1) moldbug with vague allegation* (w/link!) presumably to cast arms-length doubt** on climate science ‘orthodoxy’

2) majorajam counters with too specific a brush, painting DC and moldbug as neocons, altho larger point — get w/ the reality-based program folks — stands (’reality-based’ in scare quotes depending on your persuasion

3) moldbug rebuts w/ an RPG i played in my cousins’ basement once??? [loosely based on RAW & shea's illuminatus trilogy, iirc?]

4) majorajam brings the scorched earth promethean fire of empiricism…

3) moldbug name-calls but relents w/ rodney king acquiescence…

so i’ll score this one: moldbug pwnd!

—
* cf. http://www.reason.com/news/show/118479.html – former AGW denier/skeptic; myself, i can kinda respect the fuck it let the ice caps melt, life will adapt (or not), buy some real estate in greenland crowd… well hell, i guess i’ll also admit a certain fondness for dogged axe-grinders, because sometimes their planes of existence intersect pretty entertainingly (and sometimes illuminatingly) with the rest of ours — it’s nice to know those orthogonal dimensions are out there
** http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html

Though I must admit, I am curious. DJC are you the David Chang I knew back in college? The one who famously argued that the Tienanmen Square protesters wrestled the guns away from the soldiers and shot themselves to embarrass the Chinese government? You sure sound like him. If so I’m happy to see you haven’t lost touch with that charmingly idiosyncratic version of reality that made you such a popular topic of conversation.

I see you’re the kind of person who likes to evaluate both sides of an argument yourself before making up your mind. I certainly respect your perspective, which strikes me as honest, original, and well-reasoned. Perhaps we could agree to disagree on this important, but tangential, question?

What’s that? You didn’t know that the former mining executive’s ‘work’ doesn’t bear on the fundamental body of evidence that constitutes the theory of AGW? Well… at least that little bit of ignoramus won’t be wanting for company in there.

I hope for your sake Drudge is no more than a mouse click away.

Krugman’s point in the 1990’s was that there was no magical Asian economic model, and that Asian growth in the 1970’s and 1980’s was due to moving people from farm to factory. He turned out to be right. He’s been making the same points about the US economy for the last eight years and he also turns out to be right.

If you apply Krugman’s analysis to China, then things will look good for the next generation as people move from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity manufacturing and services. The fact that China is in this situation means that people who are predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese economy are likely to be wrong. The hard part will be around 2030-2040 when that burst of growth taps out.

Krugman never understood mercantilism. In 1997, he incorrectly argued that if we buy Chinese products, they would have to buy American products. But our growing trade deficit with China ever since has proved him wrong.

In his international economics textbook, he argued, citing Hume, that mercantilism cannot continue over a long-term. But Hume was wrong. If the goal of the gold mercantilists were to build their industry (not their gold hoard), they could have practiced the same system that the dollar mercantilists practice today by using the gold obtained from trade to buy assets in the trade deficit country.

It is a shame that his prize comes just when his biggest failure is becoming evident. The American consumer could not keep borrowing more and more from the mercantilist countries forever. Eventually there had to be a pull-back. Now that pull-back is occurring with a vengeance.

Howard Richman
http://www.tradeandtaxes.blogspot.com

This blog, with the careful information and analysis as well as objective tone set by Brad, and the highest-quality economic dialogue found on the Web, is indeed the equivalent of a university symposium. Thank you to all who contribute!

I hope you didn’t follow that link. It might poison your mind with Karl Rove’s lies. Stay strong! And remember – the Computer is always right.

HONG KONG: The $2.5 trillion combined bailout has aroused the resentment that surfaced during the Asian crisis a decade ago at a global financial architecture perceived, with some justice, to be weighted against Asians.

The deputy governor of China’s central bank, Yi Gang, recently castigated the International Monetary Fund for its almost total failure to put any teeth into surveillance of those countries – the United States and Britain – enjoying the reserve-currency status that makes it easier to run deficits. As he rightly noted, “weak financial-policy discipline resulted in excess global liquidity and disorderly capital flows.”

This should not be news. The unwillingness of the IMF to try to discipline these countries – America and Britain in particular – has been remarked upon often enough in these columns. It now makes a particularly poignant contrast to the IMF’s zeal for dispatching experts from Washington to discipline other countries’ economies – developing ones in particular. The humiliation of President Suharto of Indonesia in 1998 by the head of the IMF, Michel Camdessus, is not forgotten in Asia.

As many Asians see it, the IMF and the London and New York capital markets have one rule for the old, rich, English-speaking nations and another for Asian upstarts. Doing something about that, however, requires a degree of solidarity not yet evident in the region.

“The $250 billion taxpayer buyout of Bank shares is needed to preserve free market”. – Hank Paulson

Translation:

“The $250 billion taxpayer buyout of Bank shares is needed to preserve Goldman Sachs balance sheet”. – DJC