Prescott is a kook.  He’s the guy who said its easy to find jobs paying $100K.  Of course at the time he had two of them (dual appointment to the U of Minn and Minneapolis Fed).

Economists aren’t real scientists, anyway.  I think Prescott has amply demonstrated his fear of accountability that comes with the scientific method.

I’m sorry; that is the funniest thing I have read all day.  This guy is a professor?!

That guys a Nobel Prize winner? Wow. Where’s my Nobel Prize?

And people wonder why there aren’t more conservatives in academia…

That man has inspired me.  I am definitely going to start using spellcheck more often.

So the key to success in wingnuttia isn’t to have the biggest prick but to be the biggest prick?…

Dear god, his responses are subliterate. How did this man finish his PhD much less win a Nobel?

This was my favorite part:

In economics there is almost always one theory or no theory.

I find it endlessly entertaining when it turns out that a world-renowned expert in his own field turns out to be no better informed or articulate than your average curmudgeonly conservative crank.

It’s a reminder that political engagement is truly something within the grasp of the everyman-- it just takes effort that anyone can choose to do. You can be a genius but have no interest in going through the mental exercise of becoming an informed person, and you’ll be worse off and less able to make good political decisions than a pseudonymous blogger with a day job.

I rather like “Scientist collusions follow from their assumptions.”

It’s happened before (remember Robert Mundell). An economist conducts research worthy of the Nobel Prize while at his/her intellectual peak. Unfortunately, by the time the award is given, said economist has turned into a loon who can’t even have a civil (and grammatically correct) email discussion. I feel pity towards Prescott because he doesn’t realize he’s lost it. I feel contempt for McCain, who should know better but instead milks Prescott’s Nobel Prize to get credibility he doesn’t deserve.

Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.

Ms. Kate--be nice!  I’m an academic economist and think of myself as a “real” scientist without the benefit of nice controlled lab experiments.  That aside, I cringed my way through Prescott’s responses and am embarrassed that he’s in my field, let alone such a well-respected member of it.  I’m still cringing, in fact-- I really hope that it turns out not to be him, but I suspect it really is!

Jeebus. I’ve had more intellectually rigorous discussions with my cats than Teytelman was able to wring out of Prescott.

Tyro:

I find it endlessly entertaining when it turns out that a world-renowned expert in his own field turns out to be no better informed or articulate than your average curmudgeonly conservative crank.

You’re being way more generous than I would have. I find it depressing and horrifying (and not at all entertaining) that a “world-renowned expert” turns out to be not only ill-informed and inarticulate, but also mean, nasty, borderline illiterate and utterly incapable of stringing together an even remotely coherent logical argument.

I’ve lost a lot of respect for the Nobel committee.

Is Prescott going to be interviewed on Bloomberg or on any of the other major financial news shows?  This definitely seems like the kind of back-and-forth worth asking him about, especially to make sure it’s legit.  I’d love to hear him talk about his religion’s dogma re contract law.

All respectable students of public finance agree the taxing of capital income is bad policy.

LOL!

shit.  Prescott was born in New York.

I figured he had to be an immigrant considering his crappy grammar skilz.  He’s a native.  Fuck.

At first, I also worried about the legitimacy of these e-mails.  I wondered if this was some teenage nephew or niece, pulling a prank with the uncle’s university e-mail account.  But the exchange continued throughout the day, over a period of four hours.

I then wondered if Prescott was drunk, but he e-mailed me the last message the next day! Of course, he could be constitutively under the influence.

I finally decided to go public with this when several economics-savvy people assured me that this is most definitely Prescott himself, most likely just under his own influence.

Prescott did have over a week to e-mail some explanation for this exchange.

I find it depressing and horrifying (and not at all entertaining) that a “world-renowned expert” turns out to be not only ill-informed and inarticulate, but also mean, nasty, borderline illiterate and utterly incapable of stringing together an even remotely coherent logical argument.

Meh. People are people. Brilliance and expertise does not correlate with good moral judgment, or even good spelling, and does not insulate you from irrational thinking on other matters. I know what I’m saying can start sounding like Republican pro-ignorance pseudo-populism, but I’m not saying that at all. The guy is simply victim to the same foibles that anyone else can fall victim to.

