Which are your favourite economists ?

[EdwardBaiamonte]

J K Galbraith. For being Keynesian when everyone else who called themselves Keynesian.....wasn't.

For example, who can forget his infamous 1984 quote that the communist system in the former Soviet Union was superior to capitalism because, according to Galbraith, the communists somehow made better and more efficient use of its "manpower" than did the West? Indeed, to the very end, Galbraith was a socialist impersonating an economist.


John Kenneth Galbraith, an intellectual icon of the Old Left and New Left, said of the Soviets’ overtaking of Poland after World War II: “Russia should be permitted to absorb Poland, the Balkans, and the whole of Eastern Europe in order to spread the benefits of Communism” (Emphasis added).

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Axel Leijonihufvud for "On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes"

Vilfredo Pareto for work on welfare economics

Leon Walras for work on general equilibrium theory

Oscar Lange for his actual work in economic planning

J R Hicks, for explaining the unexplainable

Paul Samuelson for the unreadable "Foundations of Economic Analysis"

Simon Kuznets for doing what no one had done before and no one has really tried to do since

Wassily Leontieff who crunched every number

Robert Fogel who proved you needed to be an economist to be a good historian and you needed to be a historian to be a good economist

Thomas Malthus who extended economics into demography

John Nash who demonstrated that reality is not all that its cracked up to be

David Ricardo who got just about everything right, except when he was wrong

Karl Marx (see David Ricardo)

Johann von Thunen who knew where it was at (and where to put an ice cream stand on the beach)

Enjoy.

But not Friedman who created the modern economics we live by. What does that say about your real IQ. It's no surprise you cant participate here. Your head is stuck playing trivial pursuit!!

I have actually met Professor Friedman on a number of occasions and read a dozen or so of his works, including those that were intended as serious scholarship as opposed to a popular market. You obviously have read the rest.

Dear, most importantly, do you think Freidman was wrong in his basic conclusions? If so why?
Time to change the subject?? What does your fear teach us?

 

[Pksimon2007]

Axel Leijonihufvud for "On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes"

Vilfredo Pareto for work on welfare economics

Leon Walras for work on general equilibrium theory

Oscar Lange for his actual work in economic planning

J R Hicks, for explaining the unexplainable

Paul Samuelson for the unreadable "Foundations of Economic Analysis"

Simon Kuznets for doing what no one had done before and no one has really tried to do since

Wassily Leontieff who crunched every number

Robert Fogel who proved you needed to be an economist to be a good historian and you needed to be a historian to be a good economist

Thomas Malthus who extended economics into demography

John Nash who demonstrated that reality is not all that its cracked up to be

David Ricardo who got just about everything right, except when he was wrong

Karl Marx (see David Ricardo)

Johann von Thunen who knew where it was at (and where to put an ice cream stand on the beach)

Enjoy.

But not Friedman who created the modern economics we live by. What does that say about your real IQ. It's no surprise you cant participate here. Your head is stuck playing trivial pursuit!!

I have actually met Professor Friedman on a number of occasions and read a dozen or so of his works, including those that were intended as serious scholarship as opposed to a popular market. You obviously have read the rest.

- I never had that opportunity. What an honor.

 

[Pksimon2007]

J K Galbraith. For being Keynesian when everyone else who called themselves Keynesian.....wasn't.

Galbraith was also responsible for one of the great intellectual disasters of the twentieth century: the theory of countervailing power. He postulated that the solution to the conflict of big business and big labor was big government. See how well that worked out?

Adam Smith. Because who doesn't love Adam Smith?

Conservatives. Because once you get beyond the invisible hand into monopoly and collusion, they hate everything he wrote. Especially his canons of taxation.

Hyman Minsky. His financial instability hypothesis explains everything. It explains why intuitive economics don't work when there is a financial system.

For a non-entity during his lifetime, he has had a remarkable and well-deserved run since his death!

Knut Wicksell. All money is credit. You heard it there first.

How about the natural rate of interest?

and A C Pigou, for being a good sport and giving his name to Pigovian taxes.

I actually have his six volume collected works. His dicta for central bankers on who to save and who to let drown in a financial panic would have stood us in good stead in 2006-2009. We saved the scum.

- I have trouble with the natural rate of interest. I agree with Wicksell abstractly up to the point where he morphs it into a monetary rate.

