Angry Birds and Other Beasts

• Deficit Hawks: Want federal budget balanced or in surplus most of the time

• Deficit Doves: Want federal budget balanced over the scope of the business cycle

• Deficit Owls: Want federal budget managed per functional finance

• Bond Vigilantes: Investors (quasi-mythical) who will sell government bonds intending to impose "discipline" on governments who don't balance their budgets

• Rubin Democrats: Strain of Democratic Party thought and behavior, 1990s to present

  • Robert Rubin: Goldman Sachs; Treasury Secretary under Clinton

  • Prioritize growth over income redistribution or improvements in safety net

  • Neoliberal, market-oriented. Market regulation aimed at "social democratic" ends but seeking to appease conservative priorities.

Brad DeLong, "A Clinton-era centrist Democrat explains why it’s time to give democratic socialists a chance", Vox, March 4 2019