Could someone help me out why this Middlebrow Dismissive Comment has been voted up? It contains no information, takes no position, and merely lobs cynical derision at everyone.
Marty's other comment in this thread was cogent and interesting, comparing Iceland's actions to earlier crises Sweden and Argentina. But this comment, useless.
It makes a great deal of statements, and does take positions. Factual positions no less. For example:
"At the onset of the 2008 crisis, some people very accurately predicted the type of crisis it was (a financial panic) and recommended policies that were tested and proven to work."
Position taken. Factual assertion made. Is this true or false?
"The mainstream camp however, thought otherwise and most of the world followed their advice."
Position taken. Factual assertion made. Is this true or false?
"With 4 years of data we now know who was right and who was wrong"
Position taken. Factual assertion made. Is this true or false?
"Few high profile economists have reversed their deeply flawed views and the views of those baked by data and correct predictions are still not taken seriously. "
Position taken. Factual assertion made. Is this true or false?
"Economics is deeply corrupted by politics and the financial interests of its practitioners."
Position taken. Factual assertion made. Is this true or false?
Everything I have seen over the past few years indicates to me his assertions are true. In particular the case of Iceland and Ireland.
"some people" recommended "policies that were tested and proven to work"? -- What people, what policies? What position has been taken?
"mainstream camp thought otherwise" - otherwise to what?
"and followed their advice" - Really? So how is it that Ireland and the US and Iceland all responded very differently, if everyone followed the same flawed advice?
"we know who was right and wrong" - Much to my own surprise, we see that most of the solutions have worked to some degree, and the widely predicted great disaster has not occurred. Really the jury is still out.
There is a book, "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy"(2010), by Joseph Stiglitz - an economist of Nobel prize fame and former Chief Economist of the World Bank, who very early saw the coming of the global crisis and was laughed at in 2005-2006 for his opinion, esp. at a then held Davos summit.
In his book he elaborates deeply - but accessibly for "laymen" - what went wrong, how it could be fixed, but against whose interests in US the ideal public policy solution would have been, and so why just a dubious set of half-measures were taken, by whom, and how it might all worsen as situation in the near future.
So far, for the period from 2010 to 2012, what he claims and predicts seems right and rings true to me.
Well the writing is somewhat turgid in its use of nominalizations and the passive voice but that really doesn't mean its saying nothing. It just makes it a bit harder to read.
When I read martythemaniak's comment with its talk of "some people", "the mainstream camp" and "high profile economists" it's unclear who these groups are.
Monetarists? Keynesians? Advocates of lower government spending? Advocates of tax increases to cut government debt? Or tax cuts to spur growth? Advocates of higher government spending? Spending on bailouts? Countercyclical government spending on infrastructure projects? Academic economists at universities, who don't put their money where their mouth is? Big city financiers, who got us into this mess? Government economist-politicians, who have to be perpetually upbeat to try to keep the market confident? 'The Stock Market' which isn't even a person? Bloggers and columnists? Advocates of lower interest rates? Higher interest rates? Republicans? Democrats?
Needless to say, as I didn't know who was being talked about I couldn't derive much meaning from martythemaniak's comment.
I don't disagree with you, it is a sloppy way to write, but quite common when the writer has a lot of emotion and not a lot of patience to go cite the specific conversations.
So lets take one example and work through it, martythemaniak's wrote:
"At the onset of the 2008 crisis, some people very accurately predicted the type of crisis it was (a financial panic) and recommended policies that were tested and proven to work."
Using the search terms "Iceland Bank Reform" lead me to a whitepaper [1] from Mercatus which goes into great detail about the controversy around the decision to eliminate debt, it cites several economists and papers, both from the time period and the present looking back. A similar search for "Ireland banking crisis" leads to a similar set of papers where people discuss how to pull Ireland out of the mud.
So what does this say about Marty's writing style? and our reading of it? Well it says Marty throws out his emotional angst over this (perhaps he advocated the debt canceling path for Ireland, I don't know) with his comment that "some people" recommended things known to work, clearly at least a few of those people were advising the Icelandic government as they implemented those ideas. If we're engaged readers we do our own legwork, we can attach names to those people. It's more work for us, and perhaps less satisfying that way.
The comment was accused of not saying "anything" when in fact it did say things. What it did not do was to lay out evidence for the claims made, Further, the use of the passive voice made pulling out the information which would help the reader research the claims more difficult.
So there are at least three things going on here, one an emotional rant from someone who believed in strategies that Iceland implemented, but were widely criticized in other economies, feeling vindicated. Second, a quickly thrown together narrative about the tunnel vision which lead to this situation. And finally, a turgid writing style which imposes an unnecessary burden on the reader trying to understand the meaning or substance behind the rant.
Perhaps to someone sufficiently well versed in the field and its recent history, including who said what and when, the innuendo could be clearly read. I'd venture to guess that most readers could not; I certainly couldn't.
"Could someone help me out why this Middlebrow Dismissive Comment has been voted up?"
Because is it a view obviously shared by a lot of the smart people in HN.
"It contains no information, takes no position, and merely lobs cynical derision at everyone."
It contains information: That people in the economics field had been corrupted by politics and financial interest, witch is absolutely true.
Money mainly from financial elites goes to fund elite Universities in the US, and so most Ph. D need to think in a certain way for getting their position, the people that control central banks need to lie and deceive every single day, and even the Nobel price of Economics is a farce, created by central banks in order to influence people into believing their propaganda economics is scientific.
I know quite a few good economists, but none of them are in great positions of power. If they are they act like really stupid ones(because they have to, if they know something is going to lose value they can't talk about it), so people that believe in them and lose most of their savings are angry at them, what is completely understandable.
So after the Middlebrow Dismissive Comments we gonna have the Middlebrow Dismissive Comment alerts? Would it be dismissive, the GP was at least about the article, while your comment (and so mine) simply spoils the discussion.
Marty's other comment in this thread was cogent and interesting, comparing Iceland's actions to earlier crises Sweden and Argentina. But this comment, useless.
What am I missing here?