Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
As last month wound down to a close, it was clear to anyone who ever knew the meaning of the term that Keynesian economic theory was being given a good ol’ try, and was failing the test on such a massive scale that it might never recover. At least, in a medium of honest practice and evaluation, it would never recover.
So I proceeded to pretend we’re all honest, and I wrote up the obit:
Keynesian Economics Dead Forever
Keynesian economic theory, which says the most wonderful thing you can do to the economy in a capitalistic society is pool everybody’s money into a big pot by force and then spend it in some unified effort rather than let folks hang onto their wealth to spend as they please — was disconnected from life support yesterday, time-of-death recorded soon after. It was then wheeled down to the morgue and a tag was placed on its toe. We’re all going to stop arguing about it now. Forever. All the economists who’ve been promoting it for the last three quarters of a century…the ones that are still around, anyway…will be issuing an apology for wasting so much of our time, attention and resources.
Now, I don’t know if the Wall Street Journal editors read this blog. I’ve always presumed that hardly anyone ever does. But how else then do you explain this gem which popped up on their “Review & Outlook” section over the weekend…
A familiar definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. So in the wake of yesterday’s report that the national jobless rate climbed to 10.2% in October, we suppose we can expect the political class to demand another “stimulus.” Maybe if Congress spends another $787 billion in the name of job creation, it can get the jobless rate up to 12% or 13%.
It’s hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of Keynesian stimulus than the evidence of the last year’s job market. We’ve now had two examples of such stimulus—President Bush’s $160 billion effort in February 2008 and President Obama’s mega-version a year later—and neither has made even the smallest dent in employment. [emphasis mine]
Seriously, how in the world would you keep the vitals going on this cadaver? How? Here’s a situation where you can’t even fall back on the tried-and-true alternate-universe method of “Oh sure, things are bad WITH our magical program, but Trust Us WITHOUT the magical program they’d be even worse!” Even that turkey won’t hunt here. The egkspurts were given their chance, pre-stimulus, to tell us how bad things would get without the magical program. Fast forward to today, and things are much worse with it than they were ever supposed to be without it.
The program failed.
The theory failed.
Case closed.
All you can do to keep the bones dancing, is to say…the right people weren’t in charge. Or something spoiled the experiment. Maybe George Bush’s global warming upset the economic plane somehow.
So much suffering across the generations. Just stop it already.
Illustration made available from Gerard, who last week was also responsible for calling our attention to this wonderful morsel of cinematic art: The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (naughty, non-work-safe language).
It’s one of the stupidest things we’ve ever seen on YouTube. It’s probably the funniest as well, especially in the second half.
It seems an oddly well-fit metaphor here. Who is the guy running, Keynesian economic theory? Spoonkiller is reality?
Or could it be the victim is our job market and the relentless, pursuing wraith is Obama’s policies that continue to muck with it?
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Somehow I don’t see Paul Krugman giving an apology for this. He and his ilk, like Obama, are too arrogant.
- KG | 11/08/2009 @ 11:22When do we get to youtube snippets of spontaneous lamp post decorating. That’s what I want to know.
- vanderleun | 11/08/2009 @ 17:41