Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

In my day, never was longer.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

T R E 4 5 O N

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Second rate reporter says what?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You are here: Home / Economics / Free Markets Solve Everything / Because We Need Brain Bleach After…

Because We Need Brain Bleach After…

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<div align=”center”><iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/-HrTD5J2qP0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe></div>

I would rush to take exception to Samuelson’s characterization of Alan Greenspan as “wise” — except I’m not entirely sure that it isn’t a very quiet, Nobel-laureate way of saying “moron.”

Looking at it twice…hmmm.

But my takeaway is when the people who actually know money say, basically, don’t outsmart yourself, you have a very interesting sidelight into the rigged casino innovation engine that is Wall St.

And in any event, if that doesn’t wash away the mental stain of one Hermann Cain doing violence to John Lennon, I can’t help you.

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  1. 1.

    Villago Delenda Est

    First, Samuelson is a moron.

    Second, Greenspan should be flayed alive on all networks during prime time to demonstrate what happens to Randite fucks.

    A late friend of mine got advanced degrees in econ, and his advice was STAY THE HELL OUT of the commodities markets, as they’re basically a casino, and the game is rigged against you. I can only imagine what he’d make of derivatives and other schemes to transfer your money to some Wall Street asshole.

  2. 2.

    Dougerhead

    Robert Samuelson’s whole career is based on being confused with the great Paul Samuelson.

    EDIT: Wait, Paul Samuelson said that.

  3. 3.

    Lee

    I’m not entirely sure that isn’t a very quiet, Nobel-laureate way of saying “moron.”

    I’m sure.

    He called him a moron.

  5. 5.

    beltane

    This was obviously a very ironic use of the word “wise”. Listen to the quote again and substitute Alan Greenspan with Homer Simpson and you’ll have no doubt in your mind.

  7. 7.

    jl

    Wonder when this clip was made.

    Merton was the Swedish Bank Nobel Memorial Prize winner, along with Scholes, involved in Long Term Capital debacle. And here is is fretting over a muni going bad.

    Samuelson and his student Merton parted ways on fancy financial derivatives, their role, and need for regulation.

    Can TL find the Samuelson interview where he calls fancy derivatives the economists’ ‘Frankenstein monster’?

    Seems to be some tension between Samuelson and Slow on one hand, and Merton on the other in how to view active management of investments.

  10. 10.

    jl

    Also too, wingnut fail on this year’s prize being ‘anti Keynesian’:

    ‘ Professor Sims doesn’t want to be pigeonholed. “I’m not ‘non-Keynesian,’ ” he said, adding that he has been an active “promoter of new Keynesian macroeconomic models,” because they “are the place in our profession where theory and data and policy decision-making are coming together.”

    “It doesn’t really make much sense to stand on the sidelines and take potshots at them,” he said. “If you don’t like the way they’re working, you should try to do better.”

    He and Professor Sargent have been “trying to do empirical macroeconomics using formal tools of statistics,” he said. “Those tools aren’t in themselves ideological.”

    Professor Sims spoke favorably of the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus programs, which are Keynesian in their countercyclical spending. “An expansionary fiscal policy is probably what we need right now,” he said. ‘

    from Krugman’s NYT blog, and link therein to NYT story.

    Sargent is so wonky, and coy about what he really believes, he is not a good quote for any particular side.

    Sims is not a good person for the conservatives (Edit: or liberals) to try to claim. From what I have read, he does not believe that economics is a ‘science’ the way physics, chemistry, or medicine are. He thinks it relys too much on messy observational aggregate market data, coupled with an approach to theorizing and data analysis that dismisses any real world information except for the messay aggregate market data observations themselves.

  12. 12.

    Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson

    @jl:

    Sims…does not believe that economics is a ‘science’ the way physics, chemistry, or medicine are. He thinks it relys too much on messy observational aggregate market data, coupled with an approach to theorizing and data analysis that dismisses any real world information except for the messay aggregate market data observations themselves.

    Sims is correct. (Say I, ex cathedra.)

  13. 13.

    jl

    @Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson:

    Sims is actually old school in that way. People like Sameulson, Arrow, Hahn, even Debreu, the high priests of mathy math math econ, considered the models to be guides to thinking things through and frameworks for consistent thinking. They did not consider the Walrasian general equilibrium model to be a description of any feasible reality, but rather a benchmark which could never be reach by real world markets.. You looked at a general equilibrium model, and how the real world differed from it, to get clues about the best way to analyze.

    To be super old school, Frank Ramsey presented his model of intertemporal social optimization as a theoretical exercise, not a description.

    For some reason, Samuelson’s theoretical empty box model of consumer behavior (which Samuelson himself warned was an empty box unless you knew you were close to equilibrium), general equilibrium, and Ramsey style idealized intertemporal optimization models, have become the foundations of mainstream modern macro. they are not considered only realistic descriptions of reality, but are maintained assumptions (that is, never tested, but always assumed).

