Feb 12th, 2009 at 10:13 am
The Five Percent Solution
MediaMatters takes a look and finds that only five percent of guests brought on cable to talk about the stimulus package were economists.
Now of course there are plenty of aspects to the stimulus debate that aren’t really about economics. But it’s been striking to me watching things how often you’ll have what amounted to an anchor talking to a political reporter about a substantive policy question neither of them understood. Or, odder still, a “Democratic strategist” and a “Republican strategist” debating the merits of alternate approaches.
39 Responses to “The Five Percent Solution”
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February 12th, 2009 at 10:23 am
The survivalists winnow out the good stuff from the bullshit.
One thing going the rounds is this very candid assessment of the real economic condition we’re in by Democratic Congressman Kanjorski of Pennsylvania:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/09/rep-kanjorski-550-bi.html
A short excerpt:
“Kanjorski: “The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic and there. And that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.”
“It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it.”
———–
But by all means lets applaud Pelosi for stuffing additional rewards to the teachers unions into the stimulus bill.
The ship’s sinking, there’s not enough lifeboats, but maybe no one will notice that water around their ankles if we give them a SMALL portion of champagne and caviar. crumbs, really.
Hey, I have an idea. Let’s construct a squabble over a small pile of crumbs — the drama will keep the hoi polloi diverted a little longer.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:24 am
What percent of congress are economists?
February 12th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Maybe those hicks out in the wilds of Idaho , Montana and any other places one car tank’s of gasoline away from urban areas knows something our urban sophisticates didn’t read in the New York Times. Hmmmm? After all, they’ve been buying gold since 2000 — and its up by 300 percent. How’s that Dow, S&P Index and 401K doing?
Consider this 2006 assessment of where Bill Clinton’s/ Larry Summers derivatives were taking us, posted by one of those rednecks:
http://www.survivalblog.com/derivatives.html
If you’re stupid enough to depend on the New York Times and Washington Post for information, then you’re a bunch of dumb fucking sheep who deserve to be fucked.
Oh, look. Here comes a big truck to take you all to some nice green pastures. Form a line — nobody push.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:33 am
It would be nice if more journalists, especially TV ones, knew what they were talking about in general.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Re anon’s comment “It would be nice if more journalists, especially TV ones, knew what they were talking about in general.”
————-
They don’t get paid to inform you. They get paid to read the script they’re handed.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Or, odder still, a “Democratic strategist” and a “Republican strategist” debating the merits of alternate approaches.
Only odd if you don’t appreciate that ’strategist’ means ‘underemployed and will come in at a moment’s notice’. Bookers and producers love ’strategists’, because they can bullshit their way between ad breaks.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Don Williams: perhaps it is a gold bubble? Time will tell
. Hope you know when to sell. Gold prices also spiked during the recessions in the ’70s and ’80s but came back to Earth afterward.
In any case, you sound a little bitter for someone who should be rolling in gold profits. If you don’t like reading the New York Times then by all means read the husks on your corn instead.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:43 am
That Media Matters study is flawed. They consider Amity Shlaes an economist, when she has an English degree and calls herself an “economic historian”.
To call her an economist is the functional equivalent of allowing a medical historian to perform heart surgery.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:46 am
I don’t mind George Will on ABC, he has reasonably well done presentations, even if they are wrong. But you really need a Krugman on the show otherwise they all start making up “facts” out of whole cloth (I think Paul scares them). Most are not economists, have no particular expertise on the subject, and most approach economic issues in a silly (and often misleading) reasoning-by-analogy way (Will especially). Or worse, they approach it in some weird semi-ideological “conservative” (movement) way. The issues are hugely complex and interrelated and have many unknowns. We are going to live with this for some time and there are many economists who do know what they are talking about.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Having party ’strategists’ comment on substantive policy matters is a continuation of the same intellectually corrupt laziness that has our ‘news’ professionals treating every campaign as entirely a horse race.
the frustration of trying to get past the horse race updates to any matters of real substance during the campaign is identical to what we feel now watching party hacks trying to mangle eco 101, and then deciding to skip through that and get right to how many votes were traded for what tax change, etc.
it kills me.
but, i’m sorry to say that American ‘journalists’ are in general so terribly lazy, and will just do almost anything that helps them avoid having actually to think through anything they might be covering.
is this how its done in other countries?
February 12th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Pierre, I think you need a Krugman as White House Press Secretary, personally :-p. Gibbs just doesn’t seem to know how to hit back. Really wimpy performance yesterday.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Let’s not forget about the rhetorical dagger of this whole debate, “Well, I don’t think that XYZ is stimulative,” which apparently, means that its not, for purposes of the rest of the conversation.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Have you ever taken an econ class? If so, I suppose you have heard an economist speak. Would you tune in to CNN to hear that? I wouldn’t.
