Let Us Now Praise Famous Economists
Read the whole piece at the following source:
Excerpt
On this Sept. 11, let us pause amid the numerous moments of silence to remember and reflect on the true heroes who walk among us — the nation’s economists.
Yes, these brave academics who have for generations sacrificed themselves for causes greater than they were, who have fought and persevered in the name of freedom, whose selflessness is without equal, these are the people on which we can only pray our children will model their futures.
If only more economists had been dispatched to the World Trade Center on 9/11, how many lives could have been saved? If only we had, as a nation, possessed the foresight to call on a specially trained team of Keynesians from the New York Federal Reserve Bank on Maiden Lane, just a short walk away, that day would have been so different.
Consider this: Who but the nation’s economists have the uncommon valor to brave the New Jersey Turnpike’s treacherous Exit 9, the diabolical and unforgiving turns of Route 18 and the dastardly, terrifying traffic that is Route 1 on their way to the front lines of Princeton, N.J., each day? Do you have that stuff in you?
While it’s often said that leaders aren’t born, they’re made, in the case of economists one has to question the wisdom of such a platitude. Clearly, these brave souls are made of something that’s only found in DNA. Quite simply, they have an innate resolve that cannot be taught, not even at the London School of Economics.
Sep 10, 2011 at 12:43 PM
Reader Comments (12)
http://blogs.reuters.com/muniland/2011/09/09/obama-proposes-direct-aid-to-local-governments/
As with the rest of the bilge coming from the usual right wing jackasses in response to Paul Krugman's observation--and that's really all it was, an observation--on Sunday, this one from All Valid Points is lacking substance and is merely attacking Kruggs patriotism. It's like it's 2002 all over again. Go back to Teh Krugmeister's post. At what point did he suggest he was somehow braver than the brave souls who sacrificed themselves in 2001? All he did was call out the awfulness which happened in the wake of 9/11. That's it. That's all. Did he get something wrong? If so, what? Want to defend Bernie Kerik? Knock yourself out.
Here's a snippet form Krugman's follow up post:
"The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud.
It was a time when tough talk was confused with real heroism, when people who made speeches, then feathered their own political or financial nests, were exalted along with – and sometimes above – those who put their lives on the line, both on the evil day and after.
So it was a shameful episode in our nation’s history – and it’s one that I can’t help thinking about whenever we talk about 9/11 itself."
It is also probably worth noting that what All Valid Points and War Criminal Donald Rumsfeld and others are engaging in here is political exploitation and intimidation, not at all dissimilar to that from the very scary and weird time of the two years following 9/11/2001. Dr. K has been amazingly prescient about the effects of the Bush Tax Cuts, the missing bond vigilantes the Murdoch Street Journal keeps warning about, the buffoonery of "Teh Maestro" and many many more economic issues, but his prescience in the run-up to the tragic Iraq Invasion is something he should be proudest of, which apparently he is.
Here's Dave Weigel:
"On a day when everyone else was flashing back to 9/11/2001, I was flashing back to the days and months later, when criticism of the Bush administration returned, and the practioners of it became, briefly, Emmanuel Goldsteins. Remember Susan Sontag? Remember the Dixie Chicks? Remember the campaign to "revoke the Oscar" from Michael Moore? There hasn't been much criticism of the substance of Krugman's remarks; denying that 9/11 and counterterrorism strategy became "wedge issues" is denying a few years of political history. The criticism is of Krugman for expressing it. He brushes the criticism right off."
Did he get anything wrong? Should we begin the two minutes of hate for him too?
There's a lot more to say here on this, but a couple more things:
1. The call that cartoon Krugman's mirror. He's been calling this a shitty economy (and worse than, for example, the Obama Administration had) for quite some time. Would you care for some links? It's one more thing he got correct.
2. http://dailybail.com/home/attention-christina-romer-you-tried-you-failed-shut-up.html
That's childish and bush-league. If you want to be taken seriously--and I want you to--you'd lay off the Gestapo nonsense.
3. On a semi-related note, it's your joint, but a lot of your commenters were strongly hinting at violence from Ron Paul supporters directed at Rick Perry. You may wish to take those jackasses to task.
More possibly to come. Remember, it's only out of love.
We are in a depression created by easy money and a 30-year debt bubble that grossly distorted housing prices versus median incomes, and until housing falls back to historical norms, and bank and household debt deleveraging run their course (5 more years if we're lucky), the economy will not recover, Keynesian delusionsaries Krugman, Delong, Romer, Reich, Galbraith, Stiglitz, Koo, Bernanke and Obama be damned.
And one would have thought that Daily Bail would have promoted Mr. Krugman's observation and follow-up post, given credit where credit is due. Perhaps DB would have framed a post with, "While we strongly disagree with Mr. Krugman's Keynesian leanings, which we believe to be the path to a long-term wholesale dismantling of the world's economy, we most certainly agree with his prescient stance against the tragically unfortunate Iraq Invasion before it even happened and his rock-steady consistent stance since then against the liars, opportunists, and ghouls who were wrong then and insist on being wrong now in the face of blindingly obvious empirical evidence." Something like that. That's what I would have expected anyway.
You say, "He's so political, it pissed me off." People disagree about things! Hell, Krugg's blog is called "The Conscience of a Liberal." This is a good thing in that he's not offering a bullshit "Fair and Balanced" slogan or "we call it down the middle" or "we're neutral" (as though that's possible). He's openly saying that he subscribes to a certain economic (and otherwise) worldview, then defends that worldview. If you disagree, that's fabulous, make your case.