I think the natural monetary rate of interest is something quite different. In a fiat money system, the own rate for something which can be created at will is zero. The interest rate means nothing to government, and is therefore a policy variable.

I'm not sure it should be, but I see no way around it.

Obviously, in a commodity based money system the situation is much different.

 

[oldfart]

Axel Leijonihufvud for "On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes"

Vilfredo Pareto for work on welfare economics

Leon Walras for work on general equilibrium theory

Oscar Lange for his actual work in economic planning

J R Hicks, for explaining the unexplainable

Paul Samuelson for the unreadable "Foundations of Economic Analysis"

Simon Kuznets for doing what no one had done before and no one has really tried to do since

Wassily Leontieff who crunched every number

Robert Fogel who proved you needed to be an economist to be a good historian and you needed to be a historian to be a good economist

Thomas Malthus who extended economics into demography

John Nash who demonstrated that reality is not all that its cracked up to be

David Ricardo who got just about everything right, except when he was wrong

Karl Marx (see David Ricardo)

Johann von Thunen who knew where it was at (and where to put an ice cream stand on the beach)

Enjoy.

But not Friedman who created the modern economics we live by. What does that say about your real IQ. It's no surprise you cant participate here. Your head is stuck playing trivial pursuit!!

I have actually met Professor Friedman on a number of occasions and read a dozen or so of his works, including those that were intended as serious scholarship as opposed to a popular market. You obviously have read the rest.

Dear, most importantly, do you think Freidman was wrong in his basic conclusions? If so why?
Time to change the subject?? What does your fear teach us?

Nice try at hijacking the thread. We are all entitled to our opinion about Friedman or any other economist. If you think that Friedman was such hot stuff, start a thread on him. You did notice that my slam was not against Friedman, but against you?

 

[oldfart]

Axel Leijonihufvud for "On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes"

Vilfredo Pareto for work on welfare economics

Leon Walras for work on general equilibrium theory

Oscar Lange for his actual work in economic planning

J R Hicks, for explaining the unexplainable

Paul Samuelson for the unreadable "Foundations of Economic Analysis"

Simon Kuznets for doing what no one had done before and no one has really tried to do since

Wassily Leontieff who crunched every number

Robert Fogel who proved you needed to be an economist to be a good historian and you needed to be a historian to be a good economist

Thomas Malthus who extended economics into demography

John Nash who demonstrated that reality is not all that its cracked up to be

David Ricardo who got just about everything right, except when he was wrong

Karl Marx (see David Ricardo)

Johann von Thunen who knew where it was at (and where to put an ice cream stand on the beach)

Enjoy.

But not Friedman who created the modern economics we live by. What does that say about your real IQ. It's no surprise you cant participate here. Your head is stuck playing trivial pursuit!!

I have actually met Professor Friedman on a number of occasions and read a dozen or so of his works, including those that were intended as serious scholarship as opposed to a popular market. You obviously have read the rest.

- I never had that opportunity. What an honor.

Friedman was quite personable. But he did turn red one time when he shared a stage with Galbraith who ended the question session with "And there you have the long and the short of it!" Unfortunately Friedman had a peak in his skull and was bald on top, so that when you viewed his head from above he was the only true "pointy headed intellectual" I have ever met. Graduate students often referred to him as Uncle Milty, mostly with affection.

 

[oldfart]

- I have trouble with the natural rate of interest. I agree with Wicksell abstractly up to the point where he morphs it into a monetary rate.

I think the natural monetary rate of interest is something quite different. In a fiat money system, the own rate for something which can be created at will is zero. The interest rate means nothing to government, and is therefore a policy variable.

I'm not sure it should be, but I see no way around it.

Obviously, in a commodity based money system the situation is much different.

My major objection is that there is nothing "natural" about a natural rate of interest. In the minds of Wicksell and others of the Stockholm School, the natural rate of interest was simply the rate at which markets in the real economy would be in equilibrium. To them the natural rate was a proxy for the marginal rate of return on physical capital, an endogenous feature of the economy. The "money" rate was fixed by financial markets and could be higher or lower than the natural rate. The great breakthrough in this line of thought is that it penetrated the "veil of money" theory of the Classical economists and made a hash of Say's Law in all its forms. For this it deserves a high place in the history of economic thought.

