Post: #51

Not a book but listening to EconTalk with Russ Roberts has given me enough knowledge of economics to hold my own with classically trained economists.

http://www.econtalk.org/

Post: #52

The thing about studying economics is this.

Every year the questions are the same. It is just the answers that change. To quote William Goldman - 'nobody knows anything.'

Also - this video is fun. And clever...

Post: #53

The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi

It argues that there's nothing natural about the market economy, which is a product of the modern state. It's the balance to Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Post: #54

(04-20-2013 12:11 AM)Jaydublin Wrote:  

(04-19-2013 11:46 PM)More and more Wrote:  Second, it's clear that the stimulus saved a lot of jobs that otherwise would have been lost.

In the short term of course...in the long term? No

Well, in the long run we're all dead.

Post: #55

(04-21-2013 05:06 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  

(04-20-2013 01:07 PM)More and more Wrote:  

(04-20-2013 12:09 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  

(04-20-2013 07:08 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  Wrong, Obama has a law degree and was respected as a student in Harvard, Bush was noted as a rather nasty dunce, present in Harvard only through connections, according to one of his professors. And got an MBA degree.

From http://www.salon.com/2004/09/16/tsurumi/

For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush’s professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush’s ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy.

“I don’t remember all the students in detail unless I’m prompted by something,” Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect — the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite.”

A Harvard professor doesn't like a Republican?

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Meanwhile, at lease we've seen Bush's transcripts. Where are Obama's? After all he is the smartest presdient EVAH!!

Obama graduated from Harvard Magna cum laude, if I am not mistaken. So it's not clear at all why we need to see his transcripts. All that will tell us is which one or two classes he got less than an A in.

Also, that professor didn't say he didn't like Bush. He said that he remembers him because he was a particularly bad student.

My understanding is that up until the last 1990s, about 3/4 of any Harvard Law School class graduated with honors.

Moreover, BO was president of the Harvard Law Review -- he was never the editor. The guy never published any academic articles, or clerked for any judge.

Meanwhile, let's look at his transcripts from Occidental and Columbia. Oh, that's right, he's never released them, as Bush did from his undergraduate time at Yale.

And of course he never released his transcripts from HLS either.

The reality is that Barack Obama has kept his academic past hidden. There may nothing onerous there...or maybe there are indeed things he wants to hide.

Bottom line, here's my view about Obama. He is clever, but not very bright. He is charming, but very superficial.

He is the Peter Principle personified. He has no real skills except for speech delivery. He has no real experience in anything but activism and politics -- teaching doesn't count because as time went on it was clear he wasn't very good at that.

He has been in over his head ever since he got to the Illinois legislature.

Those who voted for him, and those who wrote paeans to him, like Michael Beschloss, have been snookered into thinking he's some towering intellect.

He is not, and never has been.

I'm not an Obama fan, but the idea that he has been in over his head since his IL legislator days is ridiculous. What's the evidence for that?

When you say honors, do you mean at least cum laude honors? If so, I don't believe it. Provide some evidence if you have it.

But even if three quarters of HLS were getting at least cum laude honors, it still would be pointless for Obama to release his HLS transcripts, since we know that as a magna cum laude graduate he probably got, at worse, a couple grades less than A.

The president of the HLR is more or less the editor-in-chief. And he was selected as a editor before being elected president.

Suppose that his transcript at Occidental and Columbia show that he was a mediocre student. What would that show given his subsequent success at Harvard -- other, that is, than that Harvard admissions people did a good job in identifying a talented student who, up until then, had underperformed?

By the way, it was revealed after he was elected that Obama did indeed publish an unsigned article (a 'case note' I believe they are called) during his time at the HLR.

Why does a person need some kind of other experience in something other than politics and activism?

In closing, I'll say that none of this is meant to say that I think Obama is some towering intellect. He has not shown himself to be that, which is not to say that he is not full command of the issues Americans confront.