    IMHO, you can see the results in the school’s approach to analysis since the financial panic: a series of ad hoc imputations that are required to save their assumptions. If only we could see a connection from one imputation to another, they might have a seed of a nudge of a case. But I can’t see any (Edit observable) real world process that corresponds to their series of rationalizations in the cause of saving the unobservable maintained assumptions.

    Edit edit: and the one case where their rationalizations do have empirical content (the uncertainty hypothesis) their proposal turns out to be false.

  16. 16.

    JGabriel

    Tom Levenson:

    I would rush to take exception to Samuelson’s characterization of Alan Greenspan as “wise”—except I’m not entirely sure that isn’t a very quiet, Nobel-laureate way of saying “moron.”

    I definitely detected the note of sarcasm there. As you would expect from one of the authors of Samuelson’s & Nordhaus’s Economics towards an Ayn Rand acolyte:

    Economics was attacked by American conservatives (as part of the Second Red Scare, or McCarthyism), universities that adopted it were subject to “conservative business pressuring”, and Samuelson was accused of Communism, but in the event Economics proved successful and remained widely adopted.

    .

  18. 18.

    JGabriel

    … to anyone who thinks Mitt Romney is one of those mythical “reasonable” Republicans, the evidence is piling up that he IS NOT.

    I don’t think what Mitt Romney says is evidence of anything, since he’s likely to say the opposite the next day.

    Instead, the evidence that Romney is not reasonable is his sociopathic habit of saying anything his listeners want to hear in order to get their donations and/or support.

    .

  19. 19.

    kindness

    Maybe it is more akin to a southerner saying:

    ‘Bless his/her (little) heart!’. That I’ve been told is the polite way to say someone is not altogether there.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JGabriel: Yup. First-term Romney will be all about proving to the base that he will stay bought. With the Senate about as liberal as it’s gonna get now, probably less in the next session, that first-term Romney can do a hell of a lot of damage in the judicial branch. If the house flips–which I think is possible, if unlikely– the larger damage could be mitigated.

  23. 23.

    geg6

    @JGabriel:

    Well, I’ve certainly seen a lot of people here say that they think Romney won’t really be as much of a GOPer as he’s claiming to be now during the primaries. And I think we need to be providing all the evidence out there that they are wrong about Romney so we don’t get a Preznit Mittens any time soon.

    That said, the link isn’t to anything Romney has said, but to whom he is looking to for advice on things legal and for judicial appointments. Zombie Reagan and his minions never die!

  24. 24.

    JGabriel

    @geg6:

    That said, the link isn’t to anything Romney has said, but to whom he is looking to for advice …

    Point taken. You’re right.

    .

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @geg6:
    I think the big message to send about Romney is that when you vote for him you’re getting a pig in a poke. He’s said so many different things at different times that you have no clear idea of what you’re going to be getting. You might think you’re voting for the moderate Republican Governor and wind up getting the radical Teabagger, or vice versa. Why vote for somebody like that?

  29. 29.

    Djur

    @Ed in NJ: Oh god, someone’s actually paying Zombie to stalk hippie chicks now? The moment I clicked that link I was overwhelmed by the stench of cheeto dust and stale spunk.

    He’s still the dumbest pervert on the internet. Good to know.

  30. 30.

    eemom

    @jl:

    memeorandum today is a veritable smorgasbord of crazy flailing against OWS:

    The Nazis love OWS!
    The Commies love OWS!
    The Nazis AND the Commies love OWS!
    The Anti-Semites love OWS!
    The Drug Dealers love OWS!
    The Neo-Cannibals Love OWS!

    Neo-Cannibals……?

  31. 31.

    scav

    Oh no no no, another body blow to the daily self-esteem requirements of the gilded classes: even their immediate neighbors don’t recognize their fundamental importance to all that is meaningful and important. Quinnipiac University survey has NYCites backing OWS and banking regulations. Worse, if such can be imagined, it’s even being openly reported at that bastion of leftist propagandy, the ChiTrib. Oh the poor dears.

  34. 34.

    Ohio Mom

    @jl: @slag: Yeah, once you do a little googling, you find out their big anti-Semite interviewee is a homeless fellow who gives his name as Jesus…

    There’s a youtube out there, somewhere (didn’t note where I was when I saw it) of an OWS spokesperson responding to “Jesus’s” remarks — he was quite clear that the group had discussed them and completely disavowed them.

    I’m so tired of my co-religionists and others always crying anti-Semitism to smear the left.

  36. 36.

    opie jeanne

    @Ohio Mom: Thank you so much. I was running out the door when I saw it and posted my question here.

    Just got back, am encouraging the friend who showed it to me to not forward it to anyone, nor to post it on her FB page.

  41. 41.

    sctrojan90

    Most economists like this panel and others like Bernanke come from academic backgrounds so most likely they are with TIAA-CREF. I know Bernanke is 50-50 with TIAA guaranteed fund with stock and tips. I heard the guy on the right mention TIAA Real Estate fund. Ill bet some follow Yale CIO David Swenson and his methods.

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