Is AEP becoming a Ron Paul supporter? He might be. If you haven’t read it yet, his latest thoughts are well worth a perusal:
The offending article AEP refers to in the link above is by Dr Kartik Athreya, who works within the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia; this branch presides over one of the twelve districts within the US Federal Reserve system. You can read Dr Athreya’s original article, here, on Scribd:
To tempt you, let me entertain you with a couple of samples:
“In this essay, I argue that neither non-economist bloggers, nor economists who portray economics —especially macroeconomic policy— as a simple enterprise with clear conclusions, are likely to contribute any insight to discussion of economics and, as a result, should be ignored by an open-minded lay public.”
Well, that’s the Austrian School finished then. Has anyone told Professor Roger Garrison yet, that he has nothing worth saying about macro-economics, or indeed has nothing worth saying about anything at all?
But there’s more:
“The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new. Moreover, there is a substantial likelihood that it will instead offer something incoherent or misleading.”
Thank goodness we have the Federal Reserve then, and other central banks, populated by disinterested central planning experts who have been honed within the world’s finest universities for their vital life-saving missions. For without them, we would be flying blind into booms, and busts, and other financial catastrophes. For only the wizards behind the green curtains within the world’s central banks can truly know what is going on. And to try to look behind these glorious curtains in the emerald city would be to bring down certain economic doom. How Cro-Magnon humans managed to survive for 100,000 years, before the opening of the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609, the modern world’s first central bank, is perhaps the greatest mystery of all. But thank goodness humanity is now being led so effectively by these economic giants, like Ben Bernanke, pulling on all of those mysterious levers.
However, it is slightly puzzling that Chairman Bernanke fails to understand why the price of gold is going up. I thought I did know myself, but if Ben Bernanke doesn’t, then I must be mistaken; because Ben Bernanke knows everything worth knowing.
That’s why he’s the head of the Federal Reserve.
You probably have a flavour of Dr Athreya’s thoughts, by now. However, when talking about the Federal Reserve, I much prefer quoting Jim Rogers, who was once asked what he would do if he were in Ben Bernanke’s shoes:
“I would abolish the Federal Reserve and I would resign.”
By the way, economics is easy. It is as simple as catching a fish.
But then, I’m only a blogger. What do I know? Indeed, how dare I even pass an opinion. Such dangerous scurrilous people as myself should be rounded up and locked up before they cause any more trouble.
As for these unqualified bloggers daring to suggest that all of the world’s current financial problems have actually been caused by these self-same legions of green-curtained wizards within the world’s central banks? Well, I’m sure at some point we can license the Internet with a kill switch and only approve economics articles for general distribution on the world wide web from state-approved, state-qualified, and state-licensed economists.
That ought to do the trick.
Tell it, Brother!