Questions with easy answers: Higher Ed Edition

Salon asks the following: Why does the GOP hate college? and blathers on and on without ever once touching on the very simple answer:

Because "College" hates the GOP!

People, this is just basic, basic politics. An overwhelming majority of college professors are liberals. They vote for and contribute to the Democratic Party almost exclusively. It is widely perceived that professors spend much of their time inculcating liberal ideas into their students' unformed brains.

The reason the GOP hates college is the same reason why they hate Unions. Both are bastions of support for the Democratic Party.

It's amazing to me that liberals can't or won't see this. College professors and administrators backed the wrong side (at least for now). They didn't play it down the middle. They put all their eggs in one political basket and now, hey, payback's a bitch.

Of course, this is a shame because a college degree has perhaps never been more valuable. It is truly amazing that, even as the share of young people attending college rose steadily, so did the college wage premium.

There's a program for that!

I am very happy to hear that all 1,100 employees of Solyndra have applied en masse for Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance. I really hope they get it. What's another $14 million amount to anyway?

Maybe congress can pass a "Federal Failure of Trade Adjustment Assistance Assistance" act to help these fine folks when their FTAA money runs out.

Hat Tip to Dip!

Hugo Chavez: doin' work

People, Hugo is getting it done down in Venezuela. It's only September (and he's taken some sick leave) but he's already "nationalized" 401 companies this year. Plus he's withdrawing from the World Bank's dispute settlement forum used to deal with claims by foreign investors.

He's also working to get Venezuelan assets in friendlier hands, transferring billions of dollars in deposits from US and Euro banks to banks in Russia, China, and Brazil (wow, Brazil, nice work to make Chavez associate you with Russia and China and not the "free world").

And of course there's his plan to airlift Venezuela's gold back to Caracas.

The idea is to make Venezuela's financial assets un-freezable.

I feel very sorry for the younger people of Venezuela. But the older ruling elites of the country brought Hurricane Hugo down on themselves and their descendants with their decades of incompetent, corrupt, short-sighted & elitist governance.

"It's not the end of Western civilization"

Me and Mrs. Angus yap with Captain Zach and you can hear it here.

The whole KGOU "World Views" series can be accessed here.

Mungo has always told me that I have a face for radio!

A dark day for economics

As if our failure to predict the financial tsunami, and our constant bickering and dithering about appropriate economic policies weren't enough, now comes Paul Ryan's Vino-gate to cast further unflattering light on us economists.

First consider the "whistle-blower" Dr. Feinberg. She seems to think you need a PhD in economics to be able to do basic arithmetic:

"I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week."

Man I guess she has STATA on her smartphone or something 'cause that's a real brain teaser:

700-(7.25X40X2) >O

I am going to go out on a limb and say that set of calculations owed more to her being a liberal who hates Ryan and others of his ilk than being an economist.

Then consider Ryan's two dinner companions, who also turn out to be economists and to be the ones who ordered the two bottles of wine (according to Ryan). They are not exactly covered in glory either.

First, as Ryan himself points out while throwing his pals under the bus, it's a douchebag move to order the most expensive bottle on the wine list and then to double down on it shortly thereafter.

Second, getting up and throwing F-bombs at a woman, even if she's being obnoxious (or "crazy" and "possibly drunk" as Ryan put it) just ain't cool.

People, I'd like to assure you that economists are not really like this at all, but what reason would you have to believe me?

Here's another take on the situation from our friends at Popehat.

Photo of the day

(clic the pic for a more glorious perp walk)

People, who will join me in contributing to a fund to purchase razors and decent neckties for the NYPD??

Everybody Wing Chau tonight!

If you've read Michael Lewis' book "The Big Short" (and if you haven't you are really missing something good), you know that he comes down hard on a particular trader named Wing Chau.

Well hot on the heels of Brat Pitt buying the movie rights to the book, Mr. Chau has decided to sue Lewis for defamation.

His complaint contains some interesting parts, for example:

"Wing Chau and his immediate family are Chinese immigrants. His father, Muk Loong Chau, fled Chairman Mao’s China in 1953 to make a better life for his family in America—to pursue the American dream. Mr. Chau was born in Hong Kong, where the family was waylaid for many year while awaiting a visa. Eventually, the family immigrated to Rhode Island, where his father took various jobs at Chinese restaurants, usually working six days per week."

Michael Lewis! You should be ashamed of yourself!!!

Here is more on the complaint and here is more on the saga of Wing Chau.

And here is something I've not been able to get out of my head since I read the Wing Chau portion of "The Big Short":

QOTD

"It is unimaginable that someone is killing his citizens, bombarding his citizens, how can officers be ordered to use bullets from machine guns, tanks and guns against their own citizens?"

"This is unacceptable. Let the people speak, be free, decide to express their will. Do not resist the will of the people."

--Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Story is here. Who says this guy doesn't have a sense of humor?

Roma Ladrona!

People, Rome has stolen the grand canal from Venice!

If it wasn't true, could Reuters report it?

what goes around comes around

Alan Blinder is up in arms at the audacity of foreign leaders calling QE2 "currency manipulation". So is President Obama, Paul Krugman, and a host of other luminaries.

