Qualifications I Can Believe In
I hadn’t realized that Amity Shlaes is a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations.” I kind of wonder what it takes to get made a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. She’s got a bachelor’s degree in English and her columns once won a prize from a libertarian organization for some articles that “compared the failing economy of high-taxed and over-regulated US state of Maine to the success of the increasingly economically liberal Ireland; and showed that US workers benefit from taking responsibility for their own pensions.” That’s it.
I have a really, really, really hard time imagining the CFR doing something comparable for a liberal with so little in the way of relevant qualifications or track-record outside an ideological cocoon. Just saying. Where’s my fellowship?
110 Responses to “Qualifications I Can Believe In”
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December 10th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Amazing! The Bush administration isn’t incompetent. It just wasn’t able to respond adequately because of federalism! Wow, it is so clear now! Thank you, Amity Shlaes. That is an unfortunate result of federalism, but federalism is sacrosanct, so we can’t change it.
It’s a factually baseless analysis, as is everything she peddles, but even if federalism were what kept the administration from responding adequately, then isn’t that a reason to, you know, not be so concerned with federalism?
But that’s the conservative movement. Federalism is more important than civil rights. Deregulation is more important than economic and environmental sustainability. Lower taxation is more important than a more equitable distribution of wealth and income.
I wouldn’t worry too much, Matt, about not having a fellowship with CFR. Barack Obama is way more powerful than CFR, and if what I read is true, CAP has way more influence on him than CFR despite centrist-leaning cabinet appointments.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:11 am
I kind of wonder what it takes to get made a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Blowjobs. There, let the thread continue.
Perhaps it’s the same wingnut welfare committee that decided in 2003 or thereabouts that Michelle Malkin was the person to write a piece of cod history about locking up brown people.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:20 am
Don’t worry Matt, you still have a sinecure with the group that is hard at work writing snarky blog posts about Joe the Plumber.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:45 am
what are you still doing up?
December 10th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Matt is crying in his beer that he isn’t more important than he is.
He wrote a book – that’s supposed to make him famous and wanted by girls and invited to address the Council on Foreign Relations – as if either he or they actually know anything on foreign relations. Instead, nobody at the CFR – or anybody else – read his book – and if they had, he’s still be where he is, if not even lower on the totem pole.
Possibly he could still get invited to Pyongyang, North Korea as an advisor to Kim.
December 10th, 2008 at 3:02 am
There’s a reason we call it wingnut welfare.
December 10th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Dick (post #5 at 2:54 AM);
It is important that you work harder at disguising your ad-dick-tion to kool-aid. Your task is to damage the enemy while appearing to have a brain. We may have to recall you if you cannot throw stones without having a sign on your forehead saying dick. Actually I guess that captures it. You were in fact saying dick. Thanks for coming out Richard.
December 10th, 2008 at 5:52 am
It’s pretty clear that Brookings and CFR both suck a great deal. Like GM, they are living on reputation, not their current product line. Also like GM, marketing has replaced research as job one.
December 10th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Your task is to damage the enemy while appearing to have a brain or http://www.liginmaclari.blogcu.com
December 10th, 2008 at 6:42 am
And as a consequence of CFR’s bogus credentialing, Shlaes has a piece on the WaPo op-ed page this morning. Comparing Japan’s 1990s infrastructure investments and Obama’s plan, and their economic outcomes.
Just what I want an English major to write about.
December 10th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Consider yourself the Senior Fellow in Awesomeness at the Council of Pretty Good Ideas.
December 10th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Her degree is in English? What the hell? Why is Paul Krugman even wasting his time criticizing her columns? He could have just called her out for not even having a degree in Economy.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:05 am
And she used to work for Financial Times? How stupid is Financial Times?
December 10th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Shlaes represents the other half of the conservatist elite’s two-pronged strategy vis a vis the Establishment: On the one hand, the conservatists denigrate mainstream institutions (the press, the foundations, academia) as un-/anti-American, out of touch, liberal, illegitimate (because liberal), et cetera. Then, on the other hand, once the centrist to liberal and equally elite heads of these institutions are sufficiently cowed, intimidated and convinced that they’ve been too mean to those nice conservatists, they start hiring them en masse, no matter how paltry or intellectually dishonest the conservatists’ accomplishments. Wingnut welfare becomes mainstream! Yay team!
