And Matthew Yglesias performs the intellectual garbage collection:
What Job Does Stephen Williamson Think Narayana Kocherlakota Is Angling For?: Williamson… doesn't buy the idea that [Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank Narayana] Kocherlakota was persuaded to change his mind [on the desirability of more quantitative easing by the Fed] by evidence. Rather, he states that… "ambition collides with economic science" (in general my impression is that people who run around talking a lot about "economic science" are generally engaged in an unscientific level of self-puffering and BS). But… Williamson doesn't offer any theory as to what the nature of the ambition….
[I]f I were an ambitious monetary economist who believed… FOMC['s policies] will be ineffective in boosting employment and is likely to produce a troubling level of inflation, I'd be shouting that from the rooftops…. When Milton Friedman warned that the naive Phillips Curve economics being pursued by the Federal Reserve in the late-60s and 70s would lead to ruinous inflation… lo and behold Milton Friedman was super-famous. Developing a correct analysis of the situation and then explaining it is… no guarantee of success… but… it tends to help…. [W]hat [is] it… Williamson thinks isn't equal here? What job is Kocherlakota angling for? And how will pretending to believe something he knows is wrong help him get it?
It's bizarre productions like that one from Stephen Williamson that make me really puzzled when smart people like Matt Kahn recommend we read Williamson for "some straight shooting by a smart macroeconomist".
