Flash! Economists Make Cynical Pundits Redundant!

[Spengler]

Flash! Economists Make Cynical Pundits Redundant! on the Spengler Blog


by David P. Goldman


I have nothing to say about the valedictory remarks of Christina Romer, the departing chair of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors:

She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things.

What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: "Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare."

Satire herself (as Trotsky wrote in another context somewhere in his History of the Russian Revolution) stands mute.

[Pastaneta]

I think we can induct Romer in the academia of Laputa, as described by Lemuel Gulliver...

[Spengler]

I think we can induct Romer in the academia of Laputa, as described by Lemuel Gulliver...

La Puta? She doesn't look like one.

[Walter Sobchak]

I sent a copy to my son. He graduated this spring with majors in math and econ. He is deciding between graduate programs in Statistics and Economics. He says that macro bothers him because it is all arbitrary, the results simply tell you what the assumptions were.

[Pastaneta]

La Puta? She doesn't look like one.

The island of Laputa:

http://records.viu.ca/~mcneil/lec/lecswiftlap.htm

The main focus of social criticism in the voyage to Laputa is on intellectuals, such as scholars, philosophers, and scientists, who often get lost in theoretical abstractions and conceptions to the exclusion of the more pragmatic aspects of life, in direct contrast to the practical Brobdingnagians. Many critics feel Swift was satirizing "the strange experiments of the scientists of the Royal Society," but may also have been warning his readers against "the political projectors and speculators of the time," (Davis 149-150). The Laputians excel at theoretical mathematics, but they can't build houses where the walls are straight and the corners are square. Instead, they constantly worry about when the sun will burn out and whether a comet will collide with the earth. This misuse of reason is hilariously elaborated on in Chapters five and six, where the various experiments occuring at the Grand Academy of Lagado are described. Of course, the point is highlighted as Gulliver professes his sincere admiration for such projects as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers and building houses from the roof down. The satire in Voyage three attacks both the deficiency of common sense and the consequences of corrupt judgment (Quintana, 317).

[Simple Minded]

I sent a copy to my son. He graduated this spring with majors in math and econ. He is deciding between graduate programs in Statistics and Economics. He says that macro bothers him because it is all arbitrary, the results simply tell you what the assumptions were.

Walter,
One of my friends has a degree in economics. I once asked him why so many economists disagreed with each other.

His reply was "It is not a science at all. It is more a cross between alchemy and poker." He woud agree with your son's statement.

He became a very successful business man after abandoning the field of economics.

[Spengler]

Macro is an utter and complete waste of time: I had the misfortune to study it many years ago. It reduces human issues to mathematical processes and gets everything wrong before it starts. Finance has some value (particularly when one gets into the details of corporate finance) -- much of it is abstract but it is closer to actual business.

I sent a copy to my son. He graduated this spring with majors in math and econ. He is deciding between graduate programs in Statistics and Economics. He says that macro bothers him because it is all arbitrary, the results simply tell you what the assumptions were.

Walter,
One of my friends has a degree in economics. I once asked him why so many economists disagreed with each other.

His reply was "It is not a science at all. It is more a cross between alchemy and poker." He woud agree with your son's statement.

He became a very successful business man after abandoning the field of economics.

[Pastaneta]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdFNCR1L ... r_embedded

What an idiot!

But she is a good representative of the profession... Unhappily!

[Michael]

“What do you call a thousand IMF economists lying at the bottom of the sea?” went the joke at the World Bank, – “a good start.”

A Russian joke:
“Two economists meet. One asks the other:
‘You understand what’s happening?’
The other responds: ‘Wait, I’ll explain it to you.’
‘No, no,’ says the first, ‘explaining is no problem, I’m an economist, too. What I’m asking is: do you understand?”

Entire sections of this clergy pretend to be dissidents and to critique this religion’s dogma. The latest attempt to revive the so-called “science of the economy” – a current that straight-facedly refers to itself as “Post Autistic Economics” (l’«économie non autistique»)– makes a living from dismantling the usurpations, sleights of hand and cooked books of a science whose only tangible function is to rattle the censer during the vociferations of the chiefs, giving their demands for submission a bit of ceremony, and ultimately doing what religions have always done: providing explanations. For total misery becomes intolerable the moment it is shown for what it is, without cause or reason. (L'insurrection qui vient)