Re: Sweden -- A few reactions on the N.Y. Times article

[Per Gunnar Berglund <pgb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In response to Doug Henwood:
______________

Doug asked:
> Do you, or does anyone else, know how the creation of the Nobel Prize
in Economics and its systematic bestowal on the entire Chicago faculty fits
into the coup d'etat? <

Per says:
It does, but only in an indirect sense. As Barkley Rosser has pointed
out, the prize was instituted by the Swedish central bank (Riksbanken,
http://www.riksbank.se) in the late sixties (1968) -- 'in memory of Alfred
Nobel'. The administration was handed over to the Royal Academy of
Science (KVA, http://www.kva.se). I tend to agree with Prof. Rosser's
statement that the change came when Assar Lindbeck took over the
chair of the prize committee. Indeed, Lindbeck is something of the hub
of this wheel. It is amazing that such a mediocre economist could gain
the whole institutional heritage of the Stockholm School -- and wreck it
completely. Not only did he take over the chair of the prize committee,
but also of the Institute for International Economic Studies (http://www.iies.su.se)
itself, an outfit created by Gunnar Myrdal, and long considered the most
prestigious economics institute in Sweden. The dramatis personae of the
intellectual coup d'etat has in common that they have all been working at
the institute, for Assar Lindbeck.

The reason why the 'Nobel Prize' in economics has a part in this, is merely
that it has provided Lindbeck with an extremely powerful weapon, a weapon
which he has been using to promote his own personal goals, rather than to
promote progress in the discipline of economics. In this respect, Lindbeck's
regime stretches far beyond the borders of Sweden. It has contributed to
defame economics and economists in general, and it has provided strong
incentives for young students and researchers to move into fields that lead
nowhere. The damage is enormous.

Lindbeck's impact is of course strongest felt here in Sweden. An example:
For some odd reason, every single student I knew with a fair, liberally slanted
view on justice, equality, etc left their economics studies and went over to
e.g. political science or economic history. Moreover, all the die-hard libertarians,
who make up perhaps 0.1% of the population in this country, but maybe 1%
of the economics students, for some reason ended up as salaried research
students at the IIES, the Riksbank, the Stockholm School of Economics
(http://www.hhs.se). The concentration of liberartians at the IIES is perhaps
50-90%. That's some selection, isn't it? Maybe libertarians are born with a
'natural talent', or whatever, for studies and research in economics? The flip
side of the coin is that people of a non-libertarian persuasion, making up 99.9
percent of the population and 99% of the economics students, get 10-50% of
the resources. And, as you may well imagine, the further away from the
libertarian standpoint you are, the less resources you will get. Keynesians
get nought.

This is how it looks. I could give a thousand examples in other fields, e.g. how
policy advisors are related (and indebted) to Lindbeck and IIES, or how public
inquests have asserted that their neo-conservative conclusions are supported
by the 'latest research', meaning the works of Lindbeck and his friends in a
so-called 'reference circle'. Such a list would however be very tedious, since
the point and moral is everywhere the same. From my personal point of view,
I feel ashamed on behalf of my country. Sweden in 1998 has very little in
common with that Sweden I grew up in. The decay is frightful, and I would
say that the economic part of it is the least scary of all. Much worse is the
corruption and apathy, the cheating and lying, on which the present Sweden
is 'built'. At the heart of it lies the 'National Lie' (Rikslögnen), as I have ventured
to call it, the doctrine that the State is 'running out of money', and, therefore,
that fiscal policies can never be tight enough. This National Lie is the rotten
heart of Sweden, and it was put in place by Lindbeck and his thugs. Once in
place, the society crumbles, slowly but surely, all by itself.

Sweden has long stood up as an example to other nations people. So it should
today, but now as a deterring example. The conclusion should be: If anything
he like can happen in Sweden, it can happen everywhere. No society is vaccinated
from these evil doctrines. Any country can be infected by this modern variety of
fascism -- the cameralistic dictatorship of the 'balancing of debit and credit'.
As Lincoln said: Beware!!


Regards,
Per


Per Gunnar Berglund
_______________________________________________________________
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Website: http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/pktauthors/Berglund.Per/Mainpage.htm