From Bruce Krasting's blog, sometimes an interesting read. Fed Economist: Bloggers are Stupid A Richmond Va. Federal Reserve Economist, Kartik Athreya wrote a paper recently that trashes economic bloggers. Mr. Artheya has a PhD from the University of Iowa. Iâm not so sure a few years in corn land gives him the right to take cheap shots at the new media. I am absolutely convinced that this type of thinking should not be expressed by Fed officials. It proves to me that the Fed is an elitist organization that is out of touch with America in 2010. The full report from Athreya is here. Some of the more offending comments: Writers who have not taken a year of PhD coursework in a decent economics department (and passed their PhD qualifying exams), cannot meaningfully advance the discussion on economic policy. So we have to go to school for two years to be able to write about the issues of the day. That would exclude me and a lot of others. The fact that I worked on Walls street for 30 years does not qualify me to say a word. The response of the untrained to the crisis has been even more startling. I listen to Elizabeth Warren on the radio fearlessly speculating about the nature of credit market dysfunction, and so on. Taking on Elizabeth Warren is a big mistake Mr. Arthreya. You will regret this choice of words. The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new. Moreover, there is a substantial likelihood that it will instead offer something incoherent or misleading. Everything that comes from the Federal Reserve is incoherent and misleading. The sophomoric musings of auto-didact or non-didact bloggers or writers is instructive. For those who want to really know what the best that economics has to offer is, you must look here. The only people you should listen to is Federal Reserve economists? I take a different view. The last people you should trust in this matter is FRB economists. The general public are simply being had by the bulk of the economic blogging crowd. The general public is being had. But not by the bloggers. They are being had by the folks who make the choices for us at the FRB. The views expressed are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, or Federal Reserve System. Actually the views expressed are a perfect representation of the mind set at the FRB. Narrow minded, elitist and just plain wrong. ----- Does anyone know if Bernanke's helicopters and Hank Paulson's Bazooka are in the PhD programs, I don't recall any military talk in the undergrad classes. It appears there are problems going on behind the curtain.
Sounds like somebody found out his Keynsian Branded Sheepskin isn't worth a bag of corn. Sucks to be him.
Kartik Athreya lasted at Citigroup as an associate Vice President for a whopping 7 months before getting sacked in 1998. *ZH
Economists who can't reliably forecast markets can't be trusted to forecast the economic impact of policies. Oh, and Adam Smith didn't have a PhD.
the only smart phds and with integrity i've come across are in physics and hard sciences. i met 2 crap phds not just in knowledge but also in character and they are both in econs
Wow. Eight months of on the job experience. That's pretty close to the max limit they'll accept for government work.
Wow, those hacks are getting desperate. Let's revisit some quotes from the most "learned" and superior of formally "trained" economists, Mr. Ben Bernanke, shall we? Well, I feel all warm and fuzzy, don't you?
Well, he's sort right, there are so many schools of economics and bloggers tend to be of different types of thinking(typically they recommend opposite polices and attribute the problem to different things), so by definition a lot of them, probably most of them, have to be wrong . The thing is, looking at professionals or PHDs doesn't do much good since the same thing happens there, just with deeper level of complexity in their explanations
Economics having such a strong element of mass psychology, I think it can be argued that you have to be a little bit elitist to understand it. You have to have a large enough ego to place yourself above it and outside of it. If you're just a regular guy, then you're just another participant in the economy. At the mercy of the shifting mass psychological winds the economists study. Then again maybe you don't have to be elitist to understand the economy, you just have to be "weird". The mad genius type. Or at least have a contrarian streak. The confidence and determination to think differently from everyone else.