It's summertime, the livin' is easy, and ten years ago the fish were jumping at the chance to embarrass themselves (and
Professor J. Bradford DeLong had plenty of admirers--though he probably cringes when he remembers them). It started inauspiciously;
Daniel Davies (typically) has some intelligent points to make in defense of Paul Krugman's assessment of the naivete of Milton Friedman:
But, it didn't end well, nor was it a mercy killing;
"...here, do it this way, like Keynes, and it didn't work, unlike Keynes."
Now that's naive! Did stagflation "work"? Because it was the direct result of (neo) Keynesian policies.
....Btw, Japan, over the last decade [1993-2003], is almost a laboratory experiment on Keynesianism v. Monetarism. Japan spent gazillions on supposedly stimulative public works projects, to the effect of bupkis. Because their monetary policy was restrictive at the same time.
And if anyone thinks the Fed isn't targeting the money supply by manipulating overnight interest rates...well...they're just naive.
Speaking of naive, how would d squared rate the guy who wrote the following:
" I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning, indeed I should say that we almost certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their own minds and hearts to the moral issue.
" What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic [programs], which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them . . . . No, what we need is the restoration of right moral thinking-a return to proper moral values in our social philosophy . . . . Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly."
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on June 24, 2003 04:28 PM
Davies pretended, to the end, to not recognize the author of that letter; John Maynard Keynes. He should have called himself d-cubed, because he was certainly in denial.
We need a federal standard for the size of cocktail napkins. They should be at least twice as big.
ReplyDeleteHow many government programs have failed because there wasn't enough room on the cocktail napkin to write down some of the important details?
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