A brief complaint.

[Keith Wilson]

The only thing more tedious than a Second Amendment absolutist is a conspiracy fanatic.

Thanks for listening.

[LeeG]

Sounds like an observation.

[hanleyclifford]

Let's include all seekers of absolute solutions in the complaint---left or right.

[Phillip Allen]

Let's include all seekers of absolute solutions in the complaint---left or right.

I get it!

[ChrisBen]

The only good fanatic is a woodenboat fanatic.

[Canoez]

The only good fanatic is a woodenboat fanatic.

[hanleyclifford]

The only good fanatic is a woodenboat fanatic.

Hear! Hear!

[Kaa]

The only thing more tedious than a Second Amendment absolutist is a conspiracy fanatic.

Clearly you haven't explored the internet much :-)

Kaa

[Gerarddm]

Sounds reasonable to me, Keith. :-)

[bobbys]

The only thing more tedious than a Second Amendment absolutist is a conspiracy fanatic.

Thanks for listening.

.

Yeah ,well your not the guy with drones flying over your house and messages being sent through my fillings from the UN and White house..

A lot of take out pizza sent to the White house by the way......

Half pepperoni and Sausage, other half just cheese.

[David W Pratt]

Kieth-
If you shop around, I'm sure you can find both positions in one person

[C. Ross]

The active word being "tedious"?

Excellent choices, but on the Wilson Tedium Scale, where do Radical Feminists, Gold Standardists, Birthers, anti-Federal Reservists, and Keynesians rank?

[hokiefan]

Kieth-
If you shop around, I'm sure you can find both positions in one person

We have our very own right here on the WBF. He's just on vacation at the moment.

Bobby

[Chris Coose]

The only thing more tedious than a Second Amendment absolutist is a conspiracy fanatic.

Those 2 things together cause a bunch of them to build all kinds of forts and I get a kick out of that.

[Curtism]

Yeah, but the ones found 'round here are ordinarily featherweights, thankfully.

Here's a sampling of the real deals.

[beernd]

The only good fanatic is a woodenboat fanatic.

What else is there on the face of this planet to get fanatic about?

Dunno just asking

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Let's include all seekers of absolute solutions in the complaint---left or right.

Back to that old saw "your guys do it to!", eh hanley?
Has the Left got the equivalent of a Grover Norquist oath to "never ever vote to raise taxes"?
Has the Left got an absolutely intransient bloc like the Teaparty? You know, "my way or the highway". Starve the beast! and that sort of thing.
Has the left got an absolutley intransient lbloc like the followers of Wayne LaPierre? You know, "possession of machine guns is protected by the Second Amendment".
There is more but I won't regale you with it.

Your turn,big boy.

[Gerarddm]

Now, now Chuck- perhaps hanleyclifford was referring to, say, Raul Castro or Kim Jong-Un? ;-)

[Bobcat]

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.Sir Winston Churchill

[Phillip Allen]

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.Sir Winston Churchill

WOW! There is certainly a lot of THAT in the bilge!

[hanleyclifford]

Now, now Chuck- perhaps hanleyclifford was referring to, say, Raul Castro or Kim Jong-Un? ;-)

Here ya go, Cuyahoga, a a splendid example. Just read his signature line.

[Keith Wilson]

. . . . on the Wilson Tedium Scale, where do Radical Feminists, Gold Standardists, Birthers, anti-Federal Reservists, and Keynesians rank?

Lessee - with conspiracy theorists at 10 and gun nuts at 9.5, radical feminists get about 8.5 (extra points for each use of the world 'patriarchy', Gold Bugs 8.2, Birthers 9.1. Dedicated Communists are rather thin on the ground these days, but they rate a 9.5 at least. Anti-Federal-Reservists are often also conspiracy buffs, but by itself that only manages 7.5. Whether you agree with them or not, Keynsians don't belong in the same class; they don't often show fanaticism, and as a class aren't any more tedious than any other serious discussion of economics.

[hanleyclifford]

Actually, Keith , the Federal Reserve is not really a conspiracy. It's right out in the open for anyone to examine. It's just that most Americans don't for various reasons. Once information is public it is no longer a conspiracy.

[C. Ross]

Keynsians don't belong in the same class; they don't often show fanaticism, and as a class aren't any more tedious than any other serious discussion of economics.

