dagblog - Comments for "Von Mises and Bachmann on a Beach"

There are definitely

Michael Maiello — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:10:25 +0000

There are definitely economists and money managers and strategists who have seen and called bubbles as they were forming. Dean Baker called the housing bubble and sold his own condo near the top. But most of these types, in my experience are stopped clocks. They think everything's going to collapse all of the time and when it does they say "see?" But they were like 5 years early on the call. You could have spent all of the 90s saying that tech stocks were overvalued, but does the collapse in 2000 justify steering people to miss all of the positive years?

The Fed Chairman, I hold to a different standard though. Like Cho said above, it's less about popping bubbles than managing the money supply well, and he did seem to be transparently trying to help W get re-elected.

@AD & des: I've always

tmccarthy0 — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:11:55 +0000

In reply to But Greenspan did what one

@AD & des: I've always wondered about this, are there any economists that recognize these "bubbles" before they are about to burst? I also wonder would there have been a housing bubble if Glass-Steagle (think that is right) would have remained in place? Deregulated financial markets seemed to make everything much worse for middle and lower class people who don't have gobs of cash available to them. So I agree with you in part, because I think Greenspan pushed for deregulation and that is a key tenet of Objectivism as I understand it.

He certainly seems to have rejected his fathers stellar economic work. I think he is a product of his time in some ways but is also a victim of the utopian distortions Objectivism as a philosophy offers. I just started reading Recover Ahead! And Greenspan seems to have rejected his fathers work outright as though those circumstances could never take place again, and yet here we are.

Many think the real-estate

Cho — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:11:01 +0000

In reply to But Greenspan did what one

Many think the real-estate bubble was started by the excessively loose monetary policy of 2004. If they had raised rates at the time, as most neutral observers considered appropriate, that would have helped. No need to "pop" a bubble that barely exists.

Of course Greenspan couldn't - as an objectivist - raise rates before the election. It was an explicitly political act in support of Bush, not an action due to an ideological interpretation of the evidence.

True. Though I think

Michael Maiello — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:46:06 +0000

In reply to But Greenspan did what one

True. Though I think Greenspan did more than not pop bubbles -- he actively encouraged them. Remember, if you got yourself an adjustable rate mortgage back in 2004, you were actually taking the Fed chairman's advice!

But Greenspan did what one

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:21:11 +0000

In reply to Yeah. Greenspan was in her

But Greenspan did what one would predict an objectivist would do when it came to declining to go after fraud in the mortgage industry, right?

I don't know that there have been many Fed Chairs, of any philosophy, who have deliberately sought to pop bubbles, as Dean Baker among others criticized him for not doing in the case of the real estate bubble.

Yeah. Greenspan was in her

Michael Maiello — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:41:33 +0000

In reply to I always wondered this

Yeah. Greenspan was in her circle of admirers. But he didn't really run the Fed the way you might expect an objectivist to. His Fed was highly involved in both politics and the economy. I suspect that this is because it would be impossible to run anything other than a very simplistic, middle ages style economy according to Randian ideas. The world is too complicated for her.

Well you just described Glen

tmccarthy0 — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:08:40 +0000

In reply to These von Mises people see

Well you just described Glen Beck, Harold Camping and a whole host of folks who have been able to capitalize on the foolishness of people who are afraid of everything I think mostly they are afraid of change, but change for most people isn't easy.

I always wondered this

tmccarthy0 — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:43:00 +0000

In reply to I just Googled it and to the

I always wondered this myself, because the philosophy behind both seem identical. I agree that for Rand economics wasn't a primary principle, but it must have been a secondary principle, didn't Greenspan come from the Rand Cult Institute?

AD, yes what you've written

tmccarthy0 — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:39:23 +0000

In reply to Fingers got ahead of me

AD, yes what you've written is quite true. Now I am looking to hire a blogger or two for my new site, we will see how that goes. For now I will continue to play with CSS to perfect the front page. That is most fun and keeps my skill set up.

No I am not a vegetarian, although I've been thinking about that Gluten free diet Donal wrote about, if it does all the things he says it does for athletes I would be riding my bicycle like a pro instead of an above average middle aged woman! It would be hard to leave bread behind though, I love bread and I bake it daily, I don't know if I could survive without fresh bread. :)

I just Googled it and to the

Michael Maiello — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:34:20 +0000

In reply to I ran into a von Mises

I just Googled it and to the extent this interests you, here you go:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra/essays/austrians.pdf

So there was some connection, but not much of one. Rand styled herself more a philosopher than economist so I think she wasn't all that interested in monetary policy and the like.