Here's the meat of Krugman's observation:
"What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?"
This should not be mocked or dismissed as "too political". And it has exactly fuck-all to do with Keynesian or any other type of economics. It should be accepted as unassailable if unfortunate truth. And it should be shouted from the rooftops.
Polish
Read the original story again as I just did. I haven't a clue about the author's politics, but there was nothing right or left wing about it. It was a snarky piece against economists in general.
Snip:
If only more economists had been dispatched to the World Trade Center on 9/11, how many lives could have been saved? If only we had, as a nation, possessed the foresight to call on a specially trained team of Keynesians from the New York Federal Reserve Bank on Maiden Lane, just a short walk away, that day would have been so different.
Consider this: Who but the nation’s economists have the uncommon valor to brave the New Jersey Turnpike’s treacherous Exit 9, the diabolical and unforgiving turns of Route 18 and the dastardly, terrifying traffic that is Route 1 on their way to the front lines of Princeton, N.J., each day? Do you have that stuff in you?
While it’s often said that leaders aren’t born, they’re made, in the case of economists one has to question the wisdom of such a platitude. Clearly, these brave souls are made of something that’s only found in DNA. Quite simply, they have an innate resolve that cannot be taught, not even at the London School of Economics.
Today is indeed a day to give thanks to the economists, particularly those with PhD designations, the truest of the true, the handful who have earned the right through blood, sweat and tears to be called doctor. If only my father-in-law, a retired neurosurgeon, had deserved such a salutation. But how many white papers did he have the courage to author in his career, if you can call it that? At how many academic conferences in Paris and Washington did he have the boldness to stand and describe the greatness of John Stuart Mill?
Sadly, the answer is zero. Yes, he spent years saving the lives of his patients, removing tumors and curing neurological defects of a life-altering nature. But surely we aren’t so foolish as to speak of those actions in the same breath as a 300-page dissertation on behavioral finance.
On this day, take a moment from your busy life, to thank an economist. Don’t be alarmed if they keep the conversation short — they prefer to offer only one side of things and then prohibit debate or disagreement, but that’s merely a function of their brilliance. That they deign to walk among us mere mortals should be enough to cause us to genuflect before their passage.
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It's pure anti-economist snark, Polish. It's without an ideological angle. I think you misinterpreted the piece. I'll take the blame for over-emphasizing the Krugman angle, but like the author, when I think of economists I think of Krugman. It's a very funny piece, dude. Forget your grad degree in economics for a moment, and just read it.
Um, no. I clicked the link this time. It is, as I thought was clearly obvious from the tone, a response to Krugman's observation, which is linked at the words "the nation's economists". This is a reaction to Mr. Krugman calling out the motherfuckers who should feel some shame but instead try to change the subject and imply that Paul Krugman hates FDNY. The author is suggesting that Krugman (specifically, as the link and Princeton and other references make clear) is so full of himself, that he feel that he is more important than the true heros of 9/11 (which is, obviously, a dogshit straw-man thesis). How can this possibly be interpreted any other way? It is, well, shameful.
But Krugman's post was not the best thing I read yesterday. That honor goes to funnyman Dana Gould, who tweeted,
"Ten years ago, Saddam Hussein watched the news and thought, "Good thing I'm not involved in this..." "
Never forget!!!!!!
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I don't follow Krugman's posts. I don't know anything about the battle over FDNY. I'll take your word for it. I read it simply as a snarky piece against economists. I went back and read the Krugman piece and saw nothing about the FDNY. I admit to improper titling of the story. I should have said 'economists impaled' instead of 'krugman impaled'. Even though the author linked to Krugman's story, he didn't really address Krugman's column, as it was about using 9/11 as a wedge issue, which I agree with.
I should have taken more time to read Krugman's column before posting the story, and left out the Krugman reference, and left the story as satire on economists. Your criticism that it was an unfair attack on krugman is correct. I accept that.
I changed the headline.
So which is it going to be ?
Goldman Sachs or J.P.Morgan Chase ?
In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned. Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack "intellectual integrity"; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case. Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being "just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals." What is one key difference? Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views -- he favors health care -- and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he's defending are dismissed as a "fake scandal."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein
Here's the very same GlennZilla on the topic at hand:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/13/rituals/index.html
Lede:
"On 9/11 Day, Paul Krugman provoked a wave of petulant, angry condemnation for pointing out just some of the valid reasons that day is now inextricably linked with the shameful acts done in its name by the U.S."
If you want to criticize Kruggs for hypocrisy--and you should--perhaps you could do so in a separate post. But I would hope that you would give him credit where it's due, most especially on an issue which rises above mere economics (i.e., calling out the shame of the fake heroes in the wake of 9/11 and in the run-up to the deeply tragic Iraq Invasion) and not instead endorsing yet another right wing dildo who is desperate to avoid that obvious, unfortunate, and unassailable fact and equally desperate to paint Teh Krugmeister as Emmanuel Goldstein.
I don't think Krugman walks on water. He, like most of us, gets a lot of shit wrong. I hope that I would not take any individual instances of hypocrisy as "why I shouldn't like the guy" but would judge that person in toto. I have yet to hang out with Kruggie (although he did quote me once!), but I suspect that I would like the guy, warts and all. I do agree with him about a lot of things economic and he has gotten a lot of important shit rock solid, stone cold right (e.g., calling out Teh Maestro's buffoonery). But even if I disagreed with him on his economics or because of sundry hypocrisy, I suspect that I would like him on balance, if only for his words and behavior in the wake of 9/11 up to and including his most recent blog posts about 9/11 and its aftermath.