Krugman of course epitomizes fanatical tediousness, generated from a well of smug self-righteous rigidity. If you exclude him and one or two others, yes, Keynesians as a group are an affable, generally harmless and ineffectual group.

[Keith Wilson]

Oh, just Krugman. OK. No, he's merely a well-informed op-ed writer you disagree with.

FWIW, I'd very much like your take on this column,if you can stomach a little Krugman so early in the morning. It's mostly technical. You can get as technical as you like in response, I'll muddle through somehow.

[hanleyclifford]

Gee, Keith, that sounds a lot like Bilgespeak.

[Paul Pless]

and Keynesians

nice

[C. Ross]

FWIW, I'd very much like your take on this column,if you can stomach a little Krugman so early in the morning. It's mostly technical. You can get as technical as you like in response, I'll muddle through somehow.

The link takes me here. .

Yeah, that reads like Krugman. . If you send me the link you intended I'll gladly read and reply.

[Paul Pless]

kinda makes you wonder just what exactly keith reads in the morning. . .

[Keith Wilson]

Oops! That's odd. I posted that photo as a joke yesterday; the url must have still been in 'paste'.

Well, here's the real link: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...9/is-lmentary/ And a further link to a longer paper he wrote on the same subject: http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/oxrep.pdf

[Cuyahoga Chuck]

Oops! That's odd. I posted that photo as a joke yesterday; the url must have still been in 'paste'.

Well, here's the real link: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...9/is-lmentary/ And a further link to a longer paper he wrote on the same subject: http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/oxrep.pdf

Princeton? Troglodytes don't need no stinkin' Princeton. Nor any reading matter. Especially those Gary Trudeau balloons! Trogs get their talking points from their guts. Like, "You talking to me punk?" And, " this is the most powerful handgun made punk! You feeling lucky?"

[johnw]

Krugman claims that he was not a Keynesian until he started studying the Japanese crisis. I suppose he has the fervor of a convert.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...omic-morality/
I like to think that I have enough integrity to change my views when it becomes clear that they were wrong. Maybe, maybe not — although it’s probably worth pointing out that I didn’t believe in the liquidity trap and was pretty down on old-fashioned Keynesianism until 1998, when a hard look at Japan and an attempt to understand what was happening there led me to change my mind. Anyway, I try, because the ideas of economists and political philosophers matter.

I'm inclined to think that he writes as he does because he feels like a Casandra. He's concerned with the whole direction of his profession, which he believes to be in a state of crisis.

[Keith Wilson]

Princeton? Troglodytes don't need no stinkin' Princeton.

True enough, but the links were for Chris Ross, who is a lot farther from being a troglodyte than most.

[2MeterTroll]

Krugmans got brown eyes right?

[wardd]

Krugman of course epitomizes fanatical tediousness, generated from a well of smug self-righteous rigidity. If you exclude him and one or two others, yes, Keynesians as a group are an affable, generally harmless and ineffectual group.

he's been correct more than anybody on the right

[hanleyclifford]

Princeton? Troglodytes don't need no stinkin' Princeton. Nor any reading matter. Especially those Gary Trudeau balloons! Trogs get their talking points from their guts. Like, "You talking to me punk?" And, " this is the most powerful handgun made punk! You feeling lucky?"

Well, are you gonna pull those pistols, or whistle Dixie?

[Keith Wilson]

So this afternoon I was driving to the hardware store, turned on the radio, it was 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and the celebrity guest was Paul Krugman, believe it or not.

[C. Ross]

Well, here's the real link: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...9/is-lmentary/ And a further link to a longer paper he wrote on the same subject: http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/oxrep.pdf

There are many things to be said about IS-LM.

First, in Krugman's original piece (from 2000) he notes that IS-LM was viewed by most economists and his own colleagues at MIT as unfashionable and out of date. True.

But what is it that makes old-fashioned macro so compelling? The answer, I would argue, is that we need small, ad hoc models as part of our intellectual tool-box.

As a companion piece to Krugman's own apologia, here's a decent article on "The Strange Persistence of the IS-LM Model" http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/...e/colander.pdf

IS-LM for most economists is like Freudianism is for most psychologists. Interesting, foundational, but irrelevant. I'll say more about why.

Second, Classical and Keynesian economics both use general equilibrium models and linear mathematics. Those models are useful under a certain set of highly simplifying assumptions, but their principal failing is that market data doesn't regularly fit monotonic linear models necessary for general equilibrium. Subsequent theories take into account non-linear models and stochastic events.

