Not bad, aside from "Especially the weak dollar will continue to hit the European economy hard, because it will make it much harder to export". Essentially, this means "the US was buying more than it should, and we're finally catching on, so we can no longer seriously pretend to ourselves we're getting anything in return when we sell them stuff."

Yes, I'm an American ("Damn Yankee" variety). The US has gotten the leaders the majority of us deserved. They kept the American people deluded for at least five years, thanks to support from a large contingent who think the Bible is a Science text. So... what's your excuse for getting fooled on their economic policies?

abb3w: So... what's your excuse for getting fooled on their economic policies?

don't blame me - I've been investing in shotguns and canned goods for 3 years now.

All kidding aside, we're gonna have more problems once social security implodes. weak dollar, housing market implosion, and a Hillary presidency - that'd kick off the end of the world with a bang!

And for the record, Stiglitz shared his prize with Akerlof and Spence. Stiglitz did most of the typing.

Fortunately for him, unfortunately for us, some people still like Greenspan...

The Philadelphia Daily News asked Senator Clinton, "why Greenspan", that wasn't he off-base on the housing bubble, and here was her response:

"Not only that, but the Fed didn't act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street -- don't ask me why because I never understand what he's saying -- but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he's come out and very smartly so that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he's moved on his understanding and depth of the problem -- but you know you could pick three others. You just have to have some demonstrable involvement of presidential leadership...

Linky (new window)

So basically....the economist is using what he thinks he knows today to apply it to what should have been done a couple of years ago?

Huh.

That's some nice reasoning there lou.

A leftist economist is blaming Bush for something? I'll pretend like that surprises me. Basically this is boiling down to the same old thing.

The leftists are cheering for the leftist saying what they want to hear and booing anyone who disagrees with them.

randomjsa: A leftist economist is blaming Bush for something? I'll pretend like that surprises me. Basically this is boiling down to the same old thing.

The leftists are cheering for the leftist saying what they want to hear and booing anyone who disagrees with them.

the troll-fu is weak with this one.

randomjsa: A leftist....


I realize you're probably trolling but why do so many conservatives love to label things [whatever]ists? Islamofascists, leftists, elitists, Dawinists, evolutionists and the list goes on. It's ridiculously stupid. A lot of the time, they're not even real words. WTF?

Doctor Funkenstein: why do so many conservatives love to label things

By doing so it therefore requires little - if any - thought about any annoying real issue(s) that may subsequently arise.

Point & shoot FTW!

skipjack: So basically....the economist is using what he thinks he knows today to apply it to what should have been done a couple of years ago?

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future" (not obscure)

Doctor Funkenstein: I realize you're probably trolling but why do so many conservatives love to label things [whatever]ists? Islamofascists, leftists, elitists, Dawinists, evolutionists and the list goes on. It's ridiculously stupid. A lot of the time, they're not even real words. WTF?

No I'm not trolling, I'm just telling the truth about the guy.

he is known for his critical view of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists")

He served in the Clinton Administration as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1995 - 1997). At the World Bank, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist (1997 - 2000), in the time when unprecedented protest against international economic organizations started, most prominently with the Seattle WTO meeting of 1999. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some laissez-faire and free-market economists question Stiglitz's lines of reasoning, which are based on theories of Information economics and information asymmetry and amount to an economic argument for more government intervention and regulation.

The guy is a leftist. Accept it.

randomjsa: Some laissez-faire and free-market economists question Stiglitz's lines of reasoning, which are based on theories of Information economics and information asymmetry and amount to an economic argument for more government intervention and regulation.

The guy is a leftist. Accept it.

He's not only a leftist - he's WRONG. The rampant market success of subprime mortgages shows that it's good when investors don't know what they're buying.

randomjsa:
The guy is a leftist. Accept it.

What specifically did he say that you disagree with? Do you have any support for an argument that Bush's tax cuts helped the economy? That spending trillions of dollars in Iraq was a good idea? That deficit spending and a huge trade imbalance didn't help to weaken the dollar?

Or are you just going to say "he's a leftist" and leave it at that, as if that is some kind of effective counterargument?

