In an editorial in yesterday’s New York Times, Bill Keller decries the competition that newspapers get from independent sources on the web. That’s not how he poses it, of course. No. What he sees is a lot of loud, outlandish viewpoints.
I don’t deny that there are such viewpoints. But it’s interesting that one of Keller’s approving quotes is about people who would like to eliminate the Federal Reserve Board. Here’s the key paragraph:
“Nobody who is taken seriously as an economist is going to say ‘cancel the Fed,’ ” said Glenn Hubbard, the dean of Columbia Business School, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, and now Mitt Romney’s chief economic adviser. “I find it very disturbing that the media is giving equal time to some ideas that are just crazy.”
So Hubbard is saying–and Keller appears to agree–that any economist who wants to abolish the Federal Reserve Board is not taken seriously. Furthermore, Hubbard says that someone who thinks that–and, again, Keller seems to agree–is crazy.
Later in the piece, Keller writes:
Of course, there have always been economists who leaned right or left — and some outright snake-oil salesmen — but until recently the public debate about economics pretty much stayed within the boundaries of accepted science. Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman have become conservative icons, John Maynard Keynes and Paul Samuelson are stalwarts of the liberals, but in their lifetimes they all had a reverence for evidence (even if their acolytes did not).
So Keller is saying that Hayek and Friedman are taken seriously and are not crazy, right? Do you see his problem?
For a partial hint, watch this.
HT to Don Boudreaux.
READER COMMENTS
Jonathon Hunt
Nov 29 2011 at 6:39am
Why are Friedman and Hayek still being identified with Conservatism? I mean come on; Hayek wrote an article specifically entitled “Why I’m Not a Conservative.”
mark
Nov 29 2011 at 9:46am
I admire your endurance in reading that far into his article. I gave up about 5 paragraphs in, right after he said how he had learned that there really was a consensus solution to the economy – short term stimulus. And that only politics was getting in its way. It was one of the most embarrassing articles I have ever read in the Times.
David R. Henderson
Nov 29 2011 at 10:02am
@Jonathon Hunt,
Good catch. Thanks.
@mark,
Thanks for your admiration. I learned early in life, though, that if you’re going to comment on something more than casually, you need to read the whole thing.
Eric Hanneken
Nov 29 2011 at 10:19am
Do you know who else favored abolishing the Federal Reserve Board? Alan Greenspan.
Of course, Greenspan also wrote an essay titled “Gold and Economic Freedom” for The Objectivist in 1966, in which he advocated a gold standard.
Eric Hanneken
Nov 29 2011 at 10:21am
Forgot to include the issue of Liberty Magazine in the citation. It was the November 1997 issue, which is available online.
Robert Hurley
Nov 29 2011 at 10:58am
I think your reponse is evidence of the truth of the Keller’s assertion. Your conclusion in the last quote seems to be just the opposite of what Keller implied. Take abolishing the Fed, the problem is that those who advocate that step do not then explain what the consequences will be in any objective terms. His premise is that the problem is that too often truth and fiction are given equal billing or sometime truth is never mentioned at all. I certainly have found that to be true.
drobviousso
Nov 29 2011 at 11:20am
Robert Hurley – That’s not proof of Keller’s assertion. It’s a suggestions that Keller is projecting.
Comments are closed.