OK ODB, so you agree that one of your assertions was false [the senile one]. Why should I assume your other claims have any validity either? You lack judgement on one, so I expect you lack judgement on the others.
You decline to present any evidence, which means your assertion that there are little green men remains untested. I'm not going looking for little green men.
You also have a false idea that I idolize Uncle Al. Sure, I say he's my idol, but I'm not very serious about that. I mostly am laughing at the silly people who have started foaming at the mouth [which is not far off an accurate description] about my idol since the wheels came off the bubble following irrational exuberance which he warned about in 1996 [by saying it's not easy to tell when a great economy has morphed into irrational exuberance - which isn't quite the way most people describe his comments, which they didn't read and misquoted in meaning if they did].
On the mad science experiment, I have some sympathy with that idea, but only because that's exactly what life is. It's one big mad science experiment which we have fractalized up to 6 billion of us and added all sorts of totally new variables to our experiment.
There is no choice but to run the mad money experiment. We can't do without money [that would really be a mad experiment]. But we can change money into the Q and reduce one variable.
As Jay has seen, I shift my position quite cheerfully if I find I'm wrong [or even suspect it], so if you can show me those other assertions you made are true, you'd find me all for a lynch mob. But I'm not prone to joining lynch mobs [mobs are almost invariably close to mad with a questionable attachment to reality - see the irrational exuberance for example] without solid reason.
Of course it's an ego thing for him to try to fix things. People speak of having an ego-attachment as wrong in some way. It's great to do really well and have achievement. It feels really good. People spend years of their lives on things to do really well and feed their ego. I would be nervous if he didn't have his ego on the line and was just a politburo member in a Kremlin Kult of bureaucracy and indifference. I like to see people with their egos driving them; Albert Einstein, Tiger Woods, Irwin Jacobs, George Bush. When they become like Adolf Hitler, we need a way of reminding them that others like freedom too.
Actually, I've seen more contempt from Congress in questioning my idol than I have from him in return, despite their [sometimes] asinine questions. I have seen him answer an asinine question by making it look like an intelligent question by offering some excellent comments around the subject in the question. That's not contempt.
I've wondered why people are so emotional about him. I think it's because they need a scapegoat for their own shortcomings. I haven't seen a single good critique of his financial manipulations yet.
One thing that I did wonder about was the long time from when the bubble burst to the first interest rate cut. I don't think he appreciated the impact that the poverty effect would have on economic activity. But in the midst of a red-hot mid-Y2K economy, I can understand he didn't want to rush into rate-cutting and money-printing. That was a mistake [in hindsight], but I think it was a reasonable mistake.
Mqurice |