Doctor Funkenstein: randomjsa: A leftist....


I realize you're probably trolling but why do so many conservatives love to label things [whatever]ists? Islamofascists, leftists, elitists, Dawinists, evolutionists and the list goes on. It's ridiculously stupid. A lot of the time, they're not even real words. WTF?

I guess they're just typical white persons.

NYZooMan: I guess they're just typical white persons.

Just like this economist is typical urban godless leftist elitist scum.

But make sure you turn your nose up when you call him a liberal. That way you can feel more snobbish and morally superior.

LocalCynic: NYZooMan: I guess they're just typical white persons.

Just like this economist is typical urban godless leftist elitist scum.

But make sure you turn your nose up when you call him a liberal. That way you can feel more snobbish and morally superior.

Hey, don't blame me, those aren't MY words!

Blame the source!

Doctor Funkenstein: randomjsa: A leftist....


I realize you're probably trolling but why do so many conservatives love to label things [whatever]ists? Islamofascists, leftists, elitists, Dawinists, evolutionists and the list goes on. It's ridiculously stupid. A lot of the time, they're not even real words. WTF?

You forgot some others like Neocons, fundies, chicken hawks, zionists, bible thumpers etc;

NYZooMan: I guess they're just typical white persons.

Crackerists?

NYZooMan Hey, don't blame me, those aren't MY words! Blame the source!

Only if I can turn my nose up in a condescending fashion while I condemn the source for the "typical white person" comment.

LocalCynic: NYZooMan Hey, don't blame me, those aren't MY words! Blame the source!

Only if I can turn my nose up in a condescending fashion while I condemn the source for the "typical white person" comment.

Obama?

randomjsa: The guy is a leftist. Accept it.

Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

RandomExcess: Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

Second worst.

Doctor Funkenstein: randomjsa: A leftist....


I realize you're probably trolling but why do so many conservatives love to label things [whatever]ists? Islamofascists, leftists, elitists, Dawinists, evolutionists and the list goes on. It's ridiculously stupid. A lot of the time, they're not even real words. WTF?

Labeling, name calling, degrading statements and things of the like are indicative of an individual who has large insecurity problems. They will lash out, degrade, label, categorize others to falsely bolster self esteem as they perceive their position, group or stance as superior.

Doctor Funkenstein: NYZooMan: I guess they're just typical white persons.

Crackerists?

Or,as they say in Quebec, "Crackerjaques"

Seth_The_Wide: Only if I can turn my nose up in a condescending fashion while I condemn the source for the "typical white person" comment.

Obama?

Exactly. We rural folk are morally superior to that godless urban dweller. It's not about Obama. It's about the superiority of rural living, and the inferiority of godless urban liberalism.

randomjsa: Doctor Funkenstein: I realize you're probably trolling but why do so many conservatives love to label things [whatever]ists? Islamofascists, leftists, elitists, Dawinists, evolutionists and the list goes on. It's ridiculously stupid. A lot of the time, they're not even real words. WTF?

No I'm not trolling, I'm just telling the truth about the guy.

he is known for his critical view of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists")

He served in the Clinton Administration as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1995 - 1997). At the World Bank, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist (1997 - 2000), in the time when unprecedented protest against international economic organizations started, most prominently with the Seattle WTO meeting of 1999. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Some laissez-faire and free-market economists question Stiglitz's lines of reasoning, which are based on theories of Information economics and information asymmetry and amount to an economic argument for more government intervention and regulation.

The guy is a leftist. Accept it.

Actually, you're quite right - but in this particular circumstance, it's hardly relevant. There are plenty of very conservative economists who are sayitg precisely the same things. Let's face it - the Bush administration have broken several of the paramount rules of conservative economics:
A: Do not spend money you do not have.
B:Having broken rule "A", you don't try to bail out of it by cutting taxes and printing more and more increasingly worthless money - you raise tax revenues temporarily until you're in the black.
C: While you take care not to over regulate your financial sector, you do not allow regulation to grow so lax that outright fraud and predatory practices are tolerated.
D: And, having broken rule "C", again, you don't try to fix it by printing more money.
All the economic blunders of the Bush administration (with the exception of his ill-timed tax cuts), in fact, come straight out of the liberal, "New Deal" playbook - and if Bush is to be criticized for nothing else, he should be criticized for ever presenting himself to the American people as a "conservative".

