On the 8 Spot

Doesn’t anybody edit what press release they put out. I had to go to the original link to ascertain that the official press release had “currrent” as a mispelling. I remember this line on “the hours”.

Do you think it's possible that bad writing actually attracts a higher incidence of error?

John McCain and Sarah Palin: Dishonest and Dishonorable

They even lie about how many tame economists they have:

JohnMcCain.com – McCain-Palin 2008: 100 ECONOMISTS WARN THAT WITH CURRRENT WEAK FINANCIAL CONDITIONS BARACK OBAMA’S PROPOSALS RUN A HIGH RISK OF THROWING THE US ECONOMY INTO A DEEP RECESSION…

1. They only have 90 names on the list. Not 100. 90. They can’t count.

2. They only have 90 names on the list: that means that they could not find any more–and I assure you that they tried.

3. Shame on them for saying “Barack Obama’s proposals run a high risk of throwing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.” The economic considerations that can be advanced against Obama policies do not include “throwing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.” I cannot imagine what mechanism can possibly be contemplated by which Obama’s plans would reduce aggregate demand by enough to accomplish that result.

Yes, I am talking to you, Michael Bordo, Michael Boskin, Charles Calomiris, Kristin Forbes, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Glenn Hubbard, Anne Krueger, Allan Meltzer, Kevin Murphy, William Poole, Kenneth Rogoff, Harvey Rosen, Anna Schwartz, George Shultz, John Taylor, and Murray Weidenbaum. You know better. And I know you know better.

No, I’m not talking to you, Kevin Hassett. I know that you don’t know better.

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.

Wish more people call BS on all the Crap that circulates on the media in my country. I was riding the bus about 30 minutes ago and the news reports were on the rising price of pork, the philippines meat of choice. And I was none too happy about how the report was done. Have to call GMA7 on how poor they report biz/econ news.

Washington Post Death Spiral Watch (Robert Samuelson Edition)

No wonder Paul Krugman’s ire was aroused: this is worse than I had expected. Much worse:

Robert J. Samuelson: Bankrupt Economics: What we are witnessing, in the broadest sense, is the bankruptcy of modern economics…. The $152 billion “stimulus” program earlier this year was a classic exercise in “demand management.” It didn’t work well mainly because this crisis originated in frightened financial markets…. Unfortunately, we lack experience with stabilizing financial markets, and the issue has been at the fringes of economics…

Do I point out that Ben Bernanke has spent most of his life analyzing the stabilization of financial markets, and that nobody but a blithering idiot would put him “at the fringes of economics”?

Do I point out that we have a lot of experience with stabilizing financial markets–that we dealt with a credit crunch in 1990-92, with exchange rate crises in 1992, 1994-5, 1997-8, 2001-2, plus others that did not become crises, plus a bubble collapse in 2000-2001?

Do I note that economists are now investigating whether the second quarter stimulus program worked better or worse than expected–which means that it worked about as well as people thought beforehand?

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.