Flatsville -
Mitch Ratcliffe had a web page listing prior projects. Now it is nowhere to be found. If I recall correctly it was exclusively of the peeceeweenee variety--almost certainly no big iron experience... though maybe he saw one..once. He's not much of an economist either,
Interesting that his CV would be posted & then yanked.
Mine's here: y2ktimebomb.com
Missing from my bio because it's strictly personal (as opposed to professional) is the fact that global monetary policy was breakfast table fodder where I grew up. Quick... who are credited with being the founders of the IMF?
I've asked Paul Samuelson & Lester Thurow about potential Y2K impacts & they (along with almost every other economist I've asked) simply shrug off Y2K.
I do recommend reading Charles P. Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics, & Crashes." In the words of the Boston Globe's columnist David Warsh, Kindleberger's book is considered required reading by the world's central bankers.
To the best of my knowledge, very, very few economists have ever written any programs. They're accustomed to manipulating econometric datasets with utility languages like SPSS.
A comment on Greenspan... he gets Y2K fully. Back in September 1998, I happened to catch 2.5 hours of his (& Larry Summers) being grilled by the Senate Banking Committee (& that buffoon, Phil Graham). At the very end Senator Gordon Smith ("I'm just a pea farmer", R-OR, & serving on the Special Y2K Committee) popped the Y2K question on Greenspan. He answered it very directly & without any hesitation... "there are a lot of unknown variables."
Greenspan does publically state that he wrote Fortran programs 30 years ago.
Economist Ed Yardeni (no relation to Ed Yourdon) wrote Assembler programs (only real mean code in Assembler) in an earlier life.
Do get a copy of Kindleberger's "Manias, Panics & Crashes" (it's very readible, not a single equation to be seen) & report back to the class... <g>
- David |
