The pompous know-nothing we all love to despise gets a nice keelhauling over his economic predictions. Not only was he wrong, he was arrogant about it — I guess he’s about as good an economist as he is an actor and polemicist.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Hey now! That “Bueller” thing was kinda funny.
that’s going to leave a mark
What would you expect from an idiot who’s biggest claim is speechwriter to a crook?
Even more inexplicable is the fact that the right-wing media keeps parading such an assclown to this day.
Stein should have no credibility left on any subject with anyone.
Even more inexplicable is the fact that the right-wing media keeps parading such an assclown to this day.
I’m sorry, could you please clarify which assclown you’re referring to? From the context I assume it’s Ben Stein, but there are so many–Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter. And they keep adding new ones, such as Sarah Palin, all the time.
Paul Krugman was warning of economic disaster related to subprime failure in early 2006.
I guess if you can’t get science or economics right, you may as well get them as spectacularly wrong as possible. At least it maintains his celebrity status.
Really, though, while it’s unsurprising that an anti-science know-nothing would embarrass even the DI with his ignorant ranting (“evolution doesn’t explain gravity”), how is it that even in his “area of expertise” he ends up being pwned?
The post mortem will involve the fascinating subject of how someone who fails at everything still managed to succeed better than most.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Hey now, I don’t despise Ben Stein. He is, after all, the Pixies from Fairly OddParents, and he’s a pretty good game show host.
But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a lying, shameless, horrid, destructive, pompous, self-righteous jackass.
He writes like such a dick.
This would, of course, imply that the moron actually READ The Great Gatsby. I seriously doubted he had the mental capacity to do more than skim the Cliff Notes.
With his economic prowess, he didn’t just spit into the wind, he peed into the teeth of a hurricane! What a revolting jerk.
OT but it’s a little bit of schadenfreud seeing Cheney in a wheelchair at the Inauguration.
I love him in ‘Fairly Oddparents’.
I understand the right-wing places employing Stein, but why – WHY! – would the NYT have that clown write for them? There *are* smart non-clown conservatives out there.
For those of you who missed it, Cuttlefish’s
take on the subject.
Ben who?
In case anyone’s interested, I’m liveblogging the Inauguration.
http://www.inoculatedmind.com/2009/01/watching-the-inauguration/
#11:
For some reason, I suddenly have an urge to watch Dr Strangelove.
The reformulated Ben Stein: pseudo-contrite doom and gloomer.
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/135453
“I wish I could say I knew what was going to happen in the future. I have learned that I do not. … I thought that our government would not let the bottom fall out. I was wrong. I am sorry. …
if we are in the quicksand of not being able to rely on the data our companies give out, then anything can happen. Yes, we may be at a bottom or near it. Or we may not be anywhere near a bottom.”
#18: the one thing we can be sure of is that Ben Stein’s head is very near a bottom.
Nah, not Dr. Strangelove. Cheney calls for Kiss of Death, where Richard Widmark’s character pushes a wheelchair bound victim down a flight of stairs.
Fred
I felt the same thing.
It’s like a cross between Dr. Strangelove and the penguin from Batman.
re: Cheney – I am reminded of another great american OJ, in his role as Detective Nordstrom, in a wheel chair….
Those were some awesome, loooong stairs he fell down!
And if we can’t get Cheney to Gitmo, it’s the least we can do.
Oh shout out for Science from the President!
He mentioned non-believers. Groovy.
Very
I love watching the “prediction in hindsight” game being played around the sphere.
Suddenly, even people like Paul Krugman are Nostradamus’…
One would think, as in science, those who understood a complex arrangement well enough to make accurate predictions would be the ones enlisted if the arrangement fell ill…
…and this line of reasoning would exist in the financial world as well…
…but Alas!
Those in charge of fixing what is now well broken are the ones who claimed the system was “never better” until the day it all went to hell…
Many of us knew about this cliff back in ’05 and ’06 and took basic steps to prepare ourselves.
I sold high and moved into a cheaper housing area so that I own the home outright.
I took my savings out of the market and put it in silver where it sits in a pile in a happy place…
I bought a hot tub and a nice massage chair and stocked up on some nice Sonoma County wines…
But I’m one of those “the gubmint is too big” folks so what do I know?
Enjoy your 2009 and your New Deals…
Weeeeeeee…..
J-Dog,
It’s Nordberg, not Nordstrom. I love that role, though.