Of course this was picked up by the Austrian School and developed in ways that Wicksell might not have intended. Unfortunately this is how Wicksell is mainly remembered. I prefer to think of his work as another building block in the grand project of a multi-sector intertemporal model of general equilibrium.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Axel Leijonihufvud for "On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes"

Vilfredo Pareto for work on welfare economics

Leon Walras for work on general equilibrium theory

Oscar Lange for his actual work in economic planning

J R Hicks, for explaining the unexplainable

Paul Samuelson for the unreadable "Foundations of Economic Analysis"

Simon Kuznets for doing what no one had done before and no one has really tried to do since

Wassily Leontieff who crunched every number

Robert Fogel who proved you needed to be an economist to be a good historian and you needed to be a historian to be a good economist

Thomas Malthus who extended economics into demography

John Nash who demonstrated that reality is not all that its cracked up to be

David Ricardo who got just about everything right, except when he was wrong

Karl Marx (see David Ricardo)

Johann von Thunen who knew where it was at (and where to put an ice cream stand on the beach)

Enjoy.

But not Friedman who created the modern economics we live by. What does that say about your real IQ. It's no surprise you cant participate here. Your head is stuck playing trivial pursuit!!

I have actually met Professor Friedman on a number of occasions and read a dozen or so of his works, including those that were intended as serious scholarship as opposed to a popular market. You obviously have read the rest.

- I never had that opportunity. What an honor.

What are your sorces for econimic insights . What do you like or dislike of them .

Friedman is my favorite because he stood for freedom. Liberals lack the IQ to understand how freedom works.

 

[Mr Natural]

Friedman is a quack.

 

[Mac1958]

Yeah, economists are great.

Theorists really have their thumb on the pulse of reality.

I just take them with a little grain of salt.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

- I have trouble with the natural rate of interest. I agree with Wicksell abstractly up to the point where he morphs it into a monetary rate.

I think the natural monetary rate of interest is something quite different. In a fiat money system, the own rate for something which can be created at will is zero. The interest rate means nothing to government, and is therefore a policy variable.

I'm not sure it should be, but I see no way around it.

Obviously, in a commodity based money system the situation is much different.

My major objection is that there is nothing "natural" about a natural rate of interest. In the minds of Wicksell and others of the Stockholm School, the natural rate of interest was simply the rate at which markets in the real economy would be in equilibrium. To them the natural rate was a proxy for the marginal rate of return on physical capital, an endogenous feature of the economy. The "money" rate was fixed by financial markets and could be higher or lower than the natural rate. The great breakthrough in this line of thought is that it penetrated the "veil of money" theory of the Classical economists and made a hash of Say's Law in all its forms. For this it deserves a high place in the history of economic thought.

Of course this was picked up by the Austrian School and developed in ways that Wicksell might not have intended. Unfortunately this is how Wicksell is mainly remembered. I prefer to think of his work as another building block in the grand project of a multi-sector intertemporal model of general equilibrium.

idiot savant still cant tell us if he's liberal or conservative and why? nor can he tell us why Says law is mistaken.

 

[Abishai100]

American Ant


I like looking at prominent American treasurers. Some of them have great economics erudition.

The two that really stand out are of course Alexander Hamilton and Alan Greenspan, and they both found the magic of injecting mercantilism with state-to-state organized regulation.

When states work and trade with each other efficiently, you have a really gliding national economy.

Isn't that what America is all about? Isn't that why we watch movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and our youngsters celebrate heist-glorification fictional avatars such as the comic book bandit troop, the Red Hood Gang (DC Comics)? Americans are fascinated by 'rocketeer nationalism.'

Most people think Americans only think of Apple Computers and Energizer Rechargeable Batteries and Burger King Whoppers (which by the way are great consumer products!).

Ring me up another Shirley Temple (that's ginger ale and a splash of grenadine garnished with a maraschino cherry).





Bonnie and Clyde (Film)

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

American Ant


I like looking at prominent American treasurers. Some of them have great economics erudition.

The two that really stand out are of course Alexander Hamilton and Alan Greenspan, and they both found the magic of injecting mercantilism with state-to-state organized regulation.

When states work and trade with each other efficiently, you have a really gliding national economy.

Isn't that what America is all about? Isn't that why we watch movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and our youngsters celebrate heist-glorification fictional avatars such as the comic book bandit troop, the Red Hood Gang (DC Comics)? Americans are fascinated by 'rocketeer nationalism.'

Most people think Americans only think of Apple Computers and Energizer Rechargeable Batteries and Burger King Whoppers (which by the way are great consumer products!).

