In Email, Niall Ferguson Requests I Acknowledge His "I Would Have Gotten Away with It If Not for Those Meddling Bloggers!" Rant
Niall Ferguson: Krugtron the Invincible:
For too long, Paul Krugman has exploited his authority as an award-winning economist and his power as a New York Times columnist to heap opprobrium on anyone who ventures to disagree with him. Along the way, he has acquired a claque of like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O'Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers. Krugman and his acolytes evidently relish the viciousness of their attacks, priding themselves on the crassness of their language. But I should like to know what qualifies a figure like Matt O'Brien to call anyone a "disingenuous idiot"? What exactly are his credentials? 35,550 tweets? How does he essentially differ from the cranks who, before the Internet, had to vent their spleen by writing letters in green ink?
I acknowledge it.
I suppose I might answer the question too, for I think Matt O'Brien is completely 100% qualified to call Niall Ferguson a "disingenuous idiot" whenever he chooses.
What qualifies a figure like Matt O'Brien to call anyone a "disingenuous idiot"? I think that if Matt demonstrates his intelligence--which he has--works hard--which he does--and reaches the conclusion that Niall Ferguson is acting like a disingenuous idiot, then he is not only qualified to but morally obligated to call Niall Ferguson a disingenuous idiot.
Similarly, I think I am qualified to lament that the Financial Times published Niall Ferguson's misleading screed on July 19, 2010:
Brad DeLong: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? Fiscal Policy Edition: Niall Ferguson writes:
Today’s Keynesians have learnt nothing: When Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, the deficit was already running at 4.7 per cent of GDP. It rose to a peak of 5.6 per cent in 1934. The federal debt burden [in the United States] rose only slightly – from 40 to 45 per cent of GDP – prior to the outbreak of the second world war. It was the war that saw the US (and all the other combatants) embark on fiscal expansions of the sort we have seen since 2007. So what we are witnessing today has less to do with the 1930s than with the 1940s: it is world war finance without the war…
Could we please have some acknowledgement of the fact that the reason the debt-to-GDP ratio did not rise across the 1930s was because GDP rose, not because debt didn't rise? Debt more than doubled from $22.5 billion to $49.0 billion between June 30, 1933 and June 30, 1941. But nominal GDP rose from $56 billion in 1933 to $127 billion in 1941.
And could we please have some acknowledgement that our 9.4% of GDP deficit in fiscal 2010 pales in comparison to the 30.8% of GDP deficit of 1943, or the 23.3% and 22.0% deficits of 1944 and 1945?
Niall Ferguson should not do this. The Financial Times should not enable Niall Ferguson to do this.