Aretha Franklin was a unicorn chaser after that desecration of the Constitution that was Rick Warren. When President Barack Hussein Obama acknowledged science, I found tears. That he respected unbelievers enough to mention our role in this country started to make me feel hopeful. Glad he downplayed the Lincoln and ended on George Washington. Powerful speech, powerful delivery.
He’s going to need a big shovel.
Glad to hear inclusion of non-believers, and to science, and to hope rather than fear as a mode of policy. Aretha was awesome, and I liked the poet and poem. I thought Obama’s speech, supernatural references aside, was outstanding.
Ok, back to work . . . I still live in Texas. Long way to go. Long, long way to go.
Best to you all out there in Intarweb-land.
No kings,
Robert
Oregonian Scott:
Do the world a favor while you’ve got your head up your ass: jump.
Warren is a fool but not as much as the people who pay attention to this overbearing, irrational, trite, pathetic excuse of a thinking human being, not to mention Jesus junkie. You want real freedom? Free yourself from your jebus addiction, fool.
Scott from Oregon, #26: Many of us knew about this cliff back in ’05 and ’06 and took basic steps to prepare ourselves.
Wow, you sure are smart, Scott, to have figured out something that many of us knew back in ’98 and ’99.
I seriously doubted he had the mental capacity to do more than skim the Cliff Notes.
Ow, now that’s a hell of an insult, given that Gatsby doesn’t have enough pages in it to last as a month’s worth of toilet paper, and the most exciting thing in it is a car accident. Granted, in 1925, a car accident was a big deal, but in 2009, not so much. Maybe Ben Stein was in a car accident once, and it damaged his brain.
So, uh, Scott: If Paul Krugman ostensibly has no predictive capacity (despite citations by readers here), where’s your Nobel Prize in Economics? (I agree the US Government is too big, by the way: Most of the Pentagon and the CIA needs to be scrapped.)
I figured Cheney was only faking the need for a wheelchair so he could avoid standing for Obama’s oath of office. Also found it amusing that Obama and Biden both voted against the current Chief Justice’s appointment.
The only thing I would have liked better about Obama’s speech would have been to end with, “U.S. Marshals, do your duty, take Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney into custody.”
“Dr. Hatzius […] used a combination of theory, data, guesswork, extrapolation and what he recalls as history to reach …”
Isn’t that called economics?
No shit Stein is wrong on economic issues; he’s a Libertarian. Libertarianism is to the study of Economics what Young Earth Creationism is to Geology. But instead of “god did it” they retort, “cut taxes and deregulate.’ It doesn’t matter what the issue is – bank failure, imbalance of trade, inflation, deflation – doesn’t matter. The answer is always the same, “cut taxes and deregulate.” There really is no reason to have Economics as a field of study at all. They already have the answer before you ask the question. No reason to study the way the UK handled a similar financial crisis or how Japan previously responded to a serious depression. No point at all. We already know the correct answer, “cut taxes and deregulate.” Libertarianism is sophomoric utopianist nonsense and anti-intellectual.
Cheney in a chair! Gives me a warm feeling.
I took my savings out of the market and put it in tinned food and a big stash of ammo…
To #5
Referring to Stein obviously, since that was PZ’s thread subject. Don’t get me started on the rest of the freakazoid right wing circus….
It’s been posted here before, but check out this clip of Fox talking heads mocking and deriding the dire predictions of Peter Schiffer back in 2006-2007. I hope Stein lost his fucking shirt following his own dumbass advice.
He recommends Merrill Lynch!!
This piece of work cut his political teeth trying to get John Lennon thrown out of the country while he was a Nixon speechwriter. He still thinks it was the right thing to do. Thirty-five years later the schmuck is still befouling the air, and getting rich doing it. How do we make people like this go away and leave us alone? Is there a killfile for my TV to block his nasal monotone when his commercials come on?
I remember seeing Stein in August or September of 2007 on one of those talking-heads financial shows, waxing poetic about terrific investment opportunities in the financial sector. He said that the subprime crisis was way overblown and that panicky investors had driven the share prices of Citigroup, Bear-Stearns, Merrill-Lynch, etc. down into bargain-basement range.
Stein then counseled viewers to take advantage of the great investment opportunities and jump in with both feet!
Had I listened to Stein back then, I would have mortgaged my house to buy stock in those companies on margin!
What would you expect from an idiot who’s biggest claim is speechwriter to a crook?
Stein today: “I am not a kook! I am not a kook!” *Waves two pairs of loafers in the air*
Pseudo-contrite is right, Colugo. Stein’s actually blaming the government here.
