(Untitled)

[ex_lost_kit]

How Government Prolonged the Depression
Policies that decreased competition in product and labor markets were especially destructive.By HAROLD L. COLE and LEE E. OHANIAN

Comments

[nothingmuch]

More people who just need to take a history course, obviously!

No serious historian would argue that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/01/the_new_deal_an.html

[ex_lost_kit]

Too bad the DeLong is neither an economic historian, and probably the most explicitly partisan hack~y economist out there with influence.

[sinthrex]

So from this we determine:

Credentials aren't sufficient, they need to be the _right_ credentials.

Partisan economists are unworthy of consideration unless they are named Cole and Ohanian today.

Obviously DeLong needs to take a history or economics course.

I think I've heard this somewhere before.

[ex_lost_kit]

No, I think the point is more that DeLong throws around dismissive rhetoric so often that we shouldn't take his opinions on what "serious historians" think any more seriously than we'd take Ann Coulter's opinion on what "serious politicians" think. I'm mostly speaking to his rhetoric which is, as usual, intemperate and dismissive.

[nothingmuch]

Now who's shooting the messenger?

Cole and Ohanian have been making this argument since at least 1999. It has nothing to do with the present economic crisis. Nobody is arguing that we need stimulus because the New Deal worked. We need stimulus because it's the only thing that will stop the bleeding at this point.

Tax cuts aren't going to cut it because 1. people will just save or pay down debts and 2. nobody is paying taxes right now anyway because no one is making money. Stimulus will put people back to work so they can start making money again.

[ex_lost_kit]

We need stimulus because it's the only thing that will stop the bleeding at this point.

The evidence for that coming from... you guessed it, the Great Depression!

[nothingmuch]

The evidence for that coming from ... LOGIC.

[ex_lost_kit]

So the hundreds of economists against the stimulus, including several Nobel laureates... just illogal, huh?

[nothingmuch]

They are outnumbered by the thousands of economists and Nobel laureates who agree that stimulus is the answer.

[ex_lost_kit]

Thousands? Where are you pulling that number from?

And an opinion being popular doesn't make it correct. You said that this was simply a matter of logic, you think you'd be right even if every professional disagreed with you, right?

[nothingmuch]

And an opinion being popular doesn't make it correct.

But it sure helps. That's why you mentioned your hundred right-wing loon economists.

[ex_lost_kit]

lol @ "everyone who disagrees with me is a loon"

I didn't say that there was a lot of disagreement because they were correct. I merely wanted to illustrate how odd it would be to have such disagreement over an issue that boiled down into being just logic.

[nothingmuch]

What's odd about the disagreement? Democrats and Republicans disagree all the time. Nothing odd there.

[ex_lost_kit]

Yeah, Democrats obey logic and Republicans ignore it. It's just that simple, right?

[nothingmuch]

Pretty much, bb.

According to the US BLS, there are about 15,000 economists employed in the US. Cato could only find a couple hundred willing to agree with them. Do the math. The "disagreement" is not nearly as significant as you would think.