begins his letter in today's FT" Sir, I am glad to have furnished grist to Martin Wolf's mill"

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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