I Am Dissed by The New York Times

Bill Keller* in a November 28 op-ed from The New York Times:

The other day House Speaker John Boehner put out a list of 132 economists who signed a statement endorsing a Republican menu of spending cuts, tax cuts and deregulation. All of these are legitimate things to propose, but the statement claimed the Republican list “will do more to boost private-sector job growth in America in both the near-term and long-term than the ‘stimulus’ spending approach favored by President Obama.” Reputable number-crunchers like Moody’s Analytics and some top-tier economists of both parties said Boehner’s statement would have little or no impact on the short-term employment problem. So who were these 132 economists? With a few exceptions they were academics from off-the-beaten-path colleges (no offense to Dakota State University), bloggers (the Calafia Beach Pundit?) and economists from devoutly libertarian think tanks. But the news had the right-wing tom-toms beating with excitement.

I am one of those signatories (and in fairness, I agree with most of Keller’s piece).

I happen to like the off-the-beaten-path college I work at (university actually), and I sacrificed quite a lot professionally when I chose to work here so that my family could live in a place that others merely take vacations to visit.

I do kind of wonder what selection of economists would satisfy Keller. The list of signatories is both geographically broad, and does run the academic gamut from top to bottom. I’d call that comprehensive and eclectic: it’s an academic analog to the restaurant choices Keller has in Manhattan.

Where I come from, we call Keller’s fascination with famous people star-f***ing. Since this is what interests him, here’s a few of the more famous signatories:

• Michael J. Boskin (of the Bush I administration)
• Charles Calomiris (of Columbia - an acknowledged expert on financial crises before the last one hit)
• Diana Furchtgott-Roth (of the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations)
• Gene Fama (from everyone’s short list for a Nobel Prize)
• Douglas Holtz-Eakin (former CBO head and McCain advisor)
• Allen Meltzer (of Carnegie-Mellon)
• Jeff Miron (of Harvard)
• Arthur Laffer (you know … the curve)
• Stan Liebowitz (the expert on ranking academics)
• Lee Ohanian (one of the top mid-career macroeconomists)
• George Schultz (former Secretary of Labor and Treasury and State)

Isn’t that good enough?

If not, here’s a list of good economists who signed the statement and who circulate in my network:

• Jim Butkiewicz
• Lawrence Davidson
• Joe Jadlow
• Dwight Lee
• Doug McMillin
• Mark Perry
• Paul Rubin
• Ray Sauer
• John Seater
• Lawrence Southwick
• Derek Stimel

This first-degree-of-separation network of mine has a couple hundred publications and several thousand citations backing up their policy views.

Oh, and here’s what Keller finds so objectionable (click to enlarge):

I wonder which parts Keller doesn't like? Is it oversight of unelected bureaucrats by elected representatives? Streamlining the tax code? Helping to make it a smart business decision for multinationals to repatriate profits? Cutting spending? Or, most disturbingly, is it removing Democratic party roadblocks to moving forward on free trade agreements with countries filled with people of color?

What I’d also like to know, since Keller chose to diss professionals who showed their approval of this proposal, is if he’d like it better if the Speaker of the House did not attempt to get buy-in with a public statement?

But, of course, I already know the answer to that: the last Speaker was known for not even making the final version of bills available to the people affected by them before they became law.

FWIW: Twenty years ago I wrote a dissertation advocating the policy approaches pursued by our government and Federal Reserve over the last 4 years; precisely because they'd be more likely to be effective in a crisis. I abandoned that view years ago — in favor of ones consistent with this proposal — largely based on evidence from Japan's experience in the 90's. In a very real sense, no one has been disproved more by those policies than the 1.0 version of me.

* The printer version of The New York Times includes a disclaimer to Keller’s piece indicating that they sometimes accept contributions from the general public. Keller is hardly the general public: he is the former editor.

Comments

[Pjoe Byrne]

Hi -

I wrote to Keller on this piece - and I actually got a response! My complaint is that it's not clear whether Moody's and others are saying that the the "statement" won't affect short-term unemployment? or that the POLICIES won't affect short-term unemployment? Do you know which it is? If it's the Statement he really is talking about, than the wording is misleading - perhaps intentionally. Also, the short-term-only focus is not a strong argument anyway. Please help me get to the bottom of what Moody's was talking about - the statement or the proposed policies. He wrote back that I was "right" but never changed it....