Back when I was monitoring The 700 Club for anti-RPG bullshit I heard Pat Robertson say something about the then exuberant Japanese economy. He said that it was a bubble, and that it would soon collapse.
He was right. He was right for the wrong reasons, but he was right. The Japanese economy back then was grossly overextended and headed for a fall.
Today another overextended economy in contracting, but Ben “I Forgot I’m Jewish” Stein may have gotten the why right, but he blew the consequences.
“”So, uh, Scott: If Paul Krugman ostensibly has no predictive capacity (despite citations by readers here), where’s your Nobel Prize in Economics? (I agree the US Government is too big, by the way: Most of the Pentagon and the CIA needs to be scrapped.)””
I’m glad you agree that the military “empire” is a bleeding ulcer…
You didn’t need a Nobel Prize to watch the housing crises form and pop. Hell, I be just a builder in the trades and I knew about the bubble just like lots of other ordinary folks…
That’s the whole point. IF it was so obvious, where was Washington? The only candidate of either party who pointed out the obvious during the campaigns was the much maligned Ron Paul, who stood on National TV and told everyone two things–
The overseas military was going to bust us, we need to dismantle it and bring it home. The Federal Reserve and monetary policy was ruining this nation and driving us over a cliff, which it did…
Both were accurate.
For the record, Paul Krugman is on record saying he knew about the housing bubble, but did not foresee the extent to which it would ripple.
So he got it as correct as any layman builder type like me who sat on rooftops eating sandwiches and wondered aloud if it would burst in ’07 or ’08…
For those interested, here is some interesting discussions going on about the solutions to the problem–
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
There is a forum link where all are welcome somewhere on that page, but I gotta run out and buy a toilet so you find it if you so desire to participate…
Isn’t being dickish, arrogant, and wrong about everything a hallmark of Fox brand conservatism? They all seemed to be emulating Bush.
T… Naw, much too easy.
Scott, could you please try ending a sentence without an ellipsis? It doesn’t make you sounds any more profound.
Rey Fox, #48: Scott, could you please try ending a sentence without an ellipsis?
Maybe it’s just a regular period, but Scott has a stuttering problem?
My favorite bit of Schadenfreude was on yesterday’s (Monday) Countdown, listening to the crowd cheer during the story of Cheney’s back strain and seranade him
Na na na na
Na na na na
Hey hey hey
GOODBYE!!!!
I love this quote from Stain:
It is more a call to be afraid and cautious based on general principles that he embraces and not on the lessons of history.
Damn, that’s some fine projectin’ there.
Scott from Oregon: So he got it as correct as any layman builder type like me who sat on rooftops eating sandwiches and wondered aloud if it would burst in ’07 or ’08…
Yeah, you’re as smart as Krugman alright. Now when you figure out that gravity pulls things down, you’ll be just as smart as Isaac Newton!
Ben Stein is living proof that some people accidental mistake, or willing use their sphincter muscle as a necktie,… ;-)
I’m happy to be able to say that I’m not an economist. I do know something about economics, however, because I had to pass qualifying exams in that subject en route to my Ph.D. Notice I said I know something about economics thanks to those studies, not that I know something about the economy. Asking an economist to explain the economy is like asking a theologian to explain biology. A lot like that, actually. Exactly like that.
Economists actually have the audacity to claim that they are the only “hard” social scientists, a distinction which they apparently think they earn because they use a lot of mathematics. In fact, if you start out by assuming a lot of stuff that isn’t true, then manipulating those imaginary entities mathematically is not any kind of science, hard, soft, liquid or gaseous. It’s masturbation. It is unnecessary to teach college students how to masturbate.
The entire discipline is utterly worthless. Economics departments ought to be abolished and the professors turned out to do useful work, clerking in bookstores or something. They need to start over, with the study of reality, but other people will have to do it, who possess working intellects.
As Uwe Reinhardt puts it (and he is evidently a lapsed economist, though he doesn’t go so far s to immolate himself as he should), “[T]he prism through which economists behold the world . . . , formally called “neoclassical economics,” depends crucially on certain unquestioned axioms and basic assumptions about the behavior of markets and the human decisions that drive them. After years of arduous study to master the paradigm, these axioms and assumptions simply become part of a professional credo. Indeed, a good part of the scholarly work of modern economists reminds one of the medieval scholastics who followed St. Anselm’s dictum “credo ut intellegam”: “I believe, in order that I may understand.””
cervantes #54
You may have taken an economics course or two but I doubt you learned any economics.
