I was just wondering what Donald Luskin feels like talking about today, so I surfed over to find out.
The Nobel Prize is never posthumous — it is only awarded to living persons. So some great minds such as John Maynard Keynes and Fischer Black never received the prize in Economics. All that has changed. With today’s award to Paul Krugman, the Nobel as gone to an economist who died a decade ago. The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey. And even as a public intellectual, the prize is inappropriate, because never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent. Krugman’s New York Times column drawing on economics is the equivalent of 2006’s Nobelists in Physics, astromers Mather and Smoot, doing a column on astrology — and then, in that column, telling lies about astronomy.
Ha ha. I might spend the week after November 5 just quoting wingnuts verbatim.
Chat about whatever.
Notorious P.A.T.
Really? Oprah is a professor at Stanford University?
Comrade Incertus
You can’t go wrong with quoting wingnuts.
Anyway, Amy’s got a few choice words for Thomas Friendman, and a suggestion or two for how to handle the excess of investment bank CEOs we might have cluttering up the landscape.
And one more thing. My blog hit a milestone in readers early this morning–nothing compared to this place or others, but big for me–and I have a lot of y’all to thank for it, because I get a lot of traffic from here. Thanks for coming by.
liberatemeiexinfernis
Krugman tarnished his reputation when he supported Hillary for President and started harping on Obama when his war mongering candidate of choice was not winning
It doesnt take an economist (even though I am one) to draw the connection between the Iraq war and our current deficit. We are spending close to 10 billion a month in Iraq, and all thos money could have been going into funding our schools and hospitals and veterans. I am still very angered by the fact that he looked past through Hillary’s crass opportunistic support for this war, for which we Americans will pay a heavy price (moral, social, financial, military), in years to come. That he didnt appreciate Obama’s judgement speaks volume about his
but I digress, congrats Paul Krugman..your dreams of being Treasury Secretary or Fed Chairman under Hillary adminstration may have been evaporated, but you still got the Nobel Prize. Iraqis will be grateful to you that your economic theories have made their life better.
Ned Raggett
@Comrade Incertus: Echoing the thanks to John for the links and traffic: I’ve been getting more hits as well — which is a bit funny since I’ve been slack on the political posting front lately! But last week beat me down a bit — feeling more energized now.
Elvis Elvisberg
Which embittered fictional character does Luskin most closely resemble?
Not Salieri (as in, the movie version), because he actually did some stuff… not Javert, as Krugman has been right about everything… ditto Ferris Buehler’s principal… there’s some embittered, poisonous old man out there that Luskin embodies, but I can’t put my finger on it.
Xenos
Luskin is not fit to shine Winfrey’s shoes.
He dropped out of Yale after one year. Oprah came up from less than nothing to become a billionaire, doing it honestly, honorably, and in the course of producing many things of real value. Luskin is YAWWW (Yet Another Wingnut Welfare Wanker).
Dennis - SGMM
From Wikipedia:
So, great mind that he is, Luskin foresaw the current meltdown and advised all of his clients to take approprate action – right? And he shared his prognostications in his blog, too. Didn’t he?
Whoops:
Quit Doling Out That Bad Economy Line
In the linked article, dated September 14, 2008, Luskin explains with geometric logic that things aren’t as bad as they seem and that it’s Obama’s fault for talking down the economy.
There are reasons that Krugman was awarded the Nobel and Luskin wasn’t. Luskin will never understand them.
Shade Tail
Shorter Donald Luskin
* I’m angry and jealous about Paul Krugman being **CORRECT** about everything.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
GeoX
Ha ha–this is the same Luskin with the creepy obsession with Krugman, isn’t he? The one who threatened to sue Atrios for calling him a stalker just because he was engaged in stalker-esque activities? How delightful.
Walker
@Elvis Elvisberg:
When I think of Luskin, I think of Archimedies Plutonium.
I remember as an undergraduate, when he was still Ludwig Plutonium, that he would by these full page ads in the Dartmouth newspaper expounding on his theories. In the best of the best — which I have cut out and still have lying around in some box — Plutonium said that he had not heard any objections from the scientific community on his proofs of Fermat’s Last Theorem, the Poincare Conjecture, and Goldbach’s Conjecture (this was before the first two were proved legitimately). He said that he was therefore ready to accept his prize money for his work.
He also said that he would this money forge a "sword made of Nothung" which he would draw repeatedly from a stone, with Wagner playing in the background, because he was the "King of Physics and Mathematics".
Bill Herbert
I like Jules Crittendon better:
Seriously. The whole post is worth a read, for it’s unreconstructed, party-like-it’s-2002 schlock.
The Other Steve
If we spent $10 billion on schools and hospitals, we’d still have a deficit because we still don’t have the money. Granted, there is a small argument to be made that investing in infrastructure is going to have better payoffs long term then investing in destructive shit.
