Poor Karl Ritter and Matt Moore of the Associated Press must have a lot of time to kill, a dearth of ideas, and a studied disinterest in accuracy as they await the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Economics in Stockholm, Sweden on Monday. A list of past winners is here.
Besides lamenting that no woman has ever won the Economics Prize (so?), the AP pair felt the need to relate the financial bailout passed by Congress and signed by the President a week ago, and the current steep stock market decline that followed it (or, as yours truly and Investors Business Daily would argue, occurred because of it), to who might win the award.
Along the way, they, as AP reporters are wont to do, erred, and quite seriously.
Here's how their report, weirdly entitled "Amid the meltdown, economics Nobel no easy pick," began (bold is mine):
If history is any guide, this year's Nobel economics prize will award the developers of economic theories that have had the time to take root, grow and prove resilient.
The past also indicates that Monday's winner will probably be an American male who will have done the bulk of his work several decades ago, not someone who has analyzed issues related to the financial meltdown that is now throwing capitalism into turmoil worldwide. Also, no woman has ever won the economics prize from the Nobel Foundation since it was first handed out in 1969.
But unless one really believes that professional economists just sign any old thing that crosses their desk, Ritter and Moore are incorrect that all nominees suffer from a dearth of knowledge of issues relating to what the pair describe as the "meltdown." At least two nominees under serious consideration looked at the matters involved closely enough to be among the over 160 economists who signed a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate on or shortly after September 24, 2008. The 160 signers also included at least three current Nobel laureates.
One of the nominees for this year's prize who signed the letter, Lars Peter Hansen of the University of Chicago, was named by the AP pair. The other, Harvard's Oliver Hart, is mentioned at an October 10 New York Times Freakonomics Blog entry by Steven D. Levitt.
Both gentlemen are among those who signed onto the following letter:
As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan:
1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise.
2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards.
3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted.
For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.
I first learned of the letter from this article at Bloomberg News. If the actual contents of the letter were posted at any news site, I couldn't find it.
Considering its gravity and its source, a Google News search on "economists letter bailout" (not in quotes) between September 24-30 surfaced pretty light mention of the letter. The only front-page story about it appeared on Page A01 of the Washington Post on Friday, September 26. Other mentions were clearly less prominent. The ones I found were at a Reason blog post, a New York Times "Talking Business" column by Joe Nocera, the Harvard Crimison, a Chicago TV station and a semi-coherent LA Times column by Joel Stein. I doubt there were many other citations of the letter, and could locate no reports about it by AP.
The report by Ritter and Moore shows that that weak original news coverage begets weaker and erroneous subsequent news coverage -- enough in this case to blow away the reporters' core premise that no one "who has analyzed issues related to the financial meltdown" is up for Monday's Nobel. They're flat-out wrong.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters
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Obviously, as per usual, the
October 12, 2008 - 22:21 ET by mattmObviously, as per usual, the crAP is not interested in getting it right, they're just fueling the fire in hopes it will negatively affect capitalism. I'm amazed they aren't suggesting Franklin Raines for the prize.
This looks like a duck to me
October 12, 2008 - 22:23 ET by Lame CherryI guess I should find a middle name too as one wins prizes if your name is Lars Peter Hansen. I apologize if I don't bow before Nobel prizes nor economists with 3 names as LPH reads like a Darwin economist who isn't concerned about the basics as that is what money is and instead is interested in big words making a simple thing complicated by factoring in human tendency.
I will focus on his and these other economists points.
Point 1. LPH focuses on fairness of the bailout. If he with degrees does not understand this has nothing to do with fairness, but nation rape, paying Chinese communists off because Warren Buffett does business there and taxpayers have been unfairly subsidizing him and all his other egg heads so they don't have to work for a living, then what another Jimmy Carter waste of a prize.
Point 2. Ambiguity is how shell games work. This is a shell game and it's bailout is a pay off. This is about the concentration of wealth and the ability of the select few to influence elections, building a new economic order and the transfer of wealth from retirement accounts which is the only cash cow left.