December 10th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Oh, I guess her main qualification is she wrote a book about the Great Depression bashing FDR and New Deal. An English grad can write a book about the Depression and ends up being recognized as an expert in economy because of that. So following that logic, an engineering grad can write a book about the Supreme Court for example, and will be recognized as an expert in law. Wow, I would like that gig too.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Publishers’ Weekly calls her book “plausible history, if not authoritative, novel or deeply analytical.”
It chafes my tweedy little ass that people like her are getting these positions instead of trained academics who have spent their entire professional careers developing a rigorous understanding of economic history.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I think she wrote her own Wikipedia entry. Just a hunch.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Economics beyond the undergraduate level has more in common with voodoo than any sort of rigorous academic discipline.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:44 am
…. “plausible history, if not authoritative, novel or deeply analytical.”
That is the nicest way I have ever seen of saying the book sucks. Why can’t they say “…. a non-authoritative, non-novel, non-deeply analytical history of …”? What’s with the “if not”? Excellent way of burying the lead. The first time I read that sentence, I thought Publisher’s Weekly was saying the book was authoritative, novel and deeply analytical.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:47 am
George Will, noted pundit, likes her book. Learning that her only degree is in English does finally explain for me the heretofore inexplicable fact that John Updike reviewed her Forgotten Man book for the New Yorker.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:48 am
It’s a supply and demand thing. She got the job because everyone with an econ degree is gainfully employed at (provide snarky comment here).
December 10th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Plus, her publisher could doctor the quote to read “plausible history ….. authoritative, novel or deeply analytical” and make that a blurb.
I think the reason real academic and experts don’t get these gigs is because those people are actually familiar with the concept of intellectual honesty. They will be less likely to be willing to falsify data or just plain make up stuff to support an agenda or an ideology, if only to protect their reputation as serious academic. Someone with an English degree writing about Economics,on the other hand, can just say any old damn thing, no one will fact check her, it’s not like she’s going to ruin her reputation as an actual economist or anything.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Sorry, but to an outsider it looks like these “think tanks” are nothing but PR outfits staffed by flacks of various pedigrees peddling crackpot conservative ideology with the same relentlessness as “Account Executives” at Burson Marsteller. And that Shlaes’ “flavor-of-the-month” appeal has more to do with timeliness and novelty (”Look! A theory that the New Deal didn’t really do what it did!! Lookit 1937!! See? See?”) than with actual scholarship. (If Perle and Wolfowitz are “scholars” at AEI, what more do you need to know about their “scholarship”?)
These outfits remind me of a Marx Bros. movie, in which Chico and Harpo, in cap and gown, address each other with elaborate politesse as “Professor.” (”After you, Professor.” “No, after YOU, Professor.” “Thank yaw, Professor.” “No, thank YAW, Professor.”) If one were to replace the title “Scholar” with “Shameless PR Hack,” would it not be more accurate? Is any actual scholarship being done in any of these outfits, or is it an industry devoted to finding novel ways to re-concept, repackage and publicize the same old crackpot conservative ideology?
December 10th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I would love to see Krugman and Shlaes in a televised economic cage match. It would be a thing of beauty.
She’d be a grease spot on the floor at the end.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:37 am
It’s good in a way that she’s at CFR as she helps to further discredit CFR by here lack of knowledge (or self-awareness of her lack of knowledge).
December 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Ah, come on! CFR, after all, published Daniel Drezner.
Having done that it would have been ridiculous to have caviled at Shlaes qualifications.