But we’d still be running a deficit.
Joshua
I think that Paul Krugman deserved this more than Fischer Black.
liberatemeiexinfernis
@ The Other Steve
so why dont we just start more wars? by your logic, we would still be running deficits, so we might as well take out Iran while we are still running deficits
The Moar You Know
And to think that the bailout money is going to banks. What a waste. At least if we gave some to this guy, we would get some solid entertainment out of the deal.
Comrade Jake
Egg, meet face:
The fucking geniuses at Powerline, circa August 2005. Good times.
chrismealy
Fischer Black is the patron saint of suddenly collapsed hedge funds. The guy was a hoot, but come on.
Kali's Little Sister
Thanks for the heads up. In that case I’ll take the week off. Get an Rx for antibiotics, my 3D glasses, and a bottle of vodka. Giddy up!
chopper
full of win.
Comrade Incertus
@liberatemeiexinfernis: so why dont we just start more wars? by your logic, we would still be running deficits, so we might as well take out Iran while we are still running deficits
Ummm, because we get more economic benefit from building bridges and schools in the US than we do by bombing the shit out of other countries? And since we’re in an enormous economic shitpile right now, maybe doing what’s good for our own economy ought to take precedence over trying to prove we swing the biggest dick in the Middle East.
Cris v.3.1
Since I came to the other open thread very late, I’d like to re-post my findings about the Black Screen of Death.
Coach Urban Meyer
Ding dong dilly, loony libs here at Bogus Balloonland! It’s me, the Cool Coach, about to serve up a SPREAD of TRUTH all over you! Ahh, yes, Krazy Krugman won the leftist Nutty Nobel…whatever, says the Cool Coach! All this guy won is some lefty popularity contest. Big whoop!
You stick with the Cool Coach, and you stick with the real minds behind Wacky Wall Street- Friedman, Ambrose, Sowell, and more. That’s where ya wanna be…sticking with the Cool Coach!
Badoodle-boo-yeah, loony libs! You just got served a SPREAD of ECONOMICS! Urban out.
Comrade Face
They’re now eating their own. God damn this is going to be fun to watch.
…..
I’m guessing egotistical, fradulently-incorrect Kristol wont take this laying down, either.
Punchy
Cole, could you do us a favor? Could you rent about 5 extra servers for the month of November? This way, when your traffic quintuples, nothing crashes.
And most certainly, traffic is going to explode, if I have anything to do with it.
Third Eye Open
I love to watch the mascara run on wingnut women
1. A major terrorist attack. (although at this point, I’m not sure even that would do it.)
2. Hubby won’t let me put it in print or utter it to anyone else but him, so I’ll leave it to your imagination.
As for me, I’m secretly hoping for # 2.
I enjoy watching the more self-aware nutjobs attempt to paper over it.
/points and laughs
bobbob
I wish the boneheads over on the right would just read "The Great Unraveling", Krugman’s tome on the politics of economics. He hits President Clinton’s record in it too.
Congratulations Dr. Krugman!
liberatemeiexinfernis
@Comrade Incertus
tell that to the The Other Steve. he is the one who doesnt think deficits are bad
dr. bloor
Third Eye Open
Obviously my attempt at web-coding has gone a bit awry.
I don’t know why I enjoy hanging out in their cesspool so much, but I think it has something to do with a morbid fascination with the buoyancy of sewage.
Comrade Jake
@Comrade Face:
I love the image of a bunch of McCain advisors sitting around a table discussing Bill Kristol’s remarks this weekend:
"What do we do now? Sometimes Bill’s a genius, and other times he’s a complete idiot. Last week he told us to attack more. This week he says, forget it, the attacks aren’t working. Are we talking about the genius Bill Kristol or the idiot Bill Kristol? Anyone know? Fuck."
Uncle Jeffy
Donald Luskin bitching about Paul Krugman winning the Nobel Prize in Economics has about as much intellectual validity as a one-legged man bitching about not winning the National Ass-Kicking Championship.
Funkhauser
Donald Luskin dropped out of Yale. Couldn’t finish his BA, because the call of lucre on Wall Street, doing whatever it is he does, was too much.
He’s in the same league as Bill Gates, except that one is much, much smarter, much, much more successful, and much, much richer. And doesn’t give shitty advice.
w vincentz
Unless I’m mistaken, the number of times McPOW said "fight" in his speech today were simply too numerous to mention. His insistance on "fighting", repeatedly stated with anger and resolve, projects to the other countries on the planet exactly how dangerous his agenda is.
In my view, the focus of maintaining our domestic economy on military supply and preparation is wasteful. It diminishes our resources and misdirects our efforts towards unworthy causes rather than productive ones.
Just as we’ve found that "free markets" aren’t "free", there is also no justification for American intervention or threats to other nations.
