieces)

•  He asks how to fix our unemployment debacle, focusing mostly on restoring aggregate demand. Lately, he seems to have dipped into the misguided uproar over nominal GDP targeting, but then again, who hasn’t? Overall, he seems most interested in demand restoration through fiscal policy -- pace, his comments on Obama’s speech for example: what other liberal columnists correctly identifies the absence of demand restoration as a means to lower unemployment in the President’s vision?

•  He has written two books, the second of which appears to detail how the absurd run-up in real estate values and rent in big cities like D.C. -- where prices haven't fallen -- hurts the young.

All in all, given the current state of economic understanding, I think Yeglias is one of the best financial journalists out there, perhaps because his degree is in philosophy rather than economics.

That said, this article, which rebuts the accusation that rebuttal to “QE3 will hurt savers” misses the forest for the trees. Yeglias only attempts to prove that QE is not inflationary, even though he seems to think it expands the money supply (I think? this seems like a contradiction.) In fact, reserves are not money, so it is not inflationary at all. However, while it is true that QE3 likely won’t hurt savers by provoking excess inflation, and I agree that is the general conservative argument, you cannot say it does not intend to hurt savers. The point is to reduce interests rates. 

And, for savers, per Mosler, interest payments are income. Therefore, if successful, QE3 intends to reduce savers’ interest income as we have seen occur.

Still, it seems like Yeglias is genuinely grappling with the issues in a way most financial journalists fail to, and I credit him for that.