Ring me up another Shirley Temple (that's ginger ale and a splash of grenadine garnished with a maraschino cherry).





Bonnie and Clyde (Film)

View attachment 41215

Friedman has to be the world's favorite since it was his scholarship that enabled us to avoid a depression after the recent Fanny/Freddie housing collapse!!

 

[Pksimon2007]

American Ant


I like looking at prominent American treasurers. Some of them have great economics erudition.

The two that really stand out are of course Alexander Hamilton and Alan Greenspan, and they both found the magic of injecting mercantilism with state-to-state organized regulation.

When states work and trade with each other efficiently, you have a really gliding national economy.

Isn't that what America is all about? Isn't that why we watch movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and our youngsters celebrate heist-glorification fictional avatars such as the comic book bandit troop, the Red Hood Gang (DC Comics)? Americans are fascinated by 'rocketeer nationalism.'

Most people think Americans only think of Apple Computers and Energizer Rechargeable Batteries and Burger King Whoppers (which by the way are great consumer products!).

Ring me up another Shirley Temple (that's ginger ale and a splash of grenadine garnished with a maraschino cherry).





Bonnie and Clyde (Film)

View attachment 41215

Friedman has to be the world's favorite since it was his scholarship that enabled us to avoid a depression after the recent Fanny/Freddie housing collapse!!

- lolwut?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

American Ant


I like looking at prominent American treasurers. Some of them have great economics erudition.

The two that really stand out are of course Alexander Hamilton and Alan Greenspan, and they both found the magic of injecting mercantilism with state-to-state organized regulation.

When states work and trade with each other efficiently, you have a really gliding national economy.

Isn't that what America is all about? Isn't that why we watch movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) and our youngsters celebrate heist-glorification fictional avatars such as the comic book bandit troop, the Red Hood Gang (DC Comics)? Americans are fascinated by 'rocketeer nationalism.'

Most people think Americans only think of Apple Computers and Energizer Rechargeable Batteries and Burger King Whoppers (which by the way are great consumer products!).

Ring me up another Shirley Temple (that's ginger ale and a splash of grenadine garnished with a maraschino cherry).





Bonnie and Clyde (Film)

View attachment 41215

Friedman has to be the world's favorite since it was his scholarship that enabled us to avoid a depression after the recent Fanny/Freddie housing collapse!!

- lolwut?

Friedman has to be the world's favorite economist since it was his scholarship that enabled us to avoid a depression after the recent Fanny/Freddie housing collapse that otherwise would have turned into a global depression!!

 

[CultureCitizen]

What are your sorces for econimic insights . What do you like or dislike of them .

For a serious and clear analysis my absolute favourite is Joseph Stiglitz.
I like to contrast them with the view points of Robert P Murphy and the economists of the Austrian school.
Steve Keen is bright economist who predicted the 2008 crisis long before it happened, so it is also an obligatory source for economic insight.
I like some of the articles from Paul Krugman, though his analysis is not nearly as polished as Stiglitz's.
Richard d'Wolf gives some very interesting lectures which I follow eagerly every month.
Finally I like Peter Schiff's and Max Keiser's shows ( they are a bit more theatrical , but interesting ) .

I will add Ha Joon Chang for his killer analysis on free trade and the effects it has had in the global economy.
I am reading "Bad Samaritans" which is probably the best book about the successes and failures of free trade merchantilism and globalization. And his analogies are just as insightfull as comical.

 

[regent]

Economics has so many components that are part of an economic system that it is often difficult to predict outcomes. Milton tried, and was right in one instance "capitalism is based on greed.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

I will add Ha Joon Chang for his killer analysis on free trade

so then tell us one significant thing the liberal said that wasn't 100% ignorant or admit you lack the IQ to be here.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I will add Ha Joon Chang for his killer analysis on free trade

so then tell us one significant thing the liberal said that wasn't 100% ignorant or admit you lack the IQ to be here.

Eddy T is projecting his own inability on CC. If we followed Eddy's libertarian policies, the USA would increase world wide poverty by 15% in six months.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

"capitalism is based on greed.

of course he didn't say that. Regent and culturecreep are illiterate liar liberal buffoons as always. Steve Jobs founded Apple out of greed and so we should condemn him as greedy so others will not want to invent great new things for us??

See why we have to be 100% positive that liberalism is based in pure ignorance! Is any other conclusion possible??