One can find economists to back any policy just as you can find lawyers to sign off on torture

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

There's a range of opinion on pretty much everything and in 'soft' areas of expertise like economics and law there are always some incredibly smart, qualified people whose thinking is nuts. Someone like Bush can always find a legitimately renowned authority to approve almost anything. This is why appeals to authority in law and economics are such a waste of time. There's always a group of genuine learned geniuses whose theories are less useful than just asking a child... the trick is to know which ones they are. (And sometimes very good people with a long record of being right can go off the rails driven by personal emoional prejudices and become de facto idiots... are your ears burning Alan Dershowitz?)

The sad implication of this Krugman blog entry is that experts can be found to buttress almost ANY political approach to the economy. He is focusing today on serious but lunatic RW economists, but the implications extend to policy differences within groups as well. Though liberal economists share some broad beliefs it's never enough to say "X has smart advisers" because there are usually some very, very smart people holding completely contrary views. (It's better to read at the link than here because there are hyperlinks to all the pieces Krugman finds so troubling.)

Economists, ideology, and stimulus

Mark Thoma and Brad DeLong are both, in slightly different ways, perturbed by the state of debate over fiscal stimulus. So am I. This has not been one of the profession’s finest hours.

There are certainly legitimate arguments against spending-based fiscal stimulus. You can worry about the burden of debt; you can argue that the government will spend money so badly that the jobs created are not worth having; and I’m sure there are other arguments worth taking seriously.

What’s been disturbing, however, is the parade of first-rate economists making totally non-serious arguments against fiscal expansion. You’ve got John Taylor arguing for permanent tax cuts as a response to temporary shocks, apparently oblivious to the logical problems. You’ve got John Cochrane going all Andrew-Mellon-liquidationist on us. You’ve got Eugene Fama reinventing the long-discredited Treasury View. You’ve got Gary Becker apparently unaware that monetary policy has hit the zero lower bound. And you’ve got Greg Mankiw — well, I don’t know what Greg actually believes, he just seems to be approvingly linking to anyone opposed to stimulus, regardless of the quality of their argument.

Needless to say, everyone I’ve mentioned is politically conservative. That’s their right: economists are citizens too. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that all of them have decided on political grounds that they don’t want a spending-based fiscal stimulus — and that these political considerations have led them to drop their usual quality-control standards when it comes to economic analysis.

Has there been any comparable outbreak of mass bad economics from good liberal economists? I can’t think of one, although maybe that’s my own politics showing. In any case, what’s happening now is pretty disturbing.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/economists-ideology-and-stimulus/

[chill_wind]

1. kick and rec. n/t