Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession
by ilene - September 26th, 2012 3:33 pm
A new article "Robert Johnson: Economists As Marketeers for the Monied Interests" reminded me of this article from 2009. Here, Ryan Grim examines how the economics profession became essentially a servant to the Federal Reserve. ~ Ilene
*****
Ryan Grim is the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post and former staff reporter with Politico.com and Washington City Paper. He's the author of the book, "This Is Your Country on Drugs" and won the 2007 Alt-Weekly Award for best long-form news-story. – Ilene
Intro by Tom Burger:
Here is a good article to consider when you are pondering how it is that nearly all mainstream economists toe the line with respect to monetary economic dogma.
As I have so often asserted: there is a darn good reason why these people have gone to such great lengths to nail down support from economists and government: their business is extremely lucrative. They have quite literally achieved the alchemist's dream of converting lead to gold (i.e. money). The only difference is that the Fed doesn't need even a lead mine. They can convert "nothing at all" to "gold."
This article, however, might lead one to believe that this Fed influence is a recent development; the author cites people who say this is how it has been since about the 1970s. Well, maybe the Fed's total dominance of academia is that recent, but their campaign began at least 15 years before the legislation that founded the Fed.
The big city bankers of that turn of the century era put together a comprehensive program involving a blizzard of articles for the public and for economists. They founded university chairs for "right thinking" economists, they lobbied legislators. The activities described by Rothbard and others went on and on. In my opinion, none of this — then or now — was done because these people thought it would be good for the public or for the economy. They did it because it opened the door to unlimited theft. Okay … the perpetrators probably didn't admit to themselves they were thieves. They probably just believed that unlimited wealth was their destiny because they were just so much smarter than everybody else.
If you doubt the Fed's destructive control over economic thought, please read this article. – Tom
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Breaking the Guild of Macroeconomists
by ilene - September 5th, 2010 5:11 pm
Tim at The Psy-Fi Blog compares the science of economics, or actually the pseudo-science, with medical theory in the days of Galen, the ancient Greek physician:
Galen contributed a substantial amount to the Hippocratic understanding of pathology. Under Hippocrates’ bodily humors theory, differences in human moods come as a consequence of imbalances in one of the four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. Galen advanced this theory, creating a typology of human temperaments. An imbalance of each humor corresponded with a particular human temperament (blood-sanguine, black bile-melancholic, yellow bile-choleric, and phlegm-phlegmatic). Individuals with sanguine temperaments are extroverted and social. Choleric people have energy, passion and charisma. Melancholics are creative, kind and considerate. Phlegmatic temperaments are characterized by dependability, kindness, and affection.
While that theory proved wrong, Galen made some interesting contributions to medical science:
Galen’s principal interest was in human anatomy, but Roman law had prohibited the dissection of human cadavers since about 150 BCE. Because of this restriction, Galen performed anatomical dissections on living (vivisection) and dead animals, mostly focusing on pigs and primates. This work turned out to be particularly useful because in most cases, the anatomical structures of these animals closely mirror those
of humans. Galen clarified the anatomy of the trachea and was the first to demonstrate that the larynx generates the voice. Galen may have understood the importance of artificial ventilation, because in one of his experiments he used bellows to inflate the lungs of a dead animal.
Among Galen’s major contributions to medicine was his work on the circulatory system. He was the first to recognize that there were distinct differences between venous (dark) and arterial (bright) blood. Although his many anatomical experiments on animal models led him to a more complete understanding of the circulatory system, nervous system, respiratory system and other structures, his work was not without scientific inaccuracies. Wikipedia.
Breaking the Guild of Macroeconomists
Courtesy of Tim at Psy-Fi Blog
Economic Entertainment
In an entertaining piece Economics is Hard. Don’t Let Bloggers Tell You Otherwise Kartik Athreya of the Fed in Richmond has suggested that financial bloggers are a mentally incontinent bunch, pathologically incapable of stopping themselves from opining on financial matters on which they actually offer no insight. Now, leaving aside the question of whether we want our professional economists to be entertaining, this opens up the question of whether untrained commentators can…
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Death By Globalism
by ilene - September 1st, 2010 5:48 pm
Interesting article discussing the failings of economists on both sides of the "Great Stimulus Debate," who a stimulus will really benefit (not us), inflation and deflation, and how globalization has proven ruinous for the U.S. – Ilene
Death By Globalism
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writing at CounterPunch
Have economists made themselves irrelevant? If you have any doubts, have a look at the current issue of the magazine, International Economy, a slick publication endorsed by former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, by former Secretary of State George Shultz, and by the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which declare the magazine to be “ahead of the curve.”
The main feature of the current issue is “The Great Stimulus Debate.” Is the Obama fiscal stimulus helping the economy or hindering it?
Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi represent the Keynesian view that government deficit spending is needed to lift the economy out of recession. Zandi declares that thanks to the fiscal stimulus, “The economy has made enormous progress since early 2009,” an opinion shared by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and the Congressional Budget Office.
The opposite view, associated with Harvard economics professor Robert Barro and with European economists, such as Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano and the European Central Bank, is that government budget surpluses achieved by cutting government spending spur the economy by reducing the ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product. This is the “let them eat cake school of economics.”
Barro says that fiscal stimulus has no effect, because people anticipate the future tax increases implied by government deficits and increase their personal savings to offset the added government debt. Giavazzi and Pagano reason that since fiscal stimulus does not expand the economy, fiscal austerity consisting of higher taxes and reduced government spending could be the cure for unemployment.
If one overlooks the real world and the need of life for sustenance, one can become engrossed in this debate. However, the minute one looks out the window upon the world, one realizes that cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies when 15 million Americans have lost jobs, medical coverage, and homes is a certain path to death by starvation, curable diseases, and…
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Deceptive Economic Statistics
by ilene - August 18th, 2010 7:58 pm
Deceptive Economic Statistics
Courtesy of PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, writing at CounterPunch
On August 17, Bloomberg reported a US government release that industrial production rose twice as much as forecast, climbing 1 percent. Bloomberg interpreted this to mean that “increased business investment is propelling the gains in manufacturing, which accounts for 11 percent of the world’s largest economy.”
The stock market rose.
Let’s look at this through the lens of statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com.
Williams reports that “the primary driver of a 1.0% monthly gain in seasonally-adjusted July industrial production” was “warped seasonal factors” caused by “the irregular patterns in U.S. auto production in the last two years.” Industrial production “shrank by 1.0% before seasonal adjustments.”
If the government and Bloomberg had announced that industrial production fell by 1.0% in July, would the stock market have risen 104 points on August 17?
Notice that Bloomberg reports that manufacturing accounts for 11 percent of the US economy. I remember when manufacturing accounted for 18% of the US economy. The decline of 39% is due to jobs offshoring.
Think about that. Wall Street and shareholders and executives of transnational corporations have made billions by moving 39% of US manufacturing offshore to boost the GDP and employment of foreign countries, such as China, while impoverishing their former American work force. Congress and the economics profession have cheered this on as “the New Economy.”
Bought-and-paid-for-economists told us that “the new economy” would make us all rich, and so did the financial press. We were well rid, they claimed, of the “old” industries and manufactures, the departure of which destroyed the tax base of so many American cities and states and the livelihood of millions of Americans.
The bought-and-paid-for-economists got all the media forums for a decade. While they lied, the US economy died.
Now, back to statistical deception. On August 17 the census Bureau reported a small gain in July 2010 residential construction housing starts. More hope orchestrated. In fact, the “gain,” as John Williams reports, was due to a large downward revision” in June’s reporting. The reported July “gain” would “have been a contraction” without the downward revision in June’s “gain.”
So, the overestimate of June housing not only made June look good, but also the downward correction of the June number makes July look good, because starts rose above the corrected June number. The same manipulation is likely to…
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AUSTERITY VS DEFICIT SPENDING – A CATCH 22
by ilene - August 6th, 2010 2:00 am
AUSTERITY VS DEFICIT SPENDING – A CATCH 22
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Courtesy of Hannes Kunz, Ph.D., President of Institute for Integrated Economic Research
A vivid debate is currently going between two groups of economists, politicians and financial analysts. One camp argues that government deficits have to be kept within reasonable limits or avoided altogether, because fast-increasing public debt will become unmanageable in the foreseeable future. We wholeheartedly agree.
The other group advocates a continuation of stimulus spending and credit driven investment by governments. In a New York Times op-ed piece published on June 17, 2010, Paul Krugman explained why slamming the breaks on government spending would throw us back into recession. On June 28, he doubled up, now arguing that with reduced government stimulus, we’re headed straight towards a new depression. We fully agree with his assessment.
How come IIER is simultaneously able to agree with two camps which are ready to turn to fists when making their argument? It’s quite simple: both have a point. But equally, both have no real answer.
The Keynesian bridge to nowhere
Let’s begin with Mr. Krugman, whom one might locate in the deficit-spending, or Keynesian camp. Keynes, in the part that is mostly quoted by the people advocating stimulating consumption and investment by governments, suggests two things. By keeping demand for goods and services high during a recession, the government is able to keep people employed and stimulate further demand by implying a multiplier effect from its spending. At the same time, valuable industrial infrstructure utilization is guaranteed, which ensures that past capital investment is preserved during a downturn, making the conversion to a growing economy smoother, preventing a situation where future growth would be limited by capacity constraints.
