I thought this was very good, especially the part about the “Fed Head” saying that only trained economists should be taken seriously by the public, and economic bloggers should be disregarded.
If I hadn’t been reading Mike Shedlock and Mises.org for the past two years, my 401k would be worth 50% what it is today.
A law for regulating economic opinions coming to a country near you!
I always find that people who ‘trained’ themselves were always better at the things that ‘experts’ claim to be good at. You have to be a very certain person to be a creative writer. That’s not something you learn. And I think the same can be said about economists. For some people numbers just make sense. They can find patterns that trained experts cannot find.
Keiser raise the example of the Bible, the printer scare them, the manipulations and lies they had been telling were about to be discovered.
I think it´s a very good example.
I didn’t know high level technocrats worried about what bloggers think.
It perturbs me that there is this commonly held misconception in our society that universities leave individuals with more than just a degree, that they imbue them with supernatural powers that allow only them to understand certain sciences. Non-college educated people are equally capable of understanding and mastering a subject, provided they have the veracity and intellectual capacity to do so. Even more annoying is the high-snobbery of fools like these -
Doubtus,
Thanks for the link. I liked this quote from it: "The full report from Athreya is here. Some of the more offending comments:
Writers who have not taken a year of PhD coursework in a decent economics department (and passed their PhD qualifying exams), cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy"
Change the word “policy” to “intervention” and I think the Fed head is actually correct… “cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic INTERVENTION”. Those who wish to advance the discussion of intervention ought to have PhD’s from IV league schools. But those who instead wish to understand how the economy works ought not listen to the PhD interventionists.
Preteek - the high level technocrats are becoming more worried about what bloggers think with each day’s new round of dismal economic reports, just as the bloggers predicted would happen. The bloggers understand basic economics, the seen and unseen. The interventionists only observe the “seen”.
My financial condition would have been devastated if I had not heard of and followed Mike Shedlock’s blog. He’s been hammering lately on the fact that state and municipal governments are bankrupt, state pension plans are bankrupt, etc. The mainstream financial media are very slow to cover this catastrophe. Federal debt, state debt, municipal debt, state pension plans, all bust. Where are the PhD economists on this? They want more spending, more borrowing, more debt. If the money cant’ be borrowed, just print it, they say.
Actually, the interventionists are economics professors from places like Princeton.
I am not vouching for their credibility.
I am just saying that they are quite capable of knowing the difference between what they say on television and what actually happens.
If you read Lilburne’s article on Joseph Biddle, titled “19th Century Bernanke”, you’ll find that Biddle was knowledge enough in economics to know exactly what the results of his central banking operations were, but saw his actions as gentlemanly and acceptable. He was a New York and Washington elite, and what else should ever worry him?
The wonks will hold on to their positions either way. Biddle didn’t nearly care what President Andrew Jackson said about him, and yet these modern Biddles worry about what bloggers say?
There was once a time when central bankers had class. 