Wanniski

["David Shemano" <dshemano@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devines writes:


Jude doesn't know much about economics, as far as I can tell. He does know
how to tell business audiences what they want to hear, so he can earn
more-than-generous speaker fees. Remember that he's the one who blamed the
October 1929 stock-market Crash on the June 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff. He
sees this as an example of how "rational" expectations (and "efficient"
markets) work, being able to predict the future, so that the disaster that
S&M later provoked caused the Crash. This is ridiculous to the extreme:
among other things, the tariff hikes that had been passed earlier in the
1920s -- and in previous decades -- by Republican-dominated Congresses had
been _good_ for US capitalism and the stock market. (At the time, the GOP
was the party of protectionism, starting with its Civil War-era tariff.)

BTW, does the word "gas" in the subject line refer to Wanniski?

----------------------

I have no personal interest in defending Wanniski, but I don't see
presumably sophisticated business people paying you, or anybody else on this
list, good money to predict and analyze the economy and the effects of
politics on the economy.  Let's remember that Wanniski is a popularizer of
Mundell, who I presume you do respect.

Are you taking the position that if somebody asserts and defends a position
that is outside of the mainstream of conventional economics, that person
"doesn't know much about economics."  I guess I better find a new list if I
want to learn from people who know something about economics.

David Shemano