Comment of the Day: : Monday Smackdown: Hoisted from Archives: Economists Clueless About the Economy Weblogging: "No need to ask Kevin Hassett (is there ever?)...
...Most of the signatories are obviously not attempting a serious technocratic critique; the majority are either fund managers like Asness or simple grifters like Ferguson. These people value any publicity with a whiff of gravitas because they profit from it. It follows that your technocratic criticism of them--why haven't they updated their priors, why can't they explain why they were wrong--is beside the point. They will not update their priors because they are being paid not to update their priors. They will not provide a technical explanation for their opinions because there is none. I'm afraid that you need to take a moral line, however much it pains you.
(OK, obviously John Taylor is not in the same league as most of these people. But he has been saying quite a few peculiar things lately, has he not? And he has a direct financial interest in Republican advocacy because he accepts money from the Hoover Institute. As for McKinnon, I presume that he detected 'financial repression' in the current low rate environment and wanted to burnish his reputation, with unfortunate effect. Being dead, he can neither defend himself nor change his mind.)
