johnphantom: bronyaur1: Obviously subby knows far more about economics than Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman.

Welcome to America, where morons pompously believe that their opinions are as worthwhile as those of highly educated and intelligent people.

Nice troll.

7/10

Not meant to be a troll. Meant to be an assessment of how ridiculous it is to dismiss brilliant and educated people in favor of ideas that emanate from people who are neither brilliant nor educated on the topic at hand.

When you you have a growth on your body that you can't explain, do you listen to someone with a graduate degree in medicine from a top school, and who has been practicing medicine his entire career? Or do you trust the advice you get on Fark? It is the exact same thing.

WhileAmericaBurns: bronyaur1: WhileAmericaBurns: bronyaur1: Obviously subby knows far more about economics than Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman.

Welcome to America, where morons pompously believe that their opinions are as worthwhile as those of highly educated and intelligent people the people don't let themselves be pushed around just because someone has a fancy title.

Yeah... listening to people with more intelligence or education is clearly being pushed around.

Tell us, does it hurt when your knuckles drag on the ground like that? What WAS it like to be an extra in Idiocracy?

If Ben Bernanke were in the private sector, your argument would be valid. As a person in government power, though, his primary role is not to impart his wisdom to you and I, but to do as he pleases with our economy. This whole business of treating the Fed Chairman like a wise oracle is bullshiat, the purpose of which is to intimidate the people into accepting his power unquestioningly. It's like he's our Ayatollah, but instead of controlling who gets to be President, he controls the entire monetary system. It's hard to say which role is scarier.

So, let me get this right.... you think that someone who got his Phd in economics from MIT, his undergrad in econ summa cum laude in economics from Harvard, who nearly got a perfect score on the SAT, who did his dissertation on uncertainty and business cycles, who is one of the world's foremost experts on economic policy choices during the Great Depression, who has chaired the Princeton Econ dept, and who spent a number of years associated with the Fed is NOT someone whose advice we should consider above nearly all others on the matters at hand?

Suggest someone more qualified and brighter and whose ideas on the real-time practice of monetary and economic policy should be treated with more respect than Ben Bernanke's.

When a developing nation goes for manufacturing the result is that cash builds up faster than they are used to spending it. While their domestic economies ramp up they must export their savings, in this case in part through currency rate manipulations, or the result is their own currency blowing up and stagnating their development. Like all such games this one eventually blows up. Lack of control of risk in the global financial system is a big part of what went wrong, but without all the Asian money sloshing around it would not have been possible to have such a huge bonfire in the first place. There is nothing particularly responsible about using currency rate manipulations to export a savings glut.

bronyaur1: So, let me get this right.... you think that someone who got his Phd in economics from MIT, his undergrad in econ summa cum laude in economics from Harvard, who nearly got a perfect score on the SAT, who did his dissertation on uncertainty and business cycles, who is one of the world's foremost experts on economic policy choices during the Great Depression, who has chaired the Princeton Econ dept, and who spent a number of years associated with the Fed is NOT someone whose advice we should consider above nearly all others on the matters at hand?

Yes, his resume is laudatory and he's very smart. However, this does not mean he is a better predictor any more than the head of the NOAA will make better weather predictions than that amateur forecaster on the local network. Krugman has made a number of failed predictions, and the philosophy he espouses of deficit-spending on anything and everything is already throwing up warning flags (he made hay of the fact that interest rates were so low at the time so we can afford it, but treasuries have already made a serious dive as a result of the printing presses being turned on, pushing interest rates waaaaay up).

Economists are historians and mathematicians at best, and the fact that so many schools of economic theory have been developed and implemented to extremely mixed success lends credence to my theory that predicting what -will- happen is as much art as science, much like predicting weather. Just like you'd be making a mistake if you ignore the 3 local forecasters who are yelling "ice rain" while NOAA is saying "sunny day", you'd also be making a mistake if you trust Krugman at the expense of everyone else. And these aren't all amateurs who are bucking Krugman, either. Even Warren Buffett, no Friedman conservative, is predicting massive inflation as a result of our spending policies.

bronyaur1: words

For a self-proclaimed "expert" on economics, you do an awful lot of name-calling and not much in adding to the debate. From the looks of the crap you've espoused so far in this thread, you've obviously never heard of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy that you've demonstrated so clearly here.

