So in this piece about Felix Salmon, Felix says that Larry Summers reads a lot of financial blogs:
- But every writer scribbles with an ideal reader in mind. Salmon is no exception. He may not covet the biggest audience but he does yearn for the best and most influential reader: "It’s a known fact," he says, "that Larry Summers reads a lot of blogs."
- If that sort of audience is what he’s after, I ask, why not become a regular on CNBC? "Because Larry Summers doesn’t watch CNBC."
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I particularly enjoyed this section about Felix:
- Here's how he handled an invitation to speak to a prestigious gathering of bankers and economists in Zermatt, Switzerland, recently: "After all the high empirical seriousness of the past couple of days, I think that the attendees enjoyed me blowing off steam by telling them that we had to do something which of course we won’t do at all: abolish the tax-deductibility of interest, move in general from a world of debt finance to a world of equity finance, and, insofar as there is credit in the world, encourage that credit to be in the form of loans rather than bonds." It was the equivalent of telling a convention of Episcopal priests that they should seriously reconsider value of the New Testament.
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I am convinced (well, at least hopeful) that in the first month of launching The Bail, that I had an intense argument with Larry Summers over on Calculated Risk. He dropped a few hints in the heat of his anger as he repeated over and over:
- "If you only knew who I was, you wouldn't be speaking to me that way."
Then there was a Harvard reference, and something about the Fed. I assumed at the time it was complete and utter BS, which it may very well have been.
And by the way he was right. Had I known that it might have been the narcoleptic himself, I would have been much, much more of an ass.
I was ripping Keynes on the day the stimulus was passed...I basically went to CR to pick a fight with the Keynesian academic sloths who reside there perpetually. I started the fight with a loud message (all caps) calling all Keynesians generational rapists. It was based on one of my first angry, opinion pieces on the stimulus:
- Also missing from the debate is the concern for our children and the unconscionable debt burden we are leaving them. Keynesians, what value are you adding? Your insane belief in the power of government spending is painful entertainment for the rest of us who can smell the bull the minute you hit town. Where is the grand vision? Where is the vital infrastrucure? Why do these projects merit the borrowing of $1 trillion more from our children's increasingly dim futures? We're still waiting to hear how each project will further our national interest.
- So stop wasting our time with your useless theory on how this giveaway will substantially boost the economy. We're not buying it. It didn't work in the 1930s and it's not going to work now. Are you listening, Krugman. The massive spending that accompanied our entrance into WWII brought us out of the depression. Not the keynesian claptrap you so proudly cite.
- Call this stimulus what it really is, generational rape with a trillion-dollar shovel, and it's but one more painful wrong turn as we continue on the path to federal bankruptcy.
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Larry Summers Archive ( A whole bunch of good stuff)
