By Owen Paine on Monday December 14, 2009 09:37 PM
I haven't kicked Bubbles Delong around recently. It's time. Here's the Prof:
"I am -- in normal times -- a deficit hawk. I think the right target for the deficit in normal times is zero, with the added provision that when there are foreseeable future increases in spending shares of GDP we should run a surplus to pay for those foreseeable increases in an actuarially-sound manner. "That is easily as grotesque a piece of inter-class cannibalism as a neolib might advocate in his wildest moment. It's precisely lines like that, rendered with just that momma's darling baby boy fluent glee, that was liable to get you lovingly sodomized by Bull Goose dem-lords like the late Pat Moynihan.
(There's some variant on Leda and the swan that we might elaborate here -- but let's not.)
More Bradford:
"I think this because I know that there will come abnormal times when spending increases are appropriate. And I think that the combination of (a) actuarially-sound provision for future increases in spending shares and (b) nominal balance for the operating budget in normal times will create the headroom for (c) deficit spending in emergencies when it is advisable while (d) maintaining a non-explosive path for the debt as a whole.""Abnormal times... headroom... a non-explosive path" -- If that isn't a yearning hungry id crying to be buggered I'll eat my spinach. To say "he knows better" is to say infinitely less than nothing. The man's a flabby low-rent rent boy, a Wall Street bond fiend's meme page, and for his sins he ought to be the sole source of ten thousand Conglolese skin grafts.
Oh, I know. I mutter, I mime, I sputter, I spit. But the weight of this tinkling brass self-displaying claptrap in a time of mass misery weighs on my broken housecat of a chest like the oaken catafalque of a frost giant.
Comments (4)
Isn't Bradley a brand name? Why bother? What's he ever said or done that's matter, other than occupying a probably necessary space? He certainly hasn't contributed any positive idea to the true dismal science. That cat's all paw, no scratch.
Posted by Michael Dawson | December 14, 2009 11:43 PM
Posted on December 14, 2009 23:43
If his name is a brand name, he should be sued for copyright violation and theft of intellectual property. Free trade rises and falls on the protection of property rights and if he can't respect that, then he belongs in court.
As a public service, I'll offer him limited use of one of the names to which I own the rights. He can be Quizzlebert 732. The series is exclusive, top shelf, distinctive and comes in a run that's limited to 10,000. It's also pricey, but nothing worth owning is cheap.
Posted by Al Schumann | December 15, 2009 4:36 PM
Posted on December 15, 2009 16:36
"actuarially sound" HUH?
Mr deLong doesn't know much about actuarial work, does he? The quoted phrase is like "Army intelligence," an inherent oxymoron.
Actuarial reviews are like statistics, but performed by people with a facility for calculus instead of statistical analysis. They are hypothecations of results, guesses using formulae to bolster their supposed credibility.
Needless to say, actuarial science is the backbone of life insurance. And of course life insurance isn't any sort of racket, not even remotely a scam.
Posted by C F Oxtrot | December 16, 2009 11:28 AM
Posted on December 16, 2009 11:28
cf
i suspect he has in his head some dictomy
like risk versus uncertainty
not a bad distinction really
but since all of economics has a large dose of radical uncertainty or at least
the mandarin's operate
with models that a priori
freeze out too many variables
just to make the claculation tractable
like SSI calcs
the list of moving parts
rocket most projections
straight out the window
the chronical of projected vs real outcomes is never told enough
life insurance parameters
may gently drift over time
but have an approximation to stability
that makes it the most vicious of paradigms for economic outcomes
which wobble and splay
and gimble away all the time
at any hundred
of a potential thousand joints
ten-fifteen years is a hemi eternity
the economic universe itself
can be remade in 30
Posted by op | December 16, 2009 11:55 AM
Posted on December 16, 2009 11:55