Third, rational expectations and real business cycles theory really has eclipsed Keynesianism, sorry. Krugman wrote in 2000 (the article you cited):

Few ideas in economics have been so influential, yet left so little lasting impact, as the idea that nominal shocks have real effects because of 'rational confusion'. When I was in graduate school the Lucas supply curve, with its lovely metaphors about islands and signal processing, but its alas very unlovely formal apparatus, was the central development in macroeconomics. But hardly anyone seems to think it is a useful tool today.

I hadn't read this article before, but this is one assessment that has failed the test of time. Lucas won his Nobel for rational expectations in 1995, since then only a handful of macroeconomists have won the Nobel. Kydland and Prescott won in 2004 for real business cycle theory (which is based on rational expectations and which provided a statistically supportable model to predict and explain business cycles, which Keynesianism cannot); Phelps won in 2006 as a former Keynesian who updated and turned on many of its foundations including the Phillips Curve; and Sargent and Sims won in 2011 for re-capitulation and extension of rational expectations. Krugman is the only economist associated with Keynes who has won since Lucas in 1995, and Krugman himself points out his Nobel is for trade and currency theory nit macroeconomics. He is a Keynesian only as it supports his punditry.

Fourth, IS-LM is a nice piece of political economy but not economics. It provides a reasonable lay view to economics, and is based on a reasonable simplifying assumption that people choose to balance their portfolios between cash and bonds in response to interest rates. Simple, true, but trivial. I haven't looked up the data, but I am pretty sure it would show that the majority of cash and bond investments today are held by corporations and institutional investors, not individuals. The signals that corporations and institutional investors respond to are a lot more nuanced than that of an individual person balancing their portfolios, which is largely the core of IS-LM..

There's more. This is an already over-long reply.

(Keith - I happened to hear Krugman on Wait Wait, too. He was charming and won the quiz. Just his speed. )

[George Jung]

Very nice; I tink Ross has been dogging it.....

[johnw]

Cris, have you any notion why macroeconomists have stopped winning the Nobel?

[johnw]

Now, this is interesting:

http://bigthink.com/power-games/empi...going?page=all

GAUTI EGGERTSSON

Federal Reserve Bank of New York; 37
I think the recent world economic crisis has firmly put back on the map basic macroeconomics: that is, the study of traditional questions, such as how to use monetary and fiscal policy to eliminate unemployment and control inflation. It was actually becoming quite unfashionable within economics to study these types of questions, even though they remain unanswered to a large extent. People even graduated with PhDs in economics with little idea about what role, if any, the government plays in stabilizing business cycles, the role of regulations, and so on. Instead, it was becoming increasingly fashionable to tackle smaller but more manageable questions for which data is rich and answers clear.
My guess, therefore, is that if one looks back 20 years from now, one will notice that a shift occurred towards studying the basic, big-picture, policy-relevant questions of macroeconomics—e.g., optimal currency areas, bank runs, fads and herding in financial markets, and automatic stabilizers—that have the power to change the course of history. I think there have been two comparable events that shaped the field in this way. As a discipline, macroeconomics was born in response to the Great Depression, giving rise to Keynesianism; the rational-expectations revolution in macroeconomics was born in response to the great inflation on the 1970s.
Perhaps somewhat under the radar, the past two decades have witnessed the integration of the macroeconomics that came out of the 1970s and 1980s with basic Keynesian models developed in the wake of the Great Depression. I suspect that the current crisis will accelerate that development, with models integrating financial frictions that were clearly central to its emergence.

[C. Ross]

Cris, have you any notion why macroeconomists have stopped winning the Nobel?

They haven't. Since they started awarding them in 1969, macroeconomists have received a decent share but there's hardly been a decline. Three out of the last 8 is a pretty good clip.

[Norman Bernstein]

So this afternoon I was driving to the hardware store, turned on the radio, it was 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and the celebrity guest was Paul Krugman, believe it or not.

I heard him today, as well.

[johnw]

They haven't. Since they started awarding them in 1969, macroeconomists have received a decent share but there's hardly been a decline. Three out of the last 8 is a pretty good clip.

Sorry, I was going based on this:

Lucas won his Nobel for rational expectations in 1995, since then only a handful of macroeconomists have won the Nobel.

But I suppose there haven't been all that many prizes awarded.