See, e.g, http://www.cfr.org/publication/6961/outsourcing_bogeyman.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F5471%2Fdaniel_w_drezner
December 10th, 2008 at 9:26 am
And in all seriousness, Matt, if you think it’s something that’s important to you, I’m sure you could get in the CFR and be on one of its fellowships or programs without too much difficulty either. If you want it, just do the standard networking thing and you’ll probably get it. Maybe it’d do a bit of good. A tiny bit. Maybe.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Somebody needs to do a thorough debunking of Amity’s book. She is trying to make the case that FDR’s New Deal made the depression last longer than it otherwise would have. I don’t know enough about the history of The Great Deprssion to know how she is manipulating the facts, but I’d be willing to bet that she is cherry picking her facts to create a false narrative. The right wing radio guys have this chick on every chance they can get. That’s how I know it’s full of $hit.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I think we need to send philosopher Matthew to France.
After all, for Matthew to criticize Shaeles for her English degree is to uncritically accept the power structure’s ur-myth re knowledge. It is the trait of people who would consign homesexuals to mental institutions because they are ..er.. the square peg in the round hole.
More briefly, it is the pot calling the kettle black.
After all, deconstructing Hillary’s foreign policy is no different from deconstructing works of fiction or “Debbie Does Dallas”. Narratives are created for the purposes of the power elite — it is absurd to apply other criteria, like “truth” or “competence”.
Witness “Change we can believe in”.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:45 am
What? You lost me. Less briefly, that sounds like a crock of shit.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:48 am
She graduated from college in 1982, I don’t think her undergraduate degree is especially relevant. I have a doctorate, I’m all for credentialism but it’s not the be-all and end-all. Some journalists know a hell of a lot more than me and other PhDs about a hell of lot of very important things.
Shlaes wrote for years for the WSJ. I thought and still think that most of it was crap, but she did spend 10-20 years writing and presumably learning about business and economics, it’s not like she spent the time studying Milton and Trollope.
I think James Fallows is best journalist in USA today. I’m certainly very interested in hearing/reading anything he has to say about contemporary Asia economy, foreign policy, international relations etc. That’s because the man has incredible experience, not because of whatever undergraduate degree he earned many years ago. And of course because the quality of his reporting and analysis is light years better than Shlaes’s, but that’s because he is a much better journalist.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Um, Peter Beinart is a senior fellow at CFR. All he had to do was be wrong about Iraq to get the spot.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:54 am
1) She does have kind of a cool name.
2) It doesn’t take any professional training to write tendentious books of economic history, or any other kind of history for that matter.
3) All think-tank work is bogus, including the CAP. They’re merely lobbying groups that have created a layer or two of purely nominal insulation between funders and advocacy.
December 10th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I hate Affirmative Action…for “conservative” know nothings.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:00 am
3) All think-tank work is bogus, including the CAP. They’re merely lobbying groups that have created a layer or two of purely nominal insulation between funders and advocacy.
I think that pretty much nails it.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Re Rich in PA’s comment “All think-tank work is bogus, including the CAP. They’re merely lobbying groups that have created a layer or two of purely nominal insulation between funders and advocacy.”
———–
Oh, I’m sure that Matthew is preparing a Socratic Dialogue re who/what sunk Wachovia Bank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Sandler#Predatory_Lending_and_Saturday_Night_Live
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Sandler#Organizations_funded_by_the_Sandlers
December 10th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I have to say that until July of this year I’d heard Amity Schlaes’s possibly twice; and since then, I hear it almost daily. What gives? Did she just change publicists or something? I get the sense that someone’s foisting her on me. Is there a payola system for pundits?
December 10th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Matthew to criticize Shaeles for her English degree is to uncritically accept the power structure’s ur-myth re knowledge
Except Matthew didn’t criticize her for her English degree. I suggest you re-read the post.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:08 am
As I recall, Socrates served Athens well in her wars — and yet died without a pot to piss in. If he had had anything to lose, he might have been a little more ..uh..tight-lipped.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Re Edward’s comment “Except Matthew didn’t criticize her for her English degree”
————–
Sigh.
Look at the meta-narrative, dear boy.
PS Do you know any monkeys who can program in C++ ?
December 10th, 2008 at 10:15 am
An English major, huh?
perhaps that explains why she doesn’t know what a recession is:
Amity Shlaes Does Not Know What a Recession Is
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/07/amity-shlaes-does-not-know-what-a-recession-is/
December 10th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Oops, Edward. Forget the meta-narrative. I just got the memo:
“To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements–narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on ”
Sorry.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:18 am
They have no clothes.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:22 am
she did spend 10-20 years writing and presumably learning about business and economics
(1) “Presumably” carries a lot of weight in that clause.