McPOW is finding that the rest of the planet is as tired of fighting as many in his own country are.
It’s time to talk with perceived enemies and find strategies that lead to peace.
liberatemeiexinfernis
@dr. bloor
the final refuge for somebody like you who runs out of ideas to discuss is to start calling people names, just like our friend mccain
Comrade Incertus
@liberatemeiexinfernis: I don’t think deficits are necessarily bad either. It all depends on the reasons for them. Deficits for building infrastructure when we’re facing a major economic crisis=good. Deficits for fighting an unnecessary war that will harm us in the long run=bad. It’s really not that complex an idea.
raff
Aw, dude… you had to go & bring up Jules Crittenden when I had all but forgotten she even existed. Crittenden is a hack writer who’s married to another hack writer, both of privileged backgrounds.
Jules is stunningly unfunny & her lame attempts at satire are embarrassing. If not for her ‘legacy connections’, no self-respecting media org would ever publish her
sophmoric commentary.
Punchy
@Third Eye Open: Hey, you missed an even funnier comment further down:
That’s Right Wing Reality, folks. In their world, McCane will/can take ALL 50 STATES. I about crashed my car laughing at this (yes, I read blogs while I drive)
ThymeZone
Welcome to the new McCain Campaign. Invest your precious once-in-four-years choice in a guy who relishes being in a crater he himself dug, and just wants you to join him down there to help him dig his way out as your reward for wasting your support on him.
Comrade Jake
Heh. CNN.com now has the following two headlines listed on top of one another on their main page:
McCain aide: ‘Turnaround’ starts today
Ticker: McCain move shows he’s worried?
Ya think?
D. Mason
@Third Eye Open: I couldn’t refrain from signing up and telling that vile piece of shit off.
dr. bloor
@liberatemeiexinfernis:
Oooh, snap. As an early Edwards supporter and subsequent Obama supporter, I don’t think Clinton ever deserved the label "war mongering," which you see fit to pin to her in your ever-so-sophisticated and intellectually honest manner.
Ash Can
Somebody throw a net over #22 before he hurts himself.
Gulp. Distracted driving’s a little too dicey for my taste.
liberatemeiexinfernis
@Comrade Incertus
ok I agree. look my point was that we didnt need to go to war and that contributed to our deficits. and i think most economists, including Krugman, agree that this war spending has been hurting the nation. Thats all I am saying. I am not arguing if deficits are good or bad in one situation vs another
Im just saying Krugman should have called out Hillary for her support on this war because it contributed to this deficit situation we are in. period
Xenos
What he was doing, after a few year in the trenches as a market maker, was setting up investment funds to take pensioners money and invest it heavily in very risky investments. He made a mint with JDS Uniphase, before it blew up. He thinks the making money part was genius, the losing money part was bad luck. And he thinks he is smarter than Krugman.
’nuff said.
peach flavored shampoo
Who was the jackass here last week who claimed MO would never vote for Obama?
Suck it, dumbass
Dork
If true, I suspect your registration was good for exactly 42 seconds and 1 comment. Now you can join the rest of 97% here who’ve been proudly banned by EriKKK.
r€nato
Bitter, party of one…
Comrade Jake
IIRC, Krugman’s main criticism of Obama concerned his health care plan not being universal. He preferred Clinton because she had one that was. I don’t begrudge Krugman that, because politically, I think Obama made the 100% right call there. Economically it would make more sense to have a universal plan.
Also, concerning the war, IIRC Krugman has suggested that it’s much more economically neutral than most people believe. Why? Well, like it or not, a lot of people are employed by the war. Such is life.
liberatemeiexinfernis
@Dr.Bloor
yes I suppose her desire to see iran nuked wasnt all that big of deal …
Brachiator
@Comrade Jake:
A very enjoyable post and link reference! Who would have guessed that this bit of ideological cheerleading would have turned out to be so disastrously stupid.
I would really like to be sympathetic to this argument, but I just can’t do it. Unfunded spending adds to the deficit whether it is for war or domestic programs (even taking into account potential returns on domestic spending). And the implied notion that the federal government is supposed to spend money and that the argument is just over priorities, is one of the reasons that some conservatives have a valid argument when they say that liberals love spending.
Comrade Jake
Based on the speech Obama is giving now, and the remarks that Hillary made prefacing it, I think Obama’s about to pivot to emphasizing job creation. Hillary even said "Jobs, baby, jobs!"
I think this is an excellent move.
Punchy
Probably not the most appropriate quote from a Clinton.
/snickers
Comrade Jake
@Punchy:
Heh. Well, at least she didn’t have a Freudian slip and say "Blow, baby, blow!"