We have to say that we fully agree with all the assumptions about those direct implications, in fact, the Post-Keynesian concept of the “multiplier effect” extra government dollars have is very much in line with our own view of the impact growing credit levels have on an economy. But wait. When the concept was introduced in the 1930s, the world stood at the beginning of exploring a bounty of natural resources, first and foremost oil, and what was missing was infrastructure to make good use of those gifts from mother nature. Thus, building cars, roads, machinery and other things made a lot of sense, and…
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Money Illusion
by ilene - August 4th, 2010 8:03 pm
Money Illusion
Courtesy of Tim at The Psy-Fi Blog
Sleep Soundly
Money illusion is just about the most venerable of all of the behavioural biases that afflict people’s financial good sense. It was recognised back in the early part of the twentieth century, was an integral part of financial theories from thereon and spawned a range of measures that are more or usually less useful to us in everyday life.
Then economists decided that money illusion was … illusory. Which led to various predictable, albeit unpleasant, consequences such as believing “you can’t go wrong with property” or that storing cash in your mattress equates to sensible financial planning. Being poor is one thing, but not being able to get a good night’s sleep is entirely another …
Vanishing Trick
Money illusion is the trait that causes people to focus on the amount of money they possess rather than it’s worth to them. A hundred dollars a hundred years ago is obviously worth much more than a hundred dollars now: prices have inflated and the value of the hundred dollars is far less than it used to be. Measuring this exactly isn’t possible: what price would a businessman have paid for instant communication across the world a century ago compared to the peanuts we pay for the internet today?
In deciding to ignore the idea of money illusion economics was, for once, joining the mainstream, where most people happily ignore the fact that the value of the dollar in their pocket isn’t what it once was. This leads neatly to a world where there are more unemployed people than there should be, where central banks run around like puppy dogs chasing their tails trying to avoid the dreaded d-word and lots of people end up much, much poorer than they ought to be. As ever in monetary matters the world is stranger than we can possibly want to imagine.
Fisher’s Indexes
Despite the practical impossibility of real comparisons we know perfectly well that the value of a dollar or a pound, shekel, rouble or euro isn’t what it used to be. In fact, in the case of the euro it almost certainly isn’t what it was when you started reading this. This fact, however, doesn’t stop us from almost exclusively focussing on how much money we have today rather than what it can purchase for us:…
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Durable Goods Orders “Unexpectedly” Sink; How did Economists Blow the Call?
by ilene - July 28th, 2010 9:30 pm
Durable Goods Orders "Unexpectedly" Sink; How did Economists Blow the Call?
Courtesy of Mish
I cannot help but laugh at economists who refuse to see the economy is slowing dramatically, and somehow think manufacturing is going to lead the way to recovery.
Check out this headline on Bloomberg prior to the durable goods report: Orders for Durable Goods in U.S. Probably Rebounded in June
July 28 (Bloomberg) — Orders for durable goods probably increased in June for the sixth time in the past seven months, showing business spending is supporting the U.S. recovery, economists said before a report today.
Bookings for goods meant to last at least three years rose 1 percent after dropping 0.6 percent in May, according to the median of 76 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Excluding transportation gear, orders may have grown 0.4 percent.
“Business spending, particularly for capital equipment, is holding up,” said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics LLC in Pepper Pike, Ohio. “Ordering is strong as companies ramp up and resupply.”
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said July 26 that there is fundamental strength in the economy. “I think there is underlying strength there that is still there,” Plosser said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Washington.
In the Bloomberg survey, the median and average forecasts were for an increase of +1%. The high forecast was a preposterous 4%.
Excluding transportation, the median forecast was +.4% and average +.2%.
Individual Forecasts 1.5 Percent or Greater
- Barclays Capital +1.5%
- BNP Paribas +4.0%
- Citi +1.6%
- Desjardins Group +2.0%
- High Frequency Economics +2.0%
- J.P. Morgan Chase +1.7%
- Janney Montgomery Scott +3.2%
- Landesbank Berlin +2.8%
- Nomura Securities Intl. +3.0%
- PineBridge Investments +2.5%
- Raymond James +2.0%
- RBC Capital Markets +2.3%
- Ried, Thunberg & Co. +1.5%
- Thomson Reuters/IFR +2.9%
- Wrightson Associates +1.5%
Individual Forecasts Below Zero Percent
- 4CAST Ltd. -.5%
- IHS Global Insight -0.8%
- MF Global -1.0%
- Morgan Keegan & Co. -0.5%
The Actual Report
Inquiring minds are reading the Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders June 2010
New Orders
New orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased $2.0 billion or 1.0 percent to $190.5 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This was the second consecutive monthly decrease and followed a 0.8 percent May decrease.
Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.6 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.7 percent.
