Don’t expect a lot of IRS employees to lose their jobs.

I previously predicted that no one at the IRS would (or could) be fired over the recent scandal and that the most noteworthy offenders would probably get punished with mandatory paid vacation.

Those predictions seem to have been correct.

Having gotten the easy ones right, I’d like to venture a couple less certain ones: 1) I think that no one in the permanent bureaucracy at the IRS violated a law or regulation; and 2) I think that had the permanent bureaucrats at the IRS targeted progressive groups, the same actions would in fact have been a violation of law and regulation.

Bureaucracies are probably as resilient as cockroaches.

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth  Rogoff  fire back at Paul Krugman.

We admire your past scholarly work, which influences us to this day.  So it has been with deep disappointment that we have experienced your spectacularly uncivil behavior the past few weeks.  You have attacked us in very personal terms, virtually non-stop, in your New York Times column and blog posts.  Now you have doubled down in the New York Review of Books, adding the accusation we didn’t share our data.  Your characterization of our work and of our policy impact is selective and shallow.  It is deeply misleading about where we stand on the issues.  And we would respectfully submit, your logic and evidence on the policy substance is not nearly as compelling as you imply.

Nice to see someone take off the gloves and go toe to toe with Krugman.