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Monday, April 11, 2011

leverage liquidity deflation depression.

Hey Larry did google send you here ?

Dear actual readers. I was trying to get some attention from my PhD Supervisor.

After all these years, he still has a way with words including

"leverage," "liquidity," "deflation," and "depression."

Readers are very welcome to comment especially if they manage to use the words
"leverage," "liquidity," "deflation," and "depression." Please.

It isn't really any of your business your problem, but it would be a real pleasure if he visited this blog. I'm sorry to waste your time with this model but Google gives me no choice . My goal is optimizing making as good as it can be my Summers attractor. Now I'm off to ride on my bi cycle uh pedal powered personal mobility device.

Now let's see where google is sending Larry Summers.

Oh my oh my my. I just learned that Summers's incorrect claim about Ptolemy and Copernicus was preceded by a "To be fair."

Now to be fair, I have heard it said that if you actually wanted to know where a planet was the Ptolemaic astronomical system did better than the Copernican astronomical system for fifty years after the world moved to Copernicus.


Just to summarize posts below -- in fact the Ptolemaic and Copernican models give predictions of equal quality. Copernicus had almost no influence on anyone for over 50 years. Then Galileo observed the phases of Venus which provided a whole new angle and made it clear that Copernicus was a lot closer to the truth than Ptolemy.

The key phrase "to be fair" opened Krugman's reasonable but to me not totally convincing assertion that thinking about maximizing had provided useful insights even in macroeconomics.

"To be fair, applying maximizing thinking has achieved some major successes even in macroeconomics."

I think "to be fair" should be this weeks "not intended to be a factual statement." To be fair, I am quite sure that Krugman was quite sure his statement was factual and I am quite sure that Summers believed his statement was true (he doesn't have time to waste exploring the history of astronomical thought -- I think he got if from Paul Kedrosky who got it from one of the inventors of the internet).

But you know I am googling "to be fair". No good. OK along with uh words and phrases which will not appear in this post.

The curious reader is advised to click on "phrases" -- pure paydirt.

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