Here's Blinder in today's WSJ: "But calling QE2 "currency manipulation" is a grotesque abuse of language".

His (correct) argument is that QE2 is basic everyday expansionary monetary policy just applied to a different portion of the yield curve. Sure it may have the side effect of lowering the dollar, but.....

People, the foreign reaction is a predictable consequence of our insistence in labeling China's fixed exchange rate as "currency manipulation".

A fixed exchange rate is a basic everyday policy regime. Bretton Woods was a system of fixed exchange rates, so the US has had a fixed exchange rate in the not so distant past. The countries of Western Europe continued to struggle to achieve a system of fixed exchange rates post Bretton Woods, culminating in the creation of the Euro which is a system of fixed exchange rates between all the participating countries.

Here's another gem from Blinder: "the US is sovereign nation with a right to its own monetary policy".

And China isn't???

Our administration and elite pundits have been blaming other countries for our problems for a while now, so it's not surprising that many other countries are enjoying their chance to throw it back into our faces.

European vacation?

Apparently, Shaq does not want to take a "reasonable" salary to play on a decent NBA team and is threatening to take his immense talents to Europe!

Would a European team pay $10 million for his services? Would he last out the season? Are contracts guaranteed in European leagues? What about pairing up with Starbury in China?

The big money-grubber!

Adjective-free

Big ups to Mrs. Angus, whose promotion to full professor was finalized yesterday and commemorated today with a new sign on the old office door!

Way to go, sweetheart!

I now believe in re-incarnation....

Because James Brown has come back to earth in the body of a young woman:

Hot Links!

This just in: Water is wet. Who knew?

You can now add driving to the list of things Diego Maradona is not good at.

The world's greatest sausage factory is in full swing.

3 Yikes and I'm out!

Proof that there is a God

Right here.

Good Samaritan arrested in Pennsylvania

Can anybody 'splain me exactly why poor Donald Wolfe is being persecuted by the "man"?

Here's the AP story, in its entirety:

Police say they charged a Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen trying to resuscitate a long-dead opossum along a highway. State police Trooper Jamie Levier says several witnesses saw 55-year-old Donald Wolfe, of Brookville, near the animal Thursday along Route 36 in Oliver Township, about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

The trooper says one person saw Wolfe kneeling before the animal and gesturing as though he were conducting a seance. He says another saw Wolfe attempting to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Levier says the animal already had been dead a while.

The Associated Press could not locate a home telephone number for Wolfe.

So is trying to help a fellow creature on the side of the road prima facie evidence of being drunk?

Or is it only when the creature you are trying to help is stone dead that you get busted for public drunkenness?

If it is the latter, let me point out two things in Mr. Wolfe's favor. (1) It was a POSSUM. One of the hallmarks of possum-ness is faking being dead. Wolfe's confusion is thus understandable. (2) Maybe Mr. Wolfe fully knew the critter was deceased. After all, one witness said Wolfe appeared to be conducting a seance!

People, whatever you do, don't attempt to make a miracle in Punxsutawney PA. You'll get tossed in the drunk tank for your troubles! Especially if you don't have a home phone number.

Mystery book revealed!

Thanks for your suggestions via email and the comments about what my mystery book about Native Americans might be. While looking up the suggestions on Amazon, I ran across what I believe to be the book in question (give me a break, I read it in 1978 or so!).

It's called "Custer Died for your Sins" and the author is Vine Deloria Jr.

I feel so much better now.

Econ Karma gonna get you.

Wow, talk about bad timing. People could the entire Euro sovereign debt crisis be the universe's way of sticking up for its most favored sons and daughters (economists)?

Have you seen this? Stupid economists, how could you have kept saying and saying the euro was far from optimal on economic grounds? 

..............

Oh, never mind.

Anybody wanna help start up Econ Journal Watch Watch?  

To each according to their needs

Seth Roberts great post about appreciative thinking (link is here, it's well worth reading) got me thinking about my own career teaching grad students. I realized that, in alternating waves, I've dealt with students who needed to learn appreciative thinking and students who needed to learn Cowen's Law.

At GMU, I was teaching traditional subjects (econometrics, macro) to non-traditional students (austrians and public choicers). Many of them thought the whole enterprise was invalid and were not shy about saying so or giving heated critiques of what exactly was the problem. It was great for me, because it forced me to figure out why I thought my subjects were worth learning. Plus working to convince them that even if they disagreed, there were worthwhile things to be learned and even appreciated in the standard material definitely made me a better teacher (thanks Pete and Steve and Dave!!).

At Tulane and at Oklahoma, a lot of students had the opposite problem: they thought all published work was perfect and all famous professors infallible. Here I had to work to convince them that (a la Tyler) there is indeed something wrong with everything, existing work can be improved upon, even by non superstar economists, and that a critical eye was extremely important.

This past fall though, I realized I may have gone overboard with pushing critical thinking on my students. Mrs. Angus and I started a reading group in development and growth where we meet to discuss recently published or new working papers in the fields. And some of the students didn't like anything! I am a critical person by nature, but the level of negativity in the group often disturbed me. I once again found myself trying to show students that there was value to be appreciated in other people's research, no matter what one thought of its overall validity. 

Full circle, people!

Descartes' Muse?