Maybe why this is the most recent Nobel in economics went to Paul Krugman, even though he’s the polar opposite of this guy ideologically: They wanted to honor someone who could write coherently.

P.S. I’m still not convinced this exchange is legitimate.

Not to mention that one of the many sources of recent Russian economic turmoil was the “shock therapy” approach to transition out of communism, an approach which was pushed/imposed in part by the US.  Extremely rapid privatization, for example, meant that formerly state-owned properties (land, factories, oil companies) were given out (often ridiculously cheaply) to those with close ties to the state and those in power--which clearly has at least something to do with the oligarchy that resulted.

Anyway, the point is that we can look to recent history and point to specific policies as well as historical circumstances that have led to the current state of the Russian state.  Curiously enough, remarkably few appear to have anything to do with the “Ruyssian” identity of any of the people involved.

Hahaha, okay, that was REALLY funny.  Lenny, about this invasion of Georgia—are you going to explain yourself, or what???

“Why is Western Europe by one-third depressed relative to the U.S. ? Answer is that they are following the policies that Obama is proposing. This is an established scientific finding. “

1999 called.  It wants its Dollar/Euro exchange rate back.

Tyro:

Brilliance and expertise does not correlate with good moral judgment, or even good spelling, and does not insulate you from irrational thinking on other matters.

But he’s not talking about “other matters” in this exchange, he’s purportedly talking about his own alleged field of expertise. Maybe it’s just my elitist liberal bias, but I consider the ability to construct a rational argument on topics in one’s field of expertise an essential part of being an expert in one’s field.

Also, it seems to me that “brilliant” and “completely incapable of stringing together a series of logically cohesive statements” are mutually exclusive categories.

Dear People of the United States:

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for invading Georgia.

I really am very, very sorry.  I did it completely by accident, similarly to the way I originally e-mailed Edward Prescott.

I would also like to assure everyone that my current contribution to the destruction of the United States is a completely unintended consequence of my support for Obama.

I screwed up - just like McCain screwed up with the Letterman appearance.

Sorry,

Lenny Teytelman

PS On a brighter side, the people of Russia should now be able to govern themselves, since I am no longer residing there.

Prescott is just one of those people.  In general when a person’s model and reality conflict, he assumes his model is wrong, Prescott assumes reality is wring.

The Army Core of Engineers and the levies in New Orleans were Bama in action.

Alabama? I thought New Orleans was in Louisiana.

Reading this exchange I wonder if, rather than economics, it was his brilliant research into Time Cube that got him his prize.

Don’t sweat it Lenny. Now, can you invade Alabama so as to punish them for levees and the Army Corps (damn, I didn’t even notice the ‘core’) of Engineers? It’s right next to Georgia…

Man that dude is drunk as hell.

Yeah, I’m an academic economist, too, and this guy just sounds nuts.  My favorite line was definitely “In economics there is almost always one theory or no theory.” Umm, no.  Not even close.  You have to wonder when the last time was that this guy actually read economics. 

Lenny, why don’t you contact George Akerlof for a quote?  He’s a Nobel winner from Cal and the nicest person.

Many professionals are subliterate, especially if the job doesn’t require amazing writing skills.  The crap I see from dentists on a semi-regular basis would make all of you weep.  Academic papers aside, do economists have to write a great deal?  If Prescott mainly handles mathematical models and whatnot, it seems very possible that he can get away with being a dreadful writer and still be a successful economist.

But it figures that McCain’s only expert support comes from dead-enders like this guy.

Dear People of the United States:

I really am very, very sorry.  I did it completely by accident, similarly to the way I originally e-mailed Edward Prescott.

For your next task, you will be required to apologise for the lunatic rantings of “She who you can see across the Bearing Strait”.  While we got ya on the line, anyway

I wonder, was it Prescott who came up with Nobel worthy stuff, or a truly brilliant grad student or co-winner whose work he stole by pulling rank?

Is he possibly related to the Bush clan, too?  He’s got the “affirmative action by wealth” lineage and the name Prescott rings a bell there, too.