(2) This was at the WSJ? There are smart reporters you can hang with at the WSJ. But I wouldn’t presume that Shlaes hung with them. She seems more like a fan of the op-ed page to me, and you can learn more valid economics from the backs of cereal boxes than from the WSJ op-ed. (Or have less garbage to unlearn, anyway.)
December 10th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I honestly never know what Don Williams is going on and on about, except for the fact that like Petey, he seems to really, really hate Matt for being some sort of trust fund scum or hack blogger or something. It’s …. bizarre. I mean, hey, I understand bashing Matt for his opinion, his take on issues, his spellings and typos, but the personal animosity is a bit much, no?
December 10th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Re Tim’s comment “like Petey, he seems to really, really hate Matt for being some sort of trust fund scum or hack blogger or something. It’s …. bizarre.”
——————-
Actually, I like Matthew. That’s why I think he should go into another line of work, before the Dark Side consumes him.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Followed your link to that article comparing Maine with “the increasingly economically liberal Ireland”. Oh dear. She got an award for that?
Leave aside the fact that the tax cuts didn’t lead the economic boom, they followed it – and squandered it. Leave aside the fact that the recent credit bubble has burst and that Ireland is now astonishingly screwed. Even in its own kneejerk rightwing terms, Ms Shlaes’s article is a cartoon version of the Celtic Tiger legend.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
regarding Shamity’s WSJ work: just because i used to cover football for the local paper doesnt mean i can be the coach.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I have a bachelor’s degree in English too, though it’s only summa, not magna, cum laude. Damn, so close. Maybe there’s a lesser CFR out there who’s willing to hire people like me to spew bullshit conservative talking points and pretend that it’s the product of advanced scholarship.
December 10th, 2008 at 10:49 am
perhaps it’s just the invisible hand (the economics metaphor for English grads) at work
December 10th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Hmm, female English major of libertarian persuasion who writes about economics and has attained a difficult-to-fathom standing in the establishment . . . now what former coworker and friend of Matt’s does that sound like?
December 10th, 2008 at 11:01 am
More briefly, it is the pot calling the kettle black
============================================================
Amen. How can a Philosophy major who wrote a book on foreign policy complain about an English major who wrote a book on economic history?
Shameless
December 10th, 2008 at 11:06 am
I dunno, Don — do you program in C++?
December 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Well, I am not a philosophy major, but a degree in philosophy is good training in critical thinking and so forth. I suppose my degree in history would on the surface seem better training for writing about foreign relations. A degree in foreign relations probably is not, in itself, important.
On the other hand, economics requires a pretty good training in maths and logic, even if it doesn’t require economics. Philosophers, of course, often do have a good background in maths and logic, although it depends a bit on the program, so a philosopher might do good work on economic history in a way that an English major would not. That being said, if Amity Shlaes could prove that she knew what she was talking about, I don’t think her degree would be a problem, but since she doesn’t seem to have any idea what she is talking about, her degree (like McMegan’s degree) becomes more significant.
I think when people attack Mat for his book, they should point out problems with the book, not engage in cheap attacks.
Adam
December 10th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Re Campesino’s comment “Amen. How can a Philosophy major who wrote a book on foreign policy complain about an English major who wrote a book on economic history?”
——————–
If an engineer doesn’t do the math right, the bridge falls down and he gets fired. So engineers are always fascinated at how humanities majors contrive to actually get PAID for what they do.
Nonetheless, there are important differences. English majors are trained to write convincing works of FICTION — which is why writers and politicans break out into grins of mutual appreciation –and recognition — whenever they meet.
Philosophers, on the other hand, have a tradition of searching for truth going back to Socrates. But anyone who actually undercovers and exposes Truth in Washington DC is not likely to eat very well –if at all. It is to take a vow of poverty.
Hopefully Matthew really is a Trustfund scumbag who can buy his own newspaper.