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Unpredictably Rational
by ilene - April 5th, 2010 3:44 pm
I don’t think humans are rational creatures but we do have an ability to make rational decisions. And perhaps an even greater ability to rationalize our (rational and irrational) behavior. Just saying. – Ilene
Unpredictably Rational
Courtesy of Tim at The Psy-Fi Blog
Common Sense
As we go about our everyday lives we don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on the irrationality of the people around us. Certainly from time to time people do stupid things, but by and large most of us make it through most of our days without driving the wrong way up roads, roasting our dogs in microwaves or buying stocks in stupid companies. Even when we do odd things there’s usually some recognisably rational reason for us doing them.
This version of human rationality is virtually unknown to all brands of economics which largely insist on defining rationality in an irrational way and then sniggering at the human race when it fails to live up to the standards that some rather over-focused economists think it should. The problem for them is that we’re not the irrational ones, they are. The problem for us is that the people that matter listen to them, not us.
Maximal Utility
The definition of rationality that’s at the centre of modern economics is a strange conceit, based around the idea of maximising utility. Underlying this is an assumption that rationality means that we’re consistent in our choices: faced with the same situation we should always do the same thing. From this position economists have then spent a great deal of time trying to design experiments to show that this is what we do, which is just about possible when you remove all vestiges of reality from the situation (see, for instance, Be a Sceptical Economist).
However, real-life isn’t like this. We rarely, if ever, face the same situation twice: life is a stream and we can’t stand in it twice. Mostly we must face each situation anew and make new choices each time. Obviously we rely on past experience to guide us in our decision making and, as we all have different experiences to guide us, we make different decisions. We even make different choices ourselves between very similar circumstances and most of us will see nothing wrong in this. It’s certainly not…
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Economists Opposing Fed Audit Have Undisclosed Fed Ties
by ilene - November 19th, 2009 12:13 am
Ryan Grim is the senior congressional correspondent for the Huffington Post, former staff reporter with Politico.com and Washington City Paper, and author of the book, "This Is Your Country on Drugs." Ryan won the 2007 Alt-Weekly Award for best long-form news-story. – Ilene
Economists Opposing Fed Audit Have Undisclosed Fed Ties
Courtesy of Ryan Grim
Article appears originally in the Huffington Post
As the debate over an audit of the Federal Reserve intensifies in the House, one camp is trotting out eight academics that it calls a "political cross section of prominent economists."
A review of their backgrounds shows they are anything but.
In a letter to the House Financial Services Committee earlier this month, all eight wrote that they support the type of amendment now being introduced by Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.). Watt’s approach purports to increase Fed transparency while it actually would tighten restrictions on any audits that could go forward.
The letter was sent around Wednesday by Watt’s staff to members of the committee in advance of a vote scheduled for Thursday.
Watt’s measure is in competition with an amendment cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), which would repeal the restrictions that Watt leaves in place.
But far from a broad cross-section, the "prominent economists" lobbying on behalf of the Watt bill are in fact deeply involved with the Federal Reserve. Seven of the eight are either currently on the Fed’s payroll or have been in the past.
The Fed connections are not outlined in the letter sent around to committee members on Wednesday, but are publicly discernible through a review of their resumes, which are all posted online.
In September, Huffington Post reported that the Federal Reserve has accomplished a soft form of effective control over the field of monetary economics simply by employing — and being the means for career advance — for an overwhelming proportion of the discipline.
Now that the Fed is locked in a legislative battle on the Hill, it can call on those economists to give their "unvarnished" opinions to lawmakers.
The connections that the seven economists lobbying Congress have to the Fed are not incidental and four of them maintain current positions.
Let’s run the traps:
Frederic Mishkin is a former board member, having served from 2006-2008. His career at the Fed…
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Tim on Economists
by ilene - September 15th, 2009 2:52 pm
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By Tim Naegele, in response to Ryan Grim’s Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession.
My sense — having gotten my undergraduate degree in the field from UCLA — is that most economists are incompetent "whores." There is a herd instinct that governs them, and they do not dare to get out of step with their brethren; and they tow the "company line" religiously. Hence, at best some of them are moderately competent in deciphering the past, but utterly incompetent in predicting the future. Rather than be perceived as "wrong," they are like lemmings marching to the sea, in lock step.
That is among the reasons why when one economist with credentials breaks from the pack — as Roubini did before the so-called "recession" was upon us, and says that the emperor has no clothes — he (or she) has such an impact, because the other members of his profession are essentially saying nothing. In a real sense, the profession’s "poster boy" is Alan Greenspan who has admitted that he never saw the housing crisis coming. What planet was he living on?
Ordinary Americans saw the bubble — and all bubbles burst at some point in time, and the bigger the bubble, the deeper the fall — but Greenspan and his brethren missed it. That speaks volumes.
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