CapitalistImperialistPig

I am pretty sure that Steven Landsburg has a very high IQ. This does not prevent him from expressing opinions that seem utterly lacking in ordinary judgement. I am sometimes reminded of the opinions of my favorite string theorist - no, not that one - my other favorite (fictional) string theorist, Sheldon Cooper. This disquisition on Keynesian economics is an utter classic. I keep thinking it's intended as satire, but it really doesn't seem to be. I have a very naive question for the Keynesian economists: Why aren’t you thrilled with the current state of the economy? Here’s why I ask: According to what I take to be an orthodox Keynesian view, we are now in a liquidity trap. (My question does not apply to Keynesians, new or old, who believe otherwise.) That means that people want to hold lots and lots of money instead of spending it. Cool! We can provide money at almost zero cost. So it should be easy to make people very happy. What’s the problem? Of course, people a...

Republicans seem to have painted themselves into a total corner on the debt "ceiling" talks.  I don't see how they are going to get out of this unless they are counting on a total fold by Obama. Oh wait.

This blogger says: I Bet You Paul Krugman Can’t Do This - but I don't know - Krugman seems pretty fit.

Alex Tabarrok has a follow-up post on the "shares of earnings" theme. The comments to this and the previous post are as interesting as his posts. The most interesting point: it's already happening. Ryan Hahn also points to Lumni, a new firm that is investing in human capital in the developing world: Lumni designs, markets and manages "Human capital funds", an innovative investment vehicle for financing education. Students agree to pay a fixed percentage of their individual incomes for a predetermined number of months after graduation. The arrangement traspases part of the risk of investing in education from the student to the investor, who is in a better position to diversify it. Lumni is the brainchild of economics professor Miguel Palacios. Here is his book and Cato paper on human capital contracts. It ought to be interesting to see how this turns out. As a commenter points out, it doesn't make sense to invest willy-nilly - you want to put your cash ...

A new and rather pathetic slander from Steve Landsburg targets former Harvard President and current Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers. I guess I should no longer be surprised by the puerile quality of the stuff that allegedly constitutes "tackling the big questions of philosophy using ideas from mathematics, economics and physics" a la Landsburg, but his latest stunt is more like tackling the small questions of invective using the ideas of the seventh grade playground. Here's today's schtick - put up a picture of mass murderer Amy Bishop and Summers and launch a few nasty slanders that seem to apply to the murderer and then make it clear that he's talking about Summers. Ho ho ho - what a pathetic little s**t, and no, I don't mean Summers. Of course it's pretty silly for me to be defending Summers, but Landsburg irritates the hell out of me, and that was true even before he banned me for making fun of his brand of psuedo-economics (...