Monday, July 2, 2012

Mitchell does DeLong


For all those who said "bosh" to Paul McCulley's admonition to enjoy the victory and not rub their noses in it.

Read it at Bill Mitchell — billy blog
Revisionism is rife and ignorance is being elevated to higher levels
by Bill Mitchell

10 comments:

NeilW said...

People are being nice. Nobody has said the obvious in response to Brad's comment.

wh10 said...

which is what?

i dont really want to take brad's side here, but mitchell does seem to be misrepresenting Blanchard and RE. there is nothing in that IMF document that implies blanchard believed in RE. mitchell blatantly manipulates the text to frame blanchard, and it makes him look bad IMO.

Tom Hickey said...

wh10: "which is what?"

From my point of view, some people are now just making stuff up about their former position.

Now if they need to that in order to comfortably change their views to accommodate feedback from events, so be it, I would say.

But it it is just self-justification and they aren't about to change their POV, they should not be cut any space, IMHO.

wh10 said...

that's fine, but i don't think mitchell needs to go around misrepresenting peoples' beliefs with shoddy journalism. he's got plenty of ammo against them already. it diminishes mitchell's credibility and opens up doors for people like DeLong to dismiss his argument and not take him seriously.

Tom Hickey said...

Well, tell him in the comments there. I doubt he reads the comments here. He is open to constructive criticism, so you'll have to make a case wrt specifics.

Anonymous said...

There is some very strange stuff going on lately in the Econ blogosphere. I imagine it has something to do with the silly season of a presidential election year. Economists are lining up for spots in the next administration and are lobbying on their own behalf and on behalf of their friends by manufacturing history and reaching out to different constituencies.

Matt Franko said...

It looks like Delong is also talking up Martin Feldstein who is a big disgrace as he was on the board at the AIG scheme which turned into what would effectively become the largest bankruptcy in the history of the "free market"... quite a track record!

He certainly didnt "see it coming", to the contrary he probably helped create it...

And the amazing thing is that Feldstein is still out there at some sort of Harvard econ position is still writing things and apparently has no remorse or shame. If he did he would quietly retire.

Here is some recent monetarist garbage from him as recently as end of May this year:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/fed-policy-and-inflation-risk

Plenty of disgrace to go around.

Glad to see Bill drawing attention to this revisionist history.

These people need to STOP THIS, CUT IT OUT, KNOCK IT OFF, SHUT UP, and instead LISTEN to those who saw this coming and can explain it to them and perhaps they would LEARN SOMETHING and the younger ones could perhaps salvage their careers from this point on....

Resp,

wh10 said...

As an update, Bill did a nice job defending his post in a recent comment.

Matt Franko said...

wh,

right seems like DeLong will not address the main topic/point of Bill's post, Scott points this out well also in the comments over there...

rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

Bill responds to DeLong's comment with this take-down. As usual, Bill has his facts in order.