If only someone in Congress was saying that ridiculously low interest rates would cause a bubble years ago...

RandomExcess: Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

Not true.

Worst ever was a Repulican by the name of Warren G. Harding.

Worst since WWII is George W. Bush.

Oh, and it's slightly disingenuous to blame the tax cuts. The problem is the defecit, which could have been equally avoided by either no tax cuts or decreased spending.

RandomExcess: Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

Nobel PEACE Prizes don't mean squat thanks to Arafat. The other prizes, though, still mean something.

obzerver: Worst ever was a Repulican by the name of Warren G. Harding.

No, he was the most mediocre. To be "the worst" you can't be inept and mediocre like Harding, you have to be actively malicious. Like Lincoln.

/Bush is somewhere between inept and malicious

Well they used to call it "tax and spend" but Bush messed it up and made it "cut tax and spend more". Even more simple is let's say you make 40,000 a year and you spend about 39-ish after everything is said and done, which is good but you shouldn't be spending that much and should save. So if you are a complete imbecile and do what our government does you find a job that pays 33,000 a year and spend 50,000 a year. That is probably not a smart thing to do, imagine if a government does it?

The headline and article forgot to mention that Stiglitz served in Clinton's cabinet for a few years. But I'm sure that has nothing to do with him criticizing a Republican administration.

Mentat: RandomExcess: Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

Nobel PEACE Prizes don't mean squat thanks to Arafat. The other prizes, though, still mean something.

It should also be noted that the Peace Prizes are awarded through an entirely separate and unrelated process.

Churchill2004: Oh, and it's slightly disingenuous to blame the tax cuts. The problem is the defecit, which could have been equally avoided by either no tax cuts or decreased spending.

No, the tax cuts were the problem. The GOP has been baiting and switching voters for years with short term tax cuts. Because the Bush tax cuts were bound to expire within a few years, the upper crust viewed them as a short term subsidy and simply took the money and ran. The GOP likes to talk the talk, but they had no intention of making permanent tax cuts, because they knew that would mean that they could no longer campaign on taxes.

obzerver: RandomExcess: Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

Not true.

Worst ever was a Repulican by the name of Warren G. Harding.

Worst since WWII is George W. Bush.

Everyone knows Harrison was the worst President ever. No debate is possible or necessary.

El_Dan: What specifically did he say that you disagree with? Do you have any support for an argument that Bush's tax cuts helped the economy? That spending trillions of dollars in Iraq was a good idea? That deficit spending and a huge trade imbalance didn't help to weaken the dollar?

Or are you just going to say "he's a leftist" and leave it at that, as if that is some kind of effective counterargument?

There's plenty of support for both the fact that the economy improved after the tax cuts and that tax revenue increased after the tax cuts but of course these are all lies.

Do I have any support for it? Yes, Alan Greenspan, oh but wait... He's not spouting off diatribes against America and Bush so he's scum of the Earth and is not to be believed, but hey... Another economist that is telling liberals what they want to hear? Well, he can only be speaking the truth but not Greenspan, who is just as qualified to make statements about what resulted in what.

As I said, it's a leftist saying things that leftists want to hear and being applauded by leftists for saying it. What else is new here? There are plenty of equally qualified experts who beg to differ with everything the guy says but hey, they're not saying what you want to hear so obviously their opinion is garbage.

The point is that people are taking one supposedly qualified person and throwing them under the bus for being in disagreement with another supposedly qualified person who happens to say what they want to hear.

LocalCynic: No, the tax cuts were the problem. The GOP has been baiting and switching voters for years with short term tax cuts. Because the Bush tax cuts were bound to expire within a few years, the upper crust viewed them as a short term subsidy and simply took the money and ran. The GOP likes to talk the talk, but they had no intention of making permanent tax cuts, because they knew that would mean that they could no longer campaign on taxes

All of that has nothing to do with the economic problems caused by the tax cuts- which is the fact that they coincided with a doubling of Federal expenditures. Bad intentions don't wreck economies, bad policies do. And you're just talking about bad intentions.