How about some good arguments coming from you and fewer fallacies, please?

Except the appeal to authority is only a fallacy when you try to quote someone of recognized expertise's opinion on an area outside of their expertise. Example: quoting Albert Einstein on theology or Stephen Hawking on music.

Quoting either of them to back up an argument about physics is an entirely different ball of wax. See the difference?

m0llusk: When a developing nation goes for manufacturing the result is that cash builds up faster than they are used to spending it. While their domestic economies ramp up they must export their savings, in this case in part through currency rate manipulations, or the result is their own currency blowing up and stagnating their development. Like all such games this one eventually blows up. Lack of control of risk in the global financial system is a big part of what went wrong, but without all the Asian money sloshing around it would not have been possible to have such a huge bonfire in the first place. There is nothing particularly responsible about using currency rate manipulations to export a savings glut.

Well said

CheatCommando: Except the appeal to authority is only a fallacy when you try to quote someone of recognized expertise's opinion on an area outside of their expertise. Example: quoting Albert Einstein on theology or Stephen Hawking on music.

Quoting either of them to back up an argument about physics is an entirely different ball of wax. See the difference?

Couldn't be more wrong. (new window)

bronyaur1: WhileAmericaBurns: bronyaur1: WhileAmericaBurns: bronyaur1: Obviously subby knows far more about economics than Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman.

Welcome to America, where morons pompously believe that their opinions are as worthwhile as those of highly educated and intelligent people the people don't let themselves be pushed around just because someone has a fancy title.

Yeah... listening to people with more intelligence or education is clearly being pushed around.

Tell us, does it hurt when your knuckles drag on the ground like that? What WAS it like to be an extra in Idiocracy?

If Ben Bernanke were in the private sector, your argument would be valid. As a person in government power, though, his primary role is not to impart his wisdom to you and I, but to do as he pleases with our economy. This whole business of treating the Fed Chairman like a wise oracle is bullshiat, the purpose of which is to intimidate the people into accepting his power unquestioningly. It's like he's our Ayatollah, but instead of controlling who gets to be President, he controls the entire monetary system. It's hard to say which role is scarier.

So, let me get this right.... you think that someone who got his Phd in economics from MIT, his undergrad in econ summa cum laude in economics from Harvard, who nearly got a perfect score on the SAT, who did his dissertation on uncertainty and business cycles, who is one of the world's foremost experts on economic policy choices during the Great Depression, who has chaired the Princeton Econ dept, and who spent a number of years associated with the Fed is NOT someone whose advice we should consider above nearly all others on the matters at hand?

Suggest someone more qualified and brighter and whose ideas on the real-time practice of monetary and economic policy should be treated with more respect than Ben Bernanke's.

You remember that episode of The Simpsons with Stephen Hawking? Watch that again and maybe you'll get what I'm saying.

Ben gave TAX CHEAT Geitner a hug when the Chinese laughed right in his TAX CHEAT face.

@bronyaur1:

Funny thing about famous people. They start believing their own hype. This is a very bad thing, even in scientific fields whose foundations are fairly rigid. Take a field like macroeconomics, where the foundations are constantly shifting, add in someone who's started to believe his own hype, and you get a recipe for a disaster of epic proportions.

Put another way, there is no room for hero worship in any scholarly endeavor. Especially a scholarly endeavor that affects the lives of million people. Put a way the Internet crowd can understand, science should be all "corroborating data or GTFO" and then the scientist should be all "no wai" and the community should be all "ya wai".

From your link:
On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true...

Two of the worst economists ever--thanks Princeton.

Funny money begets massive imbalances. It shouldn't take an Ivy League degree to know that.