Perhaps in matters less related to finance, more contemporary economists are becoming more data oriented. But riddle me this: How did nearly all economists become fans of a financial system ‘regulated’ by the (not federal with no reserves) Federal Reserve System? Because it’s so data driven?
By 1900 or so there seems to have been a pretty broad consensus that leaving the market to its own devices leads to the best outcomes. The problem with that is that such a conlusion doesnt leave economists or politicians with much to do.
Wasn't it Voltaire that said most of our problems arise because of man's inability to sit alone quietly?
Aside from any problems arising from man’s inability to sit quietly, there’s the question of how those squirming for action would all end up endorsing the same system. My guess is that when businesses are hiring quants, they are more motivated to purely follow the data and will hire more statisticians, logistics and computer experts while most of the “economists” are working in universities and government jobs where the culture and incentives are formed, normed and paid for by the champions of the federal reserve system.
After the 2016 election, Ethan Coen wrote a NYT op-ed complaining about Jill Stein voters and others who deprived Hillary of victory. So Ethan at least appears to be a mainstream Democrat.
Ethan certainly didn't pull any punches in that op-ed! lol
I've been reading "An Empire of Their Own" by Neal Gabler (based on your recommendation) and reading about LB Mayer has me appreciating Michael Lerner's performance in Barton Fink even more than I already did.
You think you're the only writer that can give me that Barton Fink feeling?
I ignored economists for my entire life until the GFC hit and then I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the travesty that field had become. The dismal science maybe -- but once they took the political out of political economy it became a ridiculous exercise in solipsism and nonsense with equations somehow always spitting out the same solution to every economic problem: print money and give it to bankers and when they sink the ship through fraud and incompetence just print more money for them. Any economist who doesn't follow that line doesn't have much of a career and certainly won't get hired by the Fed -- the largest employer of economists in the multiverse.
The only economists worth listening to these days come out of U of Kansas Missouri. The mainstream are charlatans pushing a "science" that feels more like necromancy or reading tea leaves than anything grounded in reality.
Bill Black is at Kansas and is more prosecutor than economist -- he famously jailed over a thousand banksters in the aftermath of the S&L crisis. He's the guy Obama trotted out to make us think he was a reformer during the '08 campaign and as soon as he won dumped in favor of financial whores like Little Timmy Geithner and the utterly incompetent Larry Summers (who famously lost Harvard's endowment $1 billion in failed derivatives trades he didn't understand).
And so it goes, $35 trillion in the hole and the Fed's ever expanding balance sheet. One day it'll all go kablooey and every mainstream economist will declare with one voice "nobody coulda seen it coming!"
Steve, my guess would be that the Cold War, in full bloom in the 1950's, played the single biggest role in making Americans more politically Conservative during that time. Enjoyed the article.
Or maybe just the fact of a large part of the globe having just lived (barely) through a couple decades of utter cataclysm owing to various strange new ideologies to which only conservatism had been or could be immune, although mostly powerlessly so.
Whether Ren and Wang understand America I couldn't say, but they assuredly understand nothing of Preston Sturges. Sullivan's Travels is about as anti-progressive a movie as could be imagined. Its chief target is the rich Hollywood liberal who decides to play poor. Wiser characters try to set him straight at every turn, to no avail. The mogul: "What do you know about trouble?" The girl: "Nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive people out into the open." The butler: "Poverty is to be avoided, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned." Finally he has to learn the hard way to keep out of what is none of his business.
Probably no major director had more respect for enterprise than Sturges, and there are more sympathetic rich characters in his oeuvre than one could find in a year's worth of American movies nowadays. He also voted Republican.
Perhaps in matters less related to finance, more contemporary economists are becoming more data oriented. But riddle me this: How did nearly all economists become fans of a financial system ‘regulated’ by the (not federal with no reserves) Federal Reserve System? Because it’s so data driven?
By 1900 or so there seems to have been a pretty broad consensus that leaving the market to its own devices leads to the best outcomes. The problem with that is that such a conlusion doesnt leave economists or politicians with much to do.
Wasn't it Voltaire that said most of our problems arise because of man's inability to sit alone quietly?
Aside from any problems arising from man’s inability to sit quietly, there’s the question of how those squirming for action would all end up endorsing the same system. My guess is that when businesses are hiring quants, they are more motivated to purely follow the data and will hire more statisticians, logistics and computer experts while most of the “economists” are working in universities and government jobs where the culture and incentives are formed, normed and paid for by the champions of the federal reserve system.
The Coens seem temperamentally conservative but they probably vote Democrat.
After the 2016 election, Ethan Coen wrote a NYT op-ed complaining about Jill Stein voters and others who deprived Hillary of victory. So Ethan at least appears to be a mainstream Democrat.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/opinion/sunday/2016-election-thank-you-notes.html
I hadn't seen that before. Their films seem to kind of mock everybody so I would have thought civil libertarians who vote Democrat.
The Coens are very high IQ, so they probably especially didn't like Trump taking the GOP dumber.
Ethan certainly didn't pull any punches in that op-ed! lol
I've been reading "An Empire of Their Own" by Neal Gabler (based on your recommendation) and reading about LB Mayer has me appreciating Michael Lerner's performance in Barton Fink even more than I already did.
You think you're the only writer that can give me that Barton Fink feeling?
I ignored economists for my entire life until the GFC hit and then I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the travesty that field had become. The dismal science maybe -- but once they took the political out of political economy it became a ridiculous exercise in solipsism and nonsense with equations somehow always spitting out the same solution to every economic problem: print money and give it to bankers and when they sink the ship through fraud and incompetence just print more money for them. Any economist who doesn't follow that line doesn't have much of a career and certainly won't get hired by the Fed -- the largest employer of economists in the multiverse.
The only economists worth listening to these days come out of U of Kansas Missouri. The mainstream are charlatans pushing a "science" that feels more like necromancy or reading tea leaves than anything grounded in reality.
Bill Black is at Kansas and is more prosecutor than economist -- he famously jailed over a thousand banksters in the aftermath of the S&L crisis. He's the guy Obama trotted out to make us think he was a reformer during the '08 campaign and as soon as he won dumped in favor of financial whores like Little Timmy Geithner and the utterly incompetent Larry Summers (who famously lost Harvard's endowment $1 billion in failed derivatives trades he didn't understand).
And so it goes, $35 trillion in the hole and the Fed's ever expanding balance sheet. One day it'll all go kablooey and every mainstream economist will declare with one voice "nobody coulda seen it coming!"
Bush and McCain weren't dumb enough?
Great article, I may have to subscribe to Taki.
Steve, my guess would be that the Cold War, in full bloom in the 1950's, played the single biggest role in making Americans more politically Conservative during that time. Enjoyed the article.
Or maybe just the fact of a large part of the globe having just lived (barely) through a couple decades of utter cataclysm owing to various strange new ideologies to which only conservatism had been or could be immune, although mostly powerlessly so.
Laughs in the Austrian method.
Whether Ren and Wang understand America I couldn't say, but they assuredly understand nothing of Preston Sturges. Sullivan's Travels is about as anti-progressive a movie as could be imagined. Its chief target is the rich Hollywood liberal who decides to play poor. Wiser characters try to set him straight at every turn, to no avail. The mogul: "What do you know about trouble?" The girl: "Nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive people out into the open." The butler: "Poverty is to be avoided, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned." Finally he has to learn the hard way to keep out of what is none of his business.
Probably no major director had more respect for enterprise than Sturges, and there are more sympathetic rich characters in his oeuvre than one could find in a year's worth of American movies nowadays. He also voted Republican.