Re: [Fwd: [Fwd: Interest Rates, Inflation, Exchange Rates and Credit inBullAnd Bear Markets]]

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
> To accuse people of making false statement and mischaracterization is
> a serious charge.  I do not make false statements, nor do I
> mischaracterize.
> I will refrain from further interaction with Alan Isaac and I serve
> notice that my future unresponsiveness to his challenges to my posts
> does not represent my acceptance of his views, civilized or not.


Henry,

I am not sure if you sent this msg
before or after the explanation and
apology that I posted.  If after, it
is an ungracious response.

Although I should perhaps simply accept
your offer to let me have the last word
from now on, I feel compelled to reiterate:
when I said you had made a false assertion
and had mischaracterized the state of affairs,
this was not meant to imply any bad faith on
your part.  It was meant only to say: I believe
the statement that ``many astute economists
believe that high interest rates cause high
inflation, at least in the long run'' (quoted
from memory) is false and mischaracterizes
the profession.  We seem to have a very
different sense of these words, since you can
say with evident sincerity: ``I do not make false
statements, nor do I mischaracterize,'' while to
my ear such claims are very odd.
(That is, they need a qualifier of intention
----I do not intentionally make false statements,
nor do I intentionally mischaracterize---which I
assume we all take for granted on a discussion
list like this.)

In addition, I owe you some thanks, for before your
post I would never have believed you could flush out
some people who both call themselves economists and
adhere to such a silly view.
(In decades of reading both heterodox and mainstream theory
and policy, I can think of only one literature where a related view
has been treated seriously, and it is not a literature I expect
has drawn attention or approval from economists on this
list: the literature based in Sargent and Wallace's
``Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic.'')
That is the basis of my view that the statement I quoted
above is (objectively, but unintentionally) false and
(as a matter of fact, but unintentionally) mischaracterizes
the actual state of theory and policy discussions among
economists.

So I hope you will chalk up this imbroglio
to the difficulties of email communication.

Alan

PS I would of course be happy to get a list of key cites
if I have overlooked an important literature.  (Please
do not cite the structuralist literature, however,
since I have already explained why it supports a
quite different claim.)