Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

I live in Taos, New Mexico. What the hell is a "suit"? I know what I tie is but don't have any. Someone I know who is moving away says his biggest regret is that he will now have to buy "real clothes." Perhaps a suit is "real clothes."

Please ignore my question, however. Something tells me I'm better off being ignorant.

P.S. The London Business School guy sounds pretty cool. I'd do whatever he does.

Oh, cry me a river. I read this:

"We are in the 40-foot ceilinged Salla Maggioranza of the Italian Department of the Treasury, surrounded by bas-relief medallions of Numa, Justinian, Solon, and Lycurgus; with caryatids on the walls (one holding a two-foot, another making the "shhh!" gesture); beneath a neo-Baroque ceiling painting of key scenes from the reunification of Italy; with sixty of us around a big red table."

and all I can think is that I envy you for being one of the 60. If the cost is wearing a tie, big deal.

Aloha attire, I say. Ties are meant to tease cats with.

Brad, you should be wearing a "toga"...
Go Brad, go!

I'm glad to see you succeeded in completing your packing (and included enough ties). But I think you're wrong in blaming the British Empire.

London was the center of banking/exchange only for the period 1815-1914 or thereabouts. Before the Napoleonic wars, it shared preeminence with Amsterdam and after the First World War, New York took over. Modern business dress didn't stabilize until the 20th century and was essentially driven by New York practice. 19th century British office workers often didn't attempt to match jacket and pants, for example. 19th century British cloth weights (prior to central heating, remember--coal fires in the office, if you were lucky) would seem to us intolerably heavy and hot. Even in the early '60s, when I was growing up, I had dress shirts which were far heavier than I would wear today.

So we when around serious money wear what Morgan partners in the '20s and '30s insisted on. Or what people who aspired to become Morgan partners wore.

According to my wife's relatives it was the Croatians who invented the tie (probably to strangle Serbs with). So one more thing besides WWI we can blame on the balkans.

Insert obligatory joke about academics and/or businessman, the state of the world and reduced circulation of blood to the brain because of ties.

I feel compelled to ask: If you're sitting around wondering why almost no one has taken their ties off, why are you still wearing yours? (Although you speak of "nineteen of us" not wearing ties, you do not list yourself among the nineteen. I conclude that you are a member of the 41 wearing ties.) Perhaps it will just take action from one or two more people to end the whole silly tie wearing thing. Take a stand, and instead of wondering why you're all wearing ties, go ahead and take yours off.

The Romans will be wearing *extremely* light suits and shirts made of voile, which will be lighter than a T-shirt, a bit like tissue paper. So they are not suffering as badly as they might.

Go and buy some for summer wear before you leave at Caleffi on Via Colonna Antonina, 53, just near the Palazzo di Montecitorio.

Then get a coffee round the corner at Ciampini in Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina...

Men in Rome also carry handbags, but that's a different story.

Heheheheh. Do I win $5 for guessing that the always-dapper Portes was one of the two?

Brad> The other 41 of us males are wearing our ties. Why is unclear: it is Rome, it is the summer, and they have turned the air conditioning off.

You're not really from California, are you?

"According to my wife's relatives it was the Croatians who invented the tie (probably to strangle Serbs with). So one more thing besides WWI we can blame on the balkans."

Dex, don't fall for the standard "ancient hatreds" myth about the Serbs and the Croats.

Here's a link to a short history of the necktie:

http://www.academia-
cravatica.hr/en/necktie_history.html

You are correct. One of them is Richard Portes and you may claim your five pounds.

John: They're those weird gray things you see the big-city lawyers wear on TV, I think.

(It was a remarkable discovery, when I was working as an administrator, how it became much less objectionable and uncomfortable to wear a suit & tie when I could have got away without it... I quite liked it, after a while.)

Perhaps we could theorise this datapoint shows the inherent conservativeness of economists? No? Oh. Well, worth a try.

My office at Treasury actually went for casual Friday. My problem was that the one day I didn't bring a tie, I'd be called in to brief Rubin, who (being an investment banker) was _not_ a fan of casual dress.

However, when we had the fire at Treasury and the air conditioning didn't work, we did not have to wear ties then.

Well, ok on the neck ties. Bit the suiits, the suits, are surely British. That need for lack of comfert was surely the result of those Victorians. And the need for suits was a product of the remnant of the little ice age.

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I'm a regular visitor to Italy and was in fact in Rome the last two weeks of July. While in Rome, I pick up the Int'l Herald Tribune for 2 euros from the newsstand in the Piazzale Cina in the EUR suburb of Rome (worth seeing for all the fascist-styled gov't buildings there).

Usually the Tribune (a mix of NYT, WA Post, AP and Reuters stories) is a quick way to get US news. However, on my last trip, I came across some stupider-than-usual opinion pieces by Roger Cohen, the self-styled "Globalist." He writes for the NYT and his articles are so slanted that I wonder if the NYT strives to make its op-ed pieces more moronic for its European readers.

I saved one gem, dated July 28. It read: "Pre-emption, even in the case of demonstrably imminent danger, and the long-term commitment of troops to Iraq are ideas that tend to send shivers down what is left of European spines."

By way of reminding Cohen, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty was invoked on September 12, 2001, by the NATO Allies. Because one of its members had been attacked, the Article explicitly outlines assistance and cooperation to be provided militarily by all Allies to the US. The subsequent US-led military action in Afghanistan was supported by 26 NATO Allies. We went into Afghanistan as much to punish the Taliban as to pre-empt further attacks... And so who doesn't believe in pre-emption? Could Cohen pls. name a sovereign country (European or otherwise) that doesn't believe in pre-emption when faced by a lethal threat?

What he is saying, truly, is that the Europeans do not agree with the NYT's definition of pre-emption --- hence, they are spineless. But what we have learned is that Judith Miller of the NYT amplified, and gave credence to, the whole disinformation campaign led by the Defense Department and the Administration. The imminent threats, and certainly the ballyhooed nuclear threats, were complete fiction. It will be proven, in time, that the NYT was as responsible for the Iraq mess as was our failed national leadership.

Sadly, the NYT's disinformation campaign cost lives, real human treasure, our soldiers. Had we listened to our spineless European allies --- who have had more experience with terrorists than ourselves (recall the Red Brigade and IRA scourges)--- we would not be dealing with the ongoing disaster in Iraq now. But our government knew better.

I'll save my euros next time in Rome and my visits to the EUR newsstand.

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