REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Incredibly whiny historian
The essay is 2,900 words long (and that's just part three!) so you probably won't want to read all of it, but here's the especially delicious part where he attacks me and Krugman's other "acolytes":
For too long, Paul Krugman has exploited his authority as an award-winning economist and his power as a New York Times columnist to heap opprobrium on anyone who ventures to disagree with him. Along the way, he has acquired a claque of like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O'Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers. Krugman and his acolytes evidently relish the viciousness of their attacks, priding themselves on the crassness of their language. But I should like to know what qualifies a figure like Matt O'Brien to call anyone a "disingenuous idiot"? What exactly are his credentials? 35,550 tweets? How does he essentially differ from the cranks who, before the Internet, had to vent their spleen by writing letters in green ink?
Indeed, what credentials does The Atlantic's Matt O'Brien have? In an accompanying video interview with Alyona Minkovski, Ferguson notes with horror that O'Brien has never even written a book. Why, he might as well be some vagrant!
But back to me.
When I saw that I had made the list of Krugman's "acolytes" (a distinction that surely distresses my father) I first tried to remember what exactly I had written that would have so upset Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History Niall Ferguson.
Based on what I can find in Google, the answer seems to be, not much.
Back in 2011, Ferguson wrote a column for Newsweek in which he alleged that the consumer price index, the standard measure of
Yes, folks, double-digit inflation is back. Pretty soon you'll be able to figure out the real inflation rate just by moving the decimal point in the core CPI one place to the right.
I wrote a response, in which I called Ferguson's argument "bizarre." I said "Ferguson's suggestion that the basket underlying CPI calculations should not ever be adjusted for changes in consumer behavior is a real headscratcher."
That was a far more charitable response than such an asinine column deserved. I even noted that there was "a nugget of a reasonable idea buried within Ferguson's piece" and went on to explain what it was.
(In Thursday's Huffington Post piece, Ferguson insists that his Newsweek piece was "hardly a confident prediction of higher inflation." That's true. It was a statement that inflation was already high and the government was using fudged statistics to claim it wasn't. Derp.)
Then, in May of this year, Ferguson suggested that John Maynard Keynes endorsed short-sighted economic policies because he was a gay man who never expected to have children. He reportedly also noted that Keynes was an "effete" man who liked to read poetry to his ballerina wife, which admittedly does sound pretty gay.
But there were several problems with Ferguson's analysis, including: "in the long run, we're all dead" doesn't actually mean we should ignore the long run; Keynes once impregnated his wife (she miscarried); and just because gay people often don't have children doesn't mean we're indifferent to the future of humanity.
I never wrote a post about this incident, but I did write a series of snarky Tweets, which may have been what pissed Ferguson off.
Oh holy shit Niall Ferguson said something EVEN DUMBER THAN WHAT HE USUALLY SAYS http://t.co/MF4SmBBP88
- Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 4, 2013
Someone should ask Niall Ferguson if the lack of interest in climate change action on the right is because conservatives are gay.
- Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 4, 2013
If I talked like Niall Ferguson I wouldn't be throwing "effete" around so liberally.
- Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 4, 2013
"Keynes? More like GAYnes!!" -- Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History Niall Ferguson
- Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 4, 2013
Niall Ferguson missed the mark. The real reason Keynes favored interventionist economic policies is that he was black.
- Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 4, 2013
Ferguson apologized, at which point I continued to pile on:
Now all we need is an unqualified apology from Ferguson for being constantly wrong about inflation and interest rates http://t.co/Y3PAbuKzOI
- Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 4, 2013
Since the quick Google survey of my past writing on Ferguson turned up only one mildly critical post and six Tweets, I have concluded that I do not spend enough time writing mean blog posts about Niall Ferguson, and I will make sure to change that in the future.
I'll try to follow the example of my editor, Joe Weisenthal, who somehow didn't make Ferguson's "acolyte" list. Joe wrote a solid post this spring called "Niall Ferguson's Horrible Track Record On Economics," which explained that Ferguson has a tendency to make ridiculous claims about inflation and interest rates while purporting to be some sort of expert on the economy.
Joe even wrote that "Ferguson has self-immolated a number of times trying to fight an anti-Keynesian battle." But then Joe, like Matt O'Brien, has never written a book, so he probably has no idea what he's talking about.
The big quote I used at the top was only the second-most delicious part of Ferguson's endless whine. Here's the most delicious:
You may ask: Why have I taken the trouble to do this? I have three motives. The first is to illuminate the way the world really works, as opposed to the way Krugman and his beloved New Keynesian macroeconomic models say it works. The second is to assert the importance of humility and civility in public as well as academic discourse. And the third, frankly, is to teach him the meaning of the old Scottish regimental motto: nemo me impune lacessit ("No one attacks me with impunity").
Niall Ferguson will teach us the importance of humility! Presumably in the same manner that Lindsay Lohan can teach us the importance of sobriety.