(I was mostly needling the economists out there about “not being scientists” because this piece of work seems a bit weak in the scientist area - if anything, Prescott is a statistician/mathematician more than an economist, hence his dense).

The Army Core of Engineers and the levies in New Orleans were Bama in action.

Alabama? I thought New Orleans was in Louisiana.

I think he meant Obama by “Bama” (http://no-bama.blogspot.com/).  As in, “Government is a failure at anything it does, Army Core of Engineers is government, Obama is pro-government, so the failing levies are exactly what we can expect from people like Obama.” In other words, not only am I guilty for invading Georgia, but Obama is responsible for the Katrina fiasco.

Yeppers!  His co-winner WAS his graduate student!

Since there isn’t a Nobel for Mathematics, there have been mathematicians/statisticians that have gotten the Nobel for how their work affected the field of Economics --- John Nash being one example.

Lenny, you are the funniest person ever, even if invading Georgia was reprehensible.  Your apology is accepted.

Lenny, why don’t you contact George Akerlof for a quote?  He’s a Nobel winner from Cal and the nicest person.

Actually, I did contact him.  I manually solicited quotes from hundreds of people.  Every single quote that I got for the site is a product of many sleepless nights of e-mailing potential contributors.  It is unbelievably difficult to get public statements from supporters of Obama (people don’t want to self-identify as affluent, can’t go on record because of clients). Of course, most people probably just ignore my requests as spam.

My biggest problem is getting e-mail addresses.  The site has so many Nobel Laureates and professors just because their e-mails are in the public domain.  In fact, I don’t really want it to be too academic (even though I’m in academics myself), because that way it plays into the McCain “elitist” theme. 

I wanted a good mix from business owners, CEOs, economists, doctors, and so on.  I have even resorted to pulling up campaign contributions on FEC for entire medical schools and then e-mailing the doctors who donated to Obama.  I must have e-mailed around 200 pro-Obama physicians, but got zero quotes.  I figured out the e-mails of the top Google people, but no luck in getting a quote, even from Eric Schmidt, whose support of Obama is so public now (and I couldn’t figure out Vint Cerf’s address at google).

So if anybody has good suggestions, please do e-mail me! (teytelman at g mail dot com)

Wikipedia’d: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Prescott

Rather sad. It’s not the spelling errors that I find disappointing, but the needlessly belligerent and narrow-minded tone (especially when compared to that of Mr. Teytelman’s messages). His messages might be a good excercise piece on a HS debate team’s “Identify the Fallacious Arguments” quiz.

And, really, “One theory or no theory”?! Does Prof. Prescott now fancy himself the Newton of economics? (I’m guessing that the answer is “yes").

On the plus side, though, at least Prof. Prescott admits that his extreme free market philosophy is a religion. And well he should, since an academic like himself would need a whole lot of blind faith to believe that he’d be anything other than lunchmeat for the warlords and robber barons who’d end up running the country if his “good religion” was put into practise.

Dan, Grand Emperor:

Now you know how I felt when James Watson made his statements about Africa and human intelligence. 

I had read about him since high school, and will always treasure the first line of The Double Helix:

“I have never seen (Sir) Francis in a modest mood.”

This is almost as bad:

While speaking at a conference in 2000, Watson had suggested a link between skin color and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos.[68][70] His lecture, complete with slides of bikini-clad women, argued that extracts of melanin — which give skin its color — had been found to boost subjects’ sex drive. “That’s why you have Latin lovers,” he said, according to people who attended the lecture. “You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.”

I wouldn’t blame the Nobel Committee, one may be a genius in a given field and still be a dipshits in other ways.

I’m reminded of the fact that scholars to this day don’t know whether Beethoven tried to pry out more money from his publishers than he was entitled to, or was he just very bad at keeping track of his accounts.

Since there isn’t a Nobel for Mathematics, there have been mathematicians/statisticians that have gotten the Nobel for how their work affected the field of Economics --- John Nash being one example.

As i have stated before, neither Krugman, Prescott or Nash has ever got a Nobel Prize for Economics - there is no Nobel Prize for Economics.