Economists build models and compare those models to the real world. Depending on the criteria used, the model may or may not come close to reflecting reality. However, to dismiss economics as masturbation is like creationists dismissing the Big Bang “because nobody was there to watch it happen.”
You claim to have a PhD in some subject that required a nodding acquaintance with economics. Which subject is it? Finance? Urban studies? Accounting? I’m truly interested to know which subject requires knowledge of a parody of economics.
It’s Peter Schiff and the Austrian economists who were right all along. Sadly, they have the ears of very few people in Washington.
Actually a fair number of economists have been saying the same thing for years. Schiff and his fellow Austrian Schoolers came into the tent very late. And the only place he made his announcement was on Faux News. Since neocons are even more ignorant about economics than loonitarians, O’Reilly and the other Faux commentators sneered at Schiff.
Paul Krugman was warning of an economic meltdown years ago, long before Schiff went public.
One other point about Schiff and the Austrian School. While Schiff foresaw the coming problems, his fixes were further deregulation and cutting taxes. Considering that deregulation was one of the major causes of the subprime crisis and ensuing credit and liquidity messes. So Schiff & Co may have been right on recognizing the problem but they are dead wrong on how to fix it.
Ben Stein is relatively liberal on economics. At least, he had an article wherein he supported progressive taxation and scoffed at the idea that cutting taxes would ultimately increase tax revenues.
“”Considering that deregulation was one of the major causes of the subprime crisis and ensuing credit and liquidity messes. “”
Yes cough cough… of course it was… cough cough…
Whatever you say dude… cough cough…
Oh my…
It’s a decades-old credit bubble. Look at the Dow Jones from ’83 to ’07. This was thought to be a new economy that followed 70s stagflation, but it was really an enormous bubble built on debt and speculation. Japan had something similar with its real estate and stock markets; theirs burst in 1990. We just might have the Japan scenario in store for us. If we’re lucky.
A number of Keynesians (Roubini, Krugman, Baker) and economic libertarians (Faber, Rogers, Schiff) alike saw it coming. The question is why so many others didn’t.
@#40: “Is there a killfile for my TV to block his nasal monotone when his commercials come on?”
You don’t like what’s on TV? Just take the channel selector in one hand, and the power switch in the other, and shake vigorously until you get a result you like better.
You won’t get any sympathy from me for self-inflicted injury. I got rid of my TV long ago.
#60: Scott from Oregon, if you actually have a point, make it instead of doing your coy Sarah Palin covering-for-ignorance act.
62
Sorry that your humor gland is impaired. Why should I quit watching “Squidbillies” when some stupid commercial comes on? Besides, I have a “mute” button, I was just makin’ a funny geez.
You may have taken an economics course or two but I doubt you learned any economics.
Economists build models and compare those models to the real world. Depending on the criteria used, the model may or may not come close to reflecting reality. However, to dismiss economics as masturbation is like creationists dismissing the Big Bang “because nobody was there to watch it happen.”
You claim to have a PhD in some subject that required a nodding acquaintance with economics. Which subject is it? Finance? Urban studies? Accounting? I’m truly interested to know which subject requires knowledge of a parody of economics.
Actually, I have a Ph.D. in Social Policy from Brandeis University, and I have taken four full semester graduate level courses in economics. I know a lot about economics, and what I present is not a parody. Note that Uwe Reinhardt now agrees with me, and he undoubtedly knows more about economics than you do.
Economists do not do what you say they do. They cling to their models regardless of whether they in any way correspond to reality. Here is how economists proceed. They make a number of assumptions which are counterfactual — not just sometimes, but always. For example, there is no such thing as a transaction without externalities. There is no such thing as perfect information. There is no such thing as perfect competition. And so on. These conditions never exist.
They then spin out elaborate theoretical constructs based on these falsehoods. At some point they forget that the underlying axioms are false, and start believing in their fairy tale reality. That’s how they indoctrinate college freshmen, and that’s why we end up with faith based economic policy.
Economics is vast edifice of bullshit erected on a foundation of sand.
@60: when you clear that hairball, try making a substantive point.
#66:
Don’t you know? The crisis was not at all influenced by the fact the credit rating agencies got paid by the sellers of the instruments they were rating, nor was it influenced by the fact that there were no disclosure requirements on the contents of tranched securities.
Nope. It was entirely the fact that commercial banks (aka the ones that didn’t fail) were required to make loans in areas where they had offices at the same rates as they made loans elsewhere to people with comparable income and savings levels. Haven’t you been paying attention?