Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Nobel Prize in Economics

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2010 was awarded jointly to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides.

Diamond, 70, is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a specialist in Social Security. Bernie Madoff would have loved to have Diamond on his team, since Diamond completely ignores the Ponzi like aspects of Social Security and tinkers with "fixing" the scam. Going beyond Madoff, Diamond then ignores the coercion involved in SS. He focuses with tunnel-like narrow vision beyond the coercive aspects, and Ponzi like aspects, to pontificate in numerous journal articles and books about how to "save" SS, including recommendations to cut "benefits" and aggressively increase SS taxes...

Mortensen, 71, is an economics professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He studies frictional unemployment. This is like studying half time in a basketball game. Yeah, it exists, but it is a pretty simple concept that doesn't tell you much about the game. Frictional unemployment simply means that if someone loses a job, it takes them time to find another job...

Outside of this obvious point, these guys have no real insights that can help anyone understand the economy and one of them. Diamond, is near the controls of the greatest Ponzi scheme the earth has ever experienced. I would be objecting less if the award was given directly to Madoff.

In summary, the Nobel Committee could have only done a worse job by giving the award jointly to Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

read the entire article

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