Ask the Sulzbergers how that is working out:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=NYT#chart2:symbol=nyt;range=5y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined
December 10th, 2008 at 11:42 am
If an engineer doesn’t do the math right, the bridge falls down and he gets fired. So engineers are always fascinated at how humanities majors contrive to actually get PAID for what they do.
Yup, yup. It’s the biggest scam in the world IMO. These people making more money than we do, without any risk and accountability.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:42 am
The resentment on this thread is hilarious. Meanwhile, poor Adam Smith was merely a professor of rhetoric. Why should anyone read him?! Nothing less than a PhD in economics will do!
December 10th, 2008 at 11:43 am
“If an engineer doesn’t do the math right, the bridge falls down and he gets fired. So engineers are always fascinated at how humanities majors contrive to actually get PAID for what they do.”
Yeah, but more people have been killed by Bad Philosophies than by Bad Engineering.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Not true. Most English majors are trained in the analysis of works of literature, poetry, non-fiction, etc. Very few classes required for a degree in English Literature are about creative writing.
Now, as an English major myself, I have to say that the idea that someone with an English degree couldn’t write about other subjects is simply silly. Given time and study, someone with a degree in anything can manage to apply critical thinking to a variety of subjects. The crux is in the quality of the analysis. An English major with a good grasp of economics could produce a better analysis than an Economics major with wacky theories about, say, how tax cuts for the wealthy are the best cure for any economic ailment.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:44 am
These outfits remind me of a Marx Bros. movie, in which Chico and Harpo, in cap and gown, address each other with elaborate politesse as “Professor.”
Ok, I know no one but me is gonna care, but this poster is the cinematic equivalent of Amity Shlaes on economics. Harpo never addressed anyone in a Marx Brothers movie because Harpo NEVER FRICKING TALKED ON FILM. That was his schtick.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I kind of wonder what it takes to get made a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations.
That one’s easy: Get yourself a regular column in the Wall Street Journal — or Bloomberg or some other safely establishmentarian media outlet — and espouse the kind of safely conventional libertarian platitudes that will make you a well-known cheerleader for corporate capitalism.
The CFR is like everyone else: It knows where the money tree grows.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Re darrelplant’s comment “Not true. Most English majors are trained in the analysis of works of literature, poetry, non-fiction, etc. Very few classes required for a degree in English Literature are about creative writing.”
—————–
“Analysis” such as I cited in post 42 above?
Maybe I need to get Seinfeld to help me work on my delivery…
but this all seemed hilariously funny to me. Comical.
But then I was trained in engineering.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I studied Greek in college. Currently I teach English. Obviously I should be shoveling shit for a living instead, fraudulent bastard.
December 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Bring in Daniel Drezner’s articles in CFR’s Foreign Affairs — buttressed by Drezner’s degree in Pol Sci (and educational loans) from Stanford — and I’ll collapse into stitches.
December 10th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Re ERM’s comment “I studied Greek in college. Currently I teach English. Obviously I should be shoveling shit for a living instead,”
————–
Er.. how could you notice the difference?
December 10th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
PS Drezner’s article in Foreign Affairs was about international trade — the joys of outsourcing to China and India.
Some engineers grinned when ole Daniel was denied tenure at Univ of Chicago.
December 10th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
New York Times bestseller list?
December 10th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Amity Shlaes is Megan McArdle without the pituitary gland malfunction.
December 10th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Those of us who actually know things are laughing/crying at this post; it would take too long to explain.
Meanwhile, here’s Obama lying about the CFR (at the same time as confirming something that we’re told isn’t being planned for).
December 10th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
It seems Yglesias cannot take anyone seriously but himself. It must be fun in that ivory tower of his. So, he cannot take Amity Shlaes seriously, fair enough, but just a few posts ago he decided he couldn’t take George Will seriously – a man with a PhD from Princeton, a Pulitzer Prize winning almost 40 year career journalist, author, and politcal commentator.
December 10th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Maybe if your book hadn’t tanked – you’d be more in demand. The problem is the CFR likes to corral thinkers who seem to be ahead of the curve on the dismal science, grandly styled geo-political stratagems, whatever. As it stands, sorry, but, Jonah G. has more intellectual cachet.