Point 3. LPH speaks of great wealth generated in this economy. Sure it has if you are of the nation rapists, the elites and patricians, but for normal people of the first economy (I have stated America has numerous economies) these people have not prospered. These Americans have lost immense ground as vehicles, housing, inflation etc... have them trying to exist on $5.85 an hour driving an hour to work each day.
My niece after travel, babysitter fees etc.... figured out she was making a whopping $2.37 an hour.
Lars Paul try telling prosperity to millions of Americans and you in your formulas try existing on two bucks and hour.
In noting the above and the volcano about to release, this is not about economics. This is about legalized theft of the internationals moving trillions of dollars around the world, inflating prices, destroying markets, sticking it to poor people and then running off with trillions as they plot the next rape to occur.
Oh yes people, the next economic rape is already being set up in the 3rd world.
Not so long ago they raped Japan and Asian nations. Before that it was America in the 70's agricultural and manufacturing bust. Then it was the BCCI savings and loan bust. After the Japanese took the sword, it was back to America in the dotcom bust.
9 11 which was a stage economic attack brought in profits in short selling. Greenspan created a new housing bubble off of the money Bush 43 was forced to print up to keep the world from a real depression........as this was all staged.
That is all theft and not a thing about running an economy.
LPH not getting that point proves how pointy his head is.
The criminals who can be arrested from Greenspan, to Barack Obama should be arrested.
Buffett and Soros should have their billions in stolen property seized and returned to Americans in real rebates amounting to half a million dollars each to American families.
You won't get Rothschilds or Rockefellers, so just put Alexander Hamilton charters on the main banks and tell them to fix this to prosper all Americans or they will loose their banks or nation rape operations.
They deliberately screwed the pooch on this to implement a whole lot of outcomes beyond a few trillion American dollars.
China is going to go into 3 years of recession. China can not afford 3 years of recession. The net result is China with it's billion person mob is going to either have to kill it's own people or march that mob out for someone else to kill them.
That is called war. This was deliberately planned and the only 3 areas the Chinese can move to are the Middle East which will probably be radioactive, Alaska for oil and Australasia for raw resources.
As I stated before this is central European and they are making a power grab intending to use their boy Obama. Brzezinski has royally screwed up east Europe and the Middle East. Russia needs 90 dollar a barrel oil to run their welfare orgy or they collapse.
The Muslims of Oil are already in turmoil and they have 26 million furious males who they will have to kill or send out to war.
So while prize winner LPH writes letters stating the obvious and not getting the obvious, the world just had initiated the doomsday scenario with America removed from the theater.
All that is left is weapons of mass destruction war after a few warm up skirmishes.
George Bush as I pointed out was preparing for this 2 years ago when he stated America was getting out of the Middle East. The American oil interests decided to bust the price of oil to get at the Eurasian problem and the European cartel decided to bust American finance in this 3rd 9 11 attack to make a grab for leadership after America withdraws.
Economics are about production in free markets where all prosper to make an entire nation secure. This is not about economics. This is about war.
World War III started when Putin murdered that British subject with polonium 210. The prodding going on since have just been delaying tactics and these 2 massive economic hits are a strategy to implement a European order which most of the children here have no comprehension what that order is about in it's ruthless rapine.
They just ruined numerous Americans again causing trauma to so many just like in the dotcom bust and they don't care, because of the objective. They will when they assemble their army have 3 other armies to play with and then Americans will understand what empires are about.
Barack Obama is going to drive America into this inferno because it is what his financier backers desire.
Solar powered fighter jets aren't going to do it as this is beyond pushing and shoving. Economic warfare brings one thing and that is nuclear warfare.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
I disagree. WW III started
October 12, 2008 - 22:34 ET by mattmI disagree. WW III started when the Berlin Wall went up. WW IV started sometime after Israel became a nation. (These two may be in the opposit order)
I think Putin started WW V....
or... maybe all of it's related and we're still in WW III. This would mean that when the wall came down, it wasn't the end of WW III, it was just a part of it.....
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner
October 13, 2008 - 08:18 ET by Hero SquadHey, turns out that to win the Nobel Prize for Economics, all you need to do is:
1. Have a political column and half-baked economic schemes.
2. Hate George Bush
3. No, really HATE George Bush
Congratulations, Paul Krugman on figuring out that formula.
*****
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