Still, I do hope Obama begins to articulate a detailed plan for creating jobs. I actually think that him spelling out what types of jobs (blue collar and white collar) would develop around an energy independence plan, giving people concrete examples, is an easy move that is full of win.
Dennis - SGMM
The ones between one overheated fantasy and another.
C.S.
Funny, that doesn’t seem to trouble Luskin much — or any other wingnut — when it comes to extolling Uncle Miltie Friedman. Now they’re all ready to remind everyone that it’s not a real Nobel. Now they want to dismiss the recipient’s work for being too politically savvy.
Jagoffs.
The Other Steve
What part of "IT IS STILL A DEFICIT" do you not understand?
What the hell happened to this blog? I leave for a few months and it’s overrun by stupid morons. Time for some house cleaning, I guess.
Nylund
Paul Krugman wrote some of the most brilliant economic papers of the 80’s and did consistently great work through the 90’s. You cannot get through grad school without reading his papers as they really changed the way people thought about things. You may dislike his politics, but anyone who has gotten a Ph.D. in economics understands just how much he added to the field.
Before he started writing for the Times, I doubt too many wingnuts even knew who he was. I started reading his papers as an undergrad in the mid-1990’s and his work was THE reason I decided to pursue graduate studies.
A very significant section of modern economic theory as it related to globalization, contagion, international trade, etc. comes directly from his work. Without him, our theories would be entirely inadequate in describing how the modern global economy works. It is that simple.
But, to too many, because he disliked the most unpopular president of all time, and spoke harshly of him before anyone else would, some people think this should over rule all he has added to economic theory. I suspect though that none of them actually have read one of his theory papers, what with all those confusing greek letters and all.
I highly recommend reading his early papers. The math is not too hard but I don’t quite know how it’d read to non-economists. If you are absolutely a layperson when it comes to economics, I think now is as good a time as ever to read "The Return of Depression Economics".
Jay C
@Punchy:
Yeah, I loved this quote from the zanies over at RedState :
Obviously, they have their own notions of what is "mainstream" – which is why what started out to be the "Republican Daily Kos" (their original "mission statement") has turned into a blogospheric joke. Yep, just like dKos: except with about 1/1000 the participation! You betcha!
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
This has to be the most icky and childish, yet strangely awesome, campaign ad this year.
liberatemeiexinfernis
@The Other Steve
Ah, finally the anger is getting to you just like its getting to McCain
Notorious P.A.T.
Yes, but we wouldn’t spending $10 billion a month on them.
PaulB
??? He simply pointed out that if we were spending $10 billion per month on things like "funding our schools and hospitals and veterans," we would still have a deficit. His statement is entirely accurate. How on earth did you get from there to "why don’t we just start more wars?"
dj spellchecka
the quote: The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey.
what?? what does he mean by "merely?" i think highly of "public intellectuals" who happen to be right a lot…
second…when did Oprah become a "public intellectual?"
HyperIon
everybody loves spending, you moron.
otherwise there wouldn’t be so much credit card debt.
why do you think folks want to get rich?
to spend that money, fool.
conservatives love spending on wars.
liberals just have different ideas about what/whom the money should be spent spent on.
jim
I’m shocked (SHOCKED!) that a wingnut would go all emo over Krugman getting a Nobel for his work in "the dismal science" … the Swedes’ perfidy in cruelly passing up genius of the likes of Greenspan & Bernanke surely dwarfs the Holocaust in their tiny minds.
Right now, probably the best thing the US could do for its ailing financial system would be to convene a team of top-calibre money-wonks – & send them all due north.
Jasper
Hah, Brad DeLong once again proven correct.
Donald Luskin really is the "Stupidest Man Alive."
Notorious P.A.T.
That is awesome, alright.
Also, on the economic effects of the war: I’ll try to find it again, but I read a report a while ago talking about how the Saudis, once they saw we were bogged down in Iraq and needed a river of gas to fuel our military vehicles, realized they could jack up the price of oil to pretty much whatever they wanted because we would have to pay it.
Yes, but increasingly few of them are Americans. For instance, most of our naval vessels are now made in. . . China.
Third Eye Open
@Punchy:
Yeah, by the time I got back from a meeting and the gym, the bottom had fallen out of that thread, and the Directors had to put the subtle, satin gloved kibosh on that chuckle-head before it looked like they were condoning that crap.
Funny none-the-less.
Personally, I think that half of the posters there are sock-puppets for that self-important dweeb, Moe.
In fact, the next time i’m driving up to Atlanta, I think I might schedule a stop to heckle Erik during a city-council meeting.
rachel
Well, she reads books–long ones without any pictures in them, even. And she talks about them. I’ve heard she’s even written one! If that’s not an inteleckshul, I don’t know what is.
/wingnut
Birdzilla
Wingnuts where ever you go their there crazy and out of their minds and full of dope full of LSD full of stupididy