Neither would anyone else.
C+I+G+X-M does not make for riveting TV. The easy thing to do would be to chalk this up to the lazy masses, I guess. But keep in mind that neither JM Keynes nor any other economist hosted the Fireside Chats.
If there was a Golden Age of American history in which people loved listening to macroeconomists go on and on about the velocity of money and IS/LM curves, I nominate that moment as the low point of human history.
Relatedly, any programming executive who urges more than 12 percent of air time for economists gets my nod for the most incompetent person on Earth.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Didn’t *you* go on TV to talk about the stimulus package?
February 12th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Five, ten, eighty-five…
February 12th, 2009 at 11:51 am
For all the (deserved) shit we heap upon Fox News, CNN is really the worst… They’re absolutely OBSESSED with having their reporters provide “political analysis” instead of actual investigative reporting. If I have to listen one more time to Jessica Fucking Yellin tell me about all the wasteful spending her uneducated ass finds in the stimulus bill, I’m going to take Wolf Blitzer hostage.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:57 am
But it’s been striking to me watching things how often you’ll have … a “Democratic strategist” and a “Republican strategist” debating the merits of alternate approaches.
Absolutely true. This is sheer laziness on the part of the show’s producers. “Let’s just get two guys on opposite sides to spew a few stupid talkingpoints and call it a ‘balanced’ presentation.”
A scale with nothing in either tray is balanced, I guess, but it doesn’t give you any useful information either.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:58 am
They didn’t really come back to Earth after the 1970s spike. But those same survivalists were probably buying gold in 1980, losing 60% of their investment, and missing out on the stock boom of the 90s.
From 1970 to today, gold went up about a factor of 25, a diverse portfolio of stocks went up about a factor of 8. Buying gold is always smart.
From 1980 to today, gold went up about 50%, a diversified portfolio of stocks, even as low as they are now, went up by about a factor of 5. Buying gold is always stupid.
Gold, like any other investment, can be good or bad.
Survivalists, however, have always been wrong about their most important prediction, so I wouldn’t take their advice about gold.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I don’t watch the Sunday shows much, but I’ve seen the Stephanopolis show a couple of times recently, and my favorite part is always the bits where Donaldson or Roberts or Will spouts some cocked up nonsense about the economy and Krugman says, “well, that’s not really correct…” or somesuch.
Of course, this means that usually they get away with it, and then spend 15 minutes in nonsensical Mad Hatter Tea Party discussion of a misformulation. Meanwhile all the serious people are listening.
weird way to run a pundocracy
February 12th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
You’ll note that as far as Republicans are concerned, this is how the media is supposed to work: in which various talking heads, mostly Republicans, spout off the talking points of the day. The alternative– have people who know what their talking about– would just muddy the Republican message.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
News that could only make a meritocrat weep. What would be really sad, to me, is a study of the income level of those invited on to speak about, well, the system they live in. I’d love to see that. Somehow, I’m guessing five percent are median income level and below.
There is nothing about the current crisis that wasn’t obvious to someone in the bottom 10 percentile for the past eight years. And this was figured out all on their lonesome by many people who had G.E.D.s from high school, and noticed that houses were being bought at teaser rates by people who worked as convenience store clerks. Wow, scary – empirical information from the real world!
Economists, mostly, they stil haven’t figured it out. But then, they are paid not to.
February 12th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
“But it’s been striking to me watching things how often you’ll have what amounted to an anchor talking to a political reporter about a substantive policy question neither of them understood. Or, odder still, a “Democratic strategist” and a “Republican strategist” debating the merits of alternate approaches.”
Name a substantive policy question on which this isn’t the case.
February 12th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I have something of an affinity for economics myself, but I don’t think that practitioners of the discipline necessarily have sufficient privileged insight into what’s happening to have title to more representation in the media than they’re getting.
I think that 1) what economists have to say about how we can fix our problems is generally known enough that having more economists talking wouldn’t necessarily clarify anything. It’s implementing those solutions given existing political power structures (i.e., Ben Nelson) that’s the difficulty, and 2) there are other aspects of this crisis that deserve to be looked at from other perspectives.
What about an anthropoligical perspective on how our societies values might have created such misalignments between individual self-interest and the interests of society as a whole? Maybe an ethicists’ perspective on what our police priorities should be, when we have to make choices among so many competing claims? (future generations, investors, workers, the natural world, etc) I suppose I’m talking about an ethicist of the sort who has something practical to say about such issues, along the lines of Peter Singer, not a high-level metaethicist along the lines of Derek Parfit. I’m sure a few exist. Maybe some kind of engineers or venture capitalists/angel investors to talk about future, up-and-coming business, technologies, or opportunities in general which could provide new growth and demand with some form of public/private sector cooperation?
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