December 10th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
jeebus, what a bunch of pussies. Richard Steven Hack and Trevor win as dumbest cunts to comment here.
December 10th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
How about that Robert J. Samuelson fella in Newsweek? Only a BA and everybody confuses him with a real economist Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson. He’s been a political advocate of deregulation forever! And just a BA too.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Amity Shlaes seems well-qualified to me. A deep commitment to the viewpoints of the powerful and the ability to express it. It’s not clear what else is required.
December 10th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Gene, interesting paragraph:
“Shlaes wrote for years for the WSJ. I thought and still think that most of it was crap, but she did spend 10-20 years writing and presumably learning about business and economics, it’s not like she spent the time studying Milton and Trollope.”
Excluding, for a moment, Schlaes country club beliefs about the New Deal, I would mistrust any economist who hasn’t spent time studying Milton and Trollope. The central method in Economics, that is, the building of models, is on the same lines as Paradise Lost or the Last Chronicle of Barset – that is, it is basically a poetic story – but most economists are bad storytellers and have never learned that the one and only motivation for the vast majority of people is not some hardwired command, “want more.” There was a portrait of Larry Summers published in the NYT’s Magazine after he had been bounced out of Harvard that put its finger on everything that was wrong with the guy: he had no acquaintance with literature. Or, what was the line? Wasn’t interested in “literary novels.” Like so many economists, this lack of any real depth, which is what you get through literature, forced him to repeat the narrowest type of plots over and over, and fall for all the neo-classical economists cliches – like “Government spending crowds out private investment”,one of those truisms that economists mindlessly repeat ad infinitum. Smith, Marx, Veblen, Polanyi and Keynes – my list of noteworthy economists, all, of course, were immersed in literature up to their ears. Smith’s notion of sympathy is something every economist should take seriously, and – of course – training in sympathy requires training the imagination, of which there is no better school than literature.
Schlaes might not be such an idiot if she read, for instance,the Grapes of Wrath.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
For what it’s worth, I have an undergrad econ degree from a fairly reputable institution, and I don’t know what the fuck is happening in the economy.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
CFR, New World Order, Rockefeller, Elvis. Need I say more?
December 11th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Roger
Thank you. Good points all, though I did find Milton excrutiating. In particular I defer to your point about models and bad story-telling: economic models reach for phsyics-like mechanics and leave the human elements to unexplained variation and error terms.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Amity Shlaes was fired from the FT for being an awful columnist. The FT is a great newspaper, but being the worst there doesn’t necessarily mean you are good enough to get into the CFR. I just hope the CFR doesn’t make hiring bad columnists a practice, you know, like picking up Bill Kristol and Bob Herbert. Who knows, maybe that’s what they are after?
December 11th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Don: “Do you know any monkeys who can program in C++ ?”
Trust me – everybody who programs in any language is a monkey. Have you actually used any software lately? It all sucks rocks – even most of the OSS stuff.
Adam: “Well, I am not a philosophy major, but a degree in philosophy is good training in critical thinking and so forth.”
Can’t prove it by Matt.
Milena: “It seems Yglesias cannot take anyone seriously but himself.”
I’ve been saying since his old blog that he’s the most conceited, arrogant, ignorant, 28-year-old wannabe pundit around. He’s trying to be Bill Kristol without the background – or the influence. (Mind you, I think Bill Kristol is a complete moron – but he’s a FAR more influential moron than Matt will ever be.)
December 11th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Um… Isn’t Michele Obama on the board of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which is part of the Council on Foreign Relations?
http://www.ccfr.org/chicago_council_board_directors.php#
December 11th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Ethnic networking, perhaps?
Wasn’t sufficient to prevent her from being sacked by the FT but in the US there will always be a perch for her somewhere.
December 18th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Trust me – everybody who programs in any language is a monkey. Have you actually used any software lately? It all sucks rocks – even most of the OSS stuff. but you see for home http://www.liginmaclari.blogcu.com
December 20th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
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December 20th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
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