What there is is a prize started by the Swedish Central Bank (i.e. a bunch of economists) which rides on the prestige of the Nobels to give economics the same status as those sciences which actually *have* Nobel Prizes.  And it does indeed often reflect an ideological bias - the Chicago School has won 9 of the things.

While reading that, I think my brain just seized up with the stupid.  Why isn’t David Horowitz protesting about this man having tenure?

.


Love Prescott’s Army “core” of engineers—closely followed by a childish insult at all Russians.

What a fucking pro!



.

Prescott - any relation to the Bushes? (There are Prescotts in the GHWB and GWB family tree).

I doubt it Nancy, apparently Prescott isn’t one to cater to the ‘special in interests’ groups.

Lenny:

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for invading Georgia.

LOL. Lenny wins the internet.

Please, never again mention “cytoplasmic sperm injection” in the first paragraph of an article whose title includes “lost weekend with Alan Greenspan.”

Thank you.

Recreation of this exchange:

Teytelman: Excuse me, sir, I was wondering if I might -

Prescott: FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER.

I am still having a hard time believing this is real. He must have been drunk. How could a prestigious-prize-winning economist be so stupid?

I am still having a hard time believing this is real. He must have been drunk. How could a prestigious-prize-winning economist be so stupid?

He can if his “greatest work” was the work of his most prized graduate student.

I am still having a hard time believing this is real. He must have been drunk. How could a prestigious-prize-winning economist be so stupid?

Lauren, I love you.  Bear my children.

(Yes!  My first convert!  Soon - the pitchforks and burning torches!)

Nah, even if the work belonged to a grad student he had to have the smarts to appropriate it. It’s possible that he’s impaired in some way, but also quite possible that he enjoys being an asshole to people he considers of lower status.

A couple of passages from this article about his Nobel (ahem) stand out:

“I love creating models and coming up with explicit structures I can play with,” says Edward C. Prescott. “Economists create their own worlds. We’re like little gods with our artificial economics, wanting to see what happens.”

and

More to the point, the two papers cited by the Swedish Academy hammered the final couple of nails in the coffin of Keynesian macroeconomic theory by changing the way economists think about the design of economic policy and the causes of business cycles.

(Perhaps those papers should have put a stake through its heart as well, because Keynesianism keeps rising from the dead.)

then again, there are some economists who actuallly make sense
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly

Western Europeans may not earn as much money as Americans, but we live longer and our kids get sick and die of preventable diseases far less frequently.  Makes you wonder what you guys are buying with all that money, doesn’t it?  Also makes you wonder whether using pure unfiltered dollars as the sole metric of “wealth” might possibly introduce some distortions to the model.

Also, we don’t start as many wars and hardly anyone despises us just because of where we’re from.  There’s some shit you can’t buy.  For everything else, there’s America’s last remaining bank, which I believe is scheduled to be HSBC any day now…

As it so happens, I was just reading a paper which argued that the optimal capital tax was significantly different than zero and actually quite high (21% and 36% were the two main results).  I actually haven’t finished yet and can’t comment on the merits, but the point is, it is HARDLY true that every reasonable economist in public finance thinks the ideal capital tax rate is 0.

http://www.econ.upenn.edu/~dkrueger/research/ConeKitaoKrugRevfinal.pdf

If only he could invent some sort of filter to smooth out his emails before he hits send.  (that was a bad econ/prescott reference that’ll go over most people’s heads)

I get it Nyland. (I’ve been editing economists, among others, for 23 years, including a lovely man with a Nobel.)

Also, we don’t start as many wars and hardly anyone despises us just because of where we’re from.

Except if you’re German and on a beach…

Just remember, kids: You’re Special!

In Interests!

Just remember, kids: You’re Special!
In Interests!

You may be confusing this blog with the one for investment bankers.

Teytelman: “By the way, I am a United States citizen and came to this wonderful country in 1990 as a refugee from the former Soviet Union. I don’t think I bear much responsibility for the invasion of Georgia. “

Prescott:  “… Society needs religion to get around the time inconsistency problem. “

Is it just me, or is Prescott suggesting that if people smoked the god pipe a little more often, it would all suddenly become clear how Lenny orchestrated the invasion of Georgia while working on his PhD in the US ... and that the answer involves time travel?