newspeak

Twitterstorm delong: November 27, 2011.

I could have posed almost any other twitterstorm from delong (J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at UC Berkeley) or any recent (as in the last 10 years) blogpost from Krugman or from Mark Blythe or from Mark Thoma or Simon Johnson–and so on. I read these and so many more. But I must surely be as isolated as the rest, be suffering from the affliction of hearing only my own opinions echoed (more richly) back. Because I think: How can the world continue in its crazy way–specifically the Austerian path chosen by the Wise Men and Women of Europe (with power, alas)–when they have nothing intelligent to say for themselves, to justify their egregious and consequential actions? In the face of the mountain of rationality and powerful argumentation, of reason and economic science, of math and data and simple brute logic–how can the Austerians, and even not just in Europe, do what they persist in doing?

Is it just so simple as: punish the sinner? And implicitly reward the righteous? Is it so *stupid* as that? It’s as if the lack of a gold standard only goaded these to fabricate the next best thing, a fictional island of intrinsic value that must–contradiction!–be preserved from the volatility of the market that it has committed itself to.

It’s madness.

(It’s almost as mad as the Koch brothers spawning/sponsoring Cain: he’s an idiot and a fool, and yet you would think that a dyad and a group as rich and powerful as the Koch would have chosen a better squawk and UT and a more intelligent campaign plan than we see with Cain, whose chances of doing well in primaries, let alone even gaining the nomination are as laughable as he is. So then one wonders: Why? Why him? Why not, say, the governor of Wisconsin?)