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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.
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.
Dougerhead
Robert Samuelson’s whole career is based on being confused with the great Paul Samuelson.
EDIT: Wait, Paul Samuelson said that.
Lee
I’m sure.
He called him a moron.
Samara Morgan
i lieked you bettah as a pretentious art douche.
heres my favorite nobel laureate in economics.
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.
Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson
@Samara Morgan: Oh, P.A.D. will come back. But variety is the spice and all that.
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.
Linnaeus
@jl:
Paul Samuelson died in late 2009, so we know it was definitely made before that.
Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson
@jl: December 26, 2008
Here’s an account of the “Frankenstein monster” interview.
Here’s another example of Samuelson saying the same thing to the interviewer in the clip above.
The video was shot in late 2008, I believe.
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.
jl
@Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson: thanks.
Tom Oh Yeah I Remember Him Levenson
@jl:
Sims is correct. (Say I, ex cathedra.)
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.
opie jeanne
OT, has anyone seen this? One of my friends found it at Israpundit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIlRQCPJcew&feature=player_embedded
jl
@opie jeanne: Yes, they found some anti Semitic nutcases who have wandered around NYC for years, and lied that they are part of OWS.
A desperate lie.
JGabriel
Tom Levenson:
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:
.
geg6
OT, but to anyone who thinks Mitt Romney is one of those mythical “reasonable” Republicans, the evidence is piling up that he IS NOT.
Just the latest:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_10/meet_one_of_romneys_top_legal032863.php
JGabriel
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.
.
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.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any funnier an Amish man named Mullett is terrorizing other Amish in night-time haircut attacks!
Ed in NJ
@opie jeanne:
Well, of course they are anti-Semitic. Don’t you see all the
Swastikas they are wearing?
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.
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!
JGabriel
@geg6:
Point taken. You’re right.
.
Jay in Oregon
I think you messed up that clip, Tom. I was looking for an economist and all I see is the Crypt Keeper.
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?
cleek
@Ed in NJ:
uh. err.
sigh
jl
@Roger Moore: He figures everyone is used to that by now?
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.
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……?
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.
slag
@Jay in Oregon: His mental faculties were still acutely functional late in his life. We should all be so fortunate.
MikeJ
@eemom:
They drive me crazy.
Wait. Sorry, that’s the Fine Young Cannibals. Carry on.
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.
opie jeanne
@jl: That’s what I thought, and hoped it was.
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.
opie jeanne
@eemom: May I quote you?
Neo Cannibals!
opie jeanne
@Ed in NJ: *major eyeroll*
Joel
@jl: Sims would be right.
Jay in Oregon
@slag:
It’s just an incredibly unflattering depiction.
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.