Ron Paul Rises

[archibaldcrane]

That 4 month old overplayed video is very current, thanks.

[Milkster]

How can anyone understand RP? Every single time he talks, I fear he just had a stroke. He jumbles and stumbles and repeats himself so much.

[Correction]

How can anyone understand RP? Every single time he talks, I fear he just had a stroke. He jumbles and stumbles and repeats himself so much.

Hey that's anti-Texite!

[Andalusian girls]

Well, he's doing pretty well in New Hampshire, 13% in and it's

Mitt Romney 10,056 35.5%
Ron Paul 6,856 24.2%
Jon Huntsman 5,012 17.7%
Newt Gingrich 2,970 10.5%
Rick Santorum 2,720 9.6%
Rick Perry 185 0.7%
Michele Bachmann 38 0.1%
Other 480 1.7%

So much for the Santorum Surge. Gingrich's numbers so far have to be damn disappointing too. It would be nice if shit could just come down to Ron Paul and Romney so they could actually have a campaign about concrete differences.

it's over, Romney is the heir presumptive

the evangelical vote never coalesced around one rival + Paul's best opportunities have come and gone

[Churchill]

what does this mean?

I mean, great, RP predicted something. That's pretty cool. What am I supposed to think past "good job ron" ?

That would be fine, my point was more directed at flippant remarks dismissing the fact that he was right.

[Lestat]

That 4 month old overplayed video is very current, thanks.

You're welcome, and have yet to see it on the forum so it can't be that overplayed just yet.

[guartz]

you follow the Austrian school and believe the Chicago school is intellectually dishonest ?

I say that because you never hear one talk about bubbles unless they are dismissing them... what you do hear from Chicago economists is things like "Buy property! House prices never go down!"

[guartz]

Just to illustrate my point, here is an article by two career fed economists from chicago school in 2004.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/e.../0412mcca.html

housing? bubble? Hahaha.. don't worry.

and here is a paper from a professor @ mises, in 2004.
http://mises.org/daily/1533

[Kerberoz]

Economics is less scientific than reading tea leaves.

[kuronosan]

You're welcome, and have yet to see it on the forum so it can't be that overplayed just yet.

wat

[test123]

[Pirian]

Economics is less scientific than reading tea leaves.

Economics is a science, and science is dynamic. The only difference is that the predictions of economists are much more public than that of other sciences. Not trying to defend these guys that couldn't see the writing on the wall, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone making the same mistakes again so soon. In one of my econ classes we threw out a quarter of the book because according to the professor, "it's garbage from the 1930's that is no longer relevant".

[Kuya]

Economics has a bad reputation of being a nest of ideologues. It's funny, because at first i thought economics would be the most pretigious social science, you know, because of the math. Little did i know that some people put it on the same league as sociology.

[guartz]

Economics is a science, and science is dynamic. The only difference is that the predictions of economists are much more public than that of other sciences. Not trying to defend these guys that couldn't see the writing on the wall, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone making the same mistakes again so soon. In one of my econ classes we threw out a quarter of the book because according to the professor, "it's garbage from the 1930's that is no longer relevant".

>.> it was the same group of people that oversaw the dot-com bubble and crash. So, "so soon" is extremely relative if it keeps happening. They also had the japanese bubble as a model in the 1980s. Like I said, intellectual dishonest at best or criminally incompetent.

oh look here is a mises article telling us it's a bubble about to burst.
http://mises.org/daily/317



and here is an article by another austrian even before the bubble took full effect in 1996
http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen16_4_1.asp

[guartz]

Economics has a bad reputation of being a nest of ideologues. It's funny, because at first i thought economics would be the most pretigious social science, you know, because of the math. Little did i know that some people put it on the same league as sociology.

It is sociology. Economy is the sum of human actions, ergo, human choices, nestled with irrational confidences and the opposite, irrational fears. To think that there is some formula that could make it predictable is the failing of central planning as a whole, not some temporary miss-step.

