It did my heart good to read Katha Pollitt's May 18th " Subject to Debate " with its mention of the Japanese use of the "water treatment" - as we called it during my two and a half years of torture, starvation and beatings from April 1943 to September 1945. Since all the fuss about the recent
Kevin Harty.
I believe we're not supposed to quote in full items which appeared elsewhere.
You tell me where any part of this could be cut.
Then subsequently tell us " the normally hard-headed Mr Wolf must be dreaming" and that "Mr Wolf blithely writes::" etc. and as a parting shot , summarizes " the Fed is less insouciant than your columnist."
That's Wolf. The well known insouciant.
You might ask what this is all about. In broad terms it's about the self destruction through over exposure of a possibly competent historian who presents his deeply conservative biases as self evident ecomomic truths, Or, more colloquolly, it's about the fact he's cluelss.
This episode kicked off three weeks ago in a New York Review of Books symposium in which NF magisterially presented his view that the projected 2019 deficit in Obama's plan would drive up current interest rates thus frustrating the 2009 recovery which is his immediate goal.
The other guests,for the most part, stared into space ,glanced at their watches or otherwise occupied themselves until NF finished.
And then carried on an economic discussion among economists.
Krugman ,courteously I thought, disagreed with NF.saying there was a world wide savings glut which would ensure against interest rates becoming a problem.
In the following weeks interest rates did escalate by a couple of percentage points ( or two hundred basis points as you might learn by taking my course in "Teaching Wall Street Jargon as a Second Language"). Which was followed by an NF FT op ed last Weekend modestly declaring hs defeat of the assembled forces of Keynesdom as personifed by Krugman. Interest rates had indeed risen said he and Obama's plan was failing just as he had warned and The End Was Near.
I'd expected Krugman to enter the fray but instead the next round was a column by the FT's impeccably conservative Martin Wolf. The interest rate rise over the last 3 weeks was indeed significant said he. It proved Obama's plan was working.,The true danger continued Wolf had been deflation. And Obama/Geithner had slain it and left its lifeless body ornamented with a cross stuck in its heart.
Digression. Deflation kills economies. It means that if you spend a buck to buy a widget intended for resale, when you do resell it , it'll be for 98 cents.Not a way to make a profit.
Consequently,said Wolf, the recent rise in rates showed the market believed Obama had preserved us from Deflation so normal business could be resumed.
Stung by this rejection of his own self adulation from Saturday NF returned to the attack by striking out at Wolf in a letter in today's FT.Whose graceful passages I quoted above.
Why do intelligent , well edited publications like the NYR or the FT give the guy column inches ? You might well ask
My theory is that an English accent will get you anywhere.As is so unfortunately true of Christopher Snitchens. Particularly if you are able to support yourself by polishing up the handle of the big front door , issuing irrelevant proclamations and pretending they're serious positions.
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In today's FT Niall Ferguson takes a victory lap, savoring his defeat of Paul Krugman in the April 30 New York Review symposium on the economy. - see the June 11 NYR.
At the symposium
Krugmann: ' There's a global savings glut" ..."There is no excess demand ...to drive up interest rates"
'We've been as high as 100% (debt to GDP) .It's an issue but not a show stopper'
Today in the FT
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Flavius: Hmn: 2017's projected debt to GDP which didn't spook the debt market 3 weeks ago is now wreaking havoc. So Krugman was wrong that that dire projection won't affect interest rates right now. Is it maybe possible that the equity rally is causing that? When stocks go up, interest rates go up for reasons perhaps not obvious to the Laurence A Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Stay tuned. Watch the FT for Krugman's reply. Should be fun.
. .
The New York Review dated June 11 continues a debate about Israel and the Rules of War between on one side Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer and on the other Asa Kasher an Israeli Philosophy professor and General Amos Yadlin .
The gist of the debate is this : Kasher and Yadlin argue that the IDF behaves justly because he does not intend to harm civilians; Margalit and Walzer argue that's not enough, it should intend not to harm them.
Is this a worthwhile discussion? Of course. They should care, It's good that the Chief of the IDF's Intelligence feels deeply about getting this right. But useless.
Wars to reprise a saying of the 60s are "unsafe for human beings and all other forms of life" Whatever the justice of the cause (as if we aren't capable of convincing ourselves that what we want to do , we should do) and whatever the committment to fighting Just War, all wars end with Abu Ghraibs and Andersonvilles , with missiles fired aimlessly at Siderots and a television commentator trying to direct his country's forces to save the life of a young woman whose father regularly saves lives in the attacker's hospital.
What do I recommend instead? Don't ask? There's no way of making it better. But lose the condemnation of the warriors. On all sides. They're doing what they always do sooner or later once a War begins..
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