Churchill2004: All of that has nothing to do with the economic problems caused by the tax cuts- which is the fact that they coincided with a doubling of Federal expenditures. Bad intentions don't wreck economies, bad policies do. And you're just talking about bad intentions.

Re-read my post. Because of the ill-intentioned short term tax cuts, corporations and the upper class were unwilling to take long term financial risks. If the tax cuts were made permanent INITIALLY, when they were created, then maybe the laissez faire prophets could have tried to play with their Laffer Curve and seen some benefit. But the short term nature of the tax cuts meant that people simply decided to take the money and run, rather than letting it trickle down onto the unwashed masses.

obzerver: RandomExcess: Nobel Prizes don't mean squat. Jimmy Carter got one and he is the worst President in U.S. history.

Not true.

Worst ever was a Repulican by the name of Warren G. Harding.

Worst since WWII is George W. Bush.

Harding was harmless, come on.

randomjsa: There's plenty of support for both the fact that the economy improved after the tax cuts and that tax revenue increased after the tax cuts but of course these are all lies.

The economy generally grows every year, so you would expect tax revenue to grow every year as well. It went down and then continued to grow at the same rate that it did before.

randomjsa: The point is that people are taking one supposedly qualified person and throwing them under the bus for being in disagreement with another supposedly qualified person who happens to say what they want to hear.

I agree. It's completely idiotic when somebody comes along and paints anybody who disagrees with them with a political label only to discount what they have to say.

LocalCynic: Churchill2004: All of that has nothing to do with the economic problems caused by the tax cuts- which is the fact that they coincided with a doubling of Federal expenditures. Bad intentions don't wreck economies, bad policies do. And you're just talking about bad intentions.

Re-read my post. Because of the ill-intentioned short term tax cuts, corporations and the upper class were unwilling to take long term financial risks. If the tax cuts were made permanent INITIALLY, when they were created, then maybe the laissez faire prophets could have tried to play with their Laffer Curve and seen some benefit. But the short term nature of the tax cuts meant that people simply decided to take the money and run, rather than letting it trickle down onto the unwashed masses.

Quick question, where are we on the Laffer Curve right now?

Everyone knows Harrison was the worst President ever. No debate is possible or necessary.



Which one? Ben or Bill?

RandomExcess: Everyone knows Harrison was the worst President ever. No debate is possible or necessary.



Which one? Ben or Bill?

I'd assume Bill, otherwise it just doesn't make sense rather than being amusing.

Crisis? What Crisis?

LocalCynic: But the short term nature of the tax cuts meant that people simply decided to take the money and run, rather than letting it trickle down onto the unwashed masses

"Take the money and run"? You really think that much of the tax cut money has left the country? Because that's the only way whatever it was used for won't be subject to the increased rates when Bush's tax cuts expire.

LocalCynic: laissez faire prophets

No such people had anything to do with this unholy mess. You're conflating the economic fascism know as "corporatism" with actual laissez faire capitalism.

randomjsa: There's plenty of support for both the fact that the economy improved after the tax cuts and that tax revenue increased after the tax cuts but of course these are all lies.

Lies, blah, whatever, grow-up, already. It is almost certainly true that any tax cut will lead to a short-term increase in economic activity, assuming there isn't the threat of recession.

The big question is, what effect does the short-term have in the longer-term. Keynesian economics, since its inception, has re-enforced the idea that borrowing money is fine since, "in the long run, we are all dead".

The Republicans love this, and, hence, we are borrowing to finance Iraq, we borrowed to cover Katrina, we will probably borrow to cover at least some of the mortgage finance crisis. Of these three things, two of them are the direct result of policy.

This sounds less than fiscally responsible.

If you could drop all the leftist/rightist crap, you may come to realize that there are ideas of merit on both sides. Usually, the deciding factor is the degree to which an idea is implemented.

There is no one master idea that can be adhered to completely that will guide us down the path of righteousness. There are different ideas that, based on a situation, can be applied with varying degrees of intensity to navigate, hopefully, the path of most success for the most people.