[Pirian]

>.> it was the same group of people that oversaw the dot-com bubble and crash. So, "so soon" is extremely relative if it keeps happening. They also had the japanese bubble as a model in the 1980s. Like I said, intellectual dishonest at best or criminally incompetent.

oh look here is a mises article telling us it's a bubble about to burst.
http://mises.org/daily/317



and here is an article by another austrian even before the bubble took full effect in 1996
http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen16_4_1.asp

I know plenty of people (I interned for one of them) that saw the bubbles in the making, and protected their clients accounts from said burst. There are always going to be outspoken people claiming there isn't a bubble - that's part of how they're formed. Your couple links of Austrian economists isn't all that impressive.

It's fine to be mad at economists for being wrong. After all, it is often your money at stake. But just because they're wrong with a prediction (however large it may be) doesn't mean you throw the whole science out. That's like throwing out all meteorological data/models because some meteorologists failed to predict the weather. Sure, someone may be losing their job if they predict sunny skies and you get 5 feet of snow and the town is shut down because it wasn't able to prepare, but the same thing happens for an economist.

[guartz]

I know plenty of people (I interned for one of them) that saw the bubbles in the making, and protected their clients accounts from said burst. There are always going to be outspoken people claiming there isn't a bubble - that's part of how they're formed. Your couple links of Austrian economists isn't all that impressive.

It's fine to be mad at economists for being wrong. After all, it is often your money at stake. But just because they're wrong with a prediction (however large it may be) doesn't mean you throw the whole science out. That's like throwing out all meteorological data/models because some meteorologists failed to predict the weather. Sure, someone may be losing their job if they predict sunny skies and you get 5 feet of snow and the town is shut down because it wasn't able to prepare, but the same thing happens for an economist.

No, it's absolutely not fine to be mad at economists who have the capacity to make these booms and busts, then consistently create conditions so booms and busts happen, and then feign ignorance. After all, they are doing science.

Your meteorological metaphor is interesting, for the sake of accuracy it needs a bit of adjustment however. You should have said; "That's like throwing out all meteorological data/models because some head meteorologists who have a weather machine and consistently use it and then fail to predict the results of their actions."

To which I would reply; you are right, let's keep the data and throw out the head meteorologists and smash that machine.

[Pirian]

No, it's absolutely not fine to be mad at economists who have the capacity to make these booms and busts, then consistently create conditions so booms and busts happen, and then feign ignorance. After all, they are doing science.

Your meteorological metaphor is interesting, for the sake of accuracy it needs a bit of adjustment however. You should have said; "That's like throwing out all meteorological data/models because some head meteorologists who have a weather machine and consistently use it and then fail to predict the results of their actions."

To which I would reply; you are right, let's keep the data and throw out the head meteorologists and smash that machine.

Economists don't have an "economy machine", which is the only way your "fix" of the analogy makes sense, because they both use science to make predictions, and then people make decisions on these predictions. You're not usually going to find an economist as the CEO of many mid-sized companies, let alone a major company that actually influences the economy on its own. Yeah, they probably all have some economics training (a basic econometrics course is required for most graduate level business degrees), but they have probably forgot 90% of that training, and it really isn't sufficient, anyways. The major companies all have lots of economists that advise the CEO in their decision, but that is a far cry from running the company.

Economists don't have the capacity to create "these boom and busts", they only have the ability to look at them and make models/equations to try and explain how/why these happened in the first place, with the attempt to avoid it in the future. This is with emphasis on the word "attempt".

edited to further clarify

[archibaldcrane]

What if the economist is named Alan Greenspan?

[Pirian]

What if the economist is named Alan Greenspan?

Ahh, you got me there. I would argue that they (chairman of the fed, and board of governors) do less real economics, and more economics that benefit their buddies at various banks, but that is just my opinion (however backed by suspicious surroundings/conditions) so I won't really make that argument.