The Map and the Territory by Alan Greenspan — SIX | SCHOONER INTELLIGENCE AND THEN SOME

1. 1. Before the 20th century, timely economic data for the US economy as a whole were scarce, with only decennial censuses providing some information.
2. 2. The Journal of Commerce used two deepwater schooners to intercept incoming ships and obtain trade stories ahead of markets, a practice called 'schooner intelligence'.
3. 3. Samuel F. B. Morse's commercially viable telegraph in 1844 was a major information breakthrough, blanketing much of the US east of the Mississippi within a decade.
4. 4. The Pony Express, starting in 1860, reduced transcontinental message time to under ten days, but was made obsolete by the transcontinental telegraph in 1861.
5. 5. The transatlantic cable, operational on July 28, 1866, enabled near-real-time communication between New York, San Francisco, and London, greatly improving global resource allocation.
6. 6. Railroad expansion and the Homestead Act during and after the Civil War opened the Great Plains, more than doubling national wheat production.
7. 7. Simon Kuznets, funded by the NBER, developed comprehensive national income data back to 1869, setting the standard for GNP measurement later adopted by the Department of Commerce.
8. 8. Postwar Keynesian forecasters predicted secular stagnation after WWII, but the economy boomed, teaching Greenspan that intelligent people can make big macroeconomic mistakes.
9. 9. During the 1973-74 OPEC oil embargo, Greenspan incorrectly assumed oil demand was price inelastic, but demand fell sharply as prices rose, surprising him and many others.
10. 10. As CEA chairman in 1974-75, Greenspan developed a weekly GNP estimate to determine whether the recession was an inventory correction or a collapse in final demand.
11. 11. Greenspan notes that Presidents Ford and Reagan showed unusual political courage by resisting calls for aggressive stimulus (Ford in 1975) and supporting tight money (Reagan in 1980-82).
12. 12. The Fed's lending of $29 billion to JPMorgan for the Bear Stearns bailout in 2008 should have been swapped with Treasury securities to maintain proper fiscal bookkeeping, Greenspan argues.