“We Need a Housing Bubble” Krugman got a Nobel in Economics. “Let’s Ramp Up a Murderous, Useless War” Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize. So what do we give Helicopter Ben Bernanke, who has squandered much of whatever capital we had left after the housing bubble burst by pushing interest rates down to zero, and guaranteed (just wait for it) the worst depression in American history? Make him Time Person of the Year!
This is really quite a deft move by the establishment. How could Congress have the audacity to vote to undermine the Time Person of the Year, of all people?!
As can be seen from the Time puff piece written for the occasion, the Fed has gotten cultivating a certain image down to an art. As I’ve written:
There is something disarming about a technocrat. While it is easy to dismiss elected officials as blustering panderers, there is something comforting in the image of the specialist civil servant toiling away with industry and equanimity. We tend to imagine such an employee of the state poring over statistics as an ancient Greek priest might examine entrails, and carefully allocating resources like an Egyptian vizier allocating slaves. The technocrat seems benign, crucially important, and above the fray.
This is certainly the image that has been cultivated by Federal Reserve chairmen. One remembers Alan Greenspan, with his prominent braincase and thick glasses, uttering technical jargon just arcane enough to assure the markets that all was well with the “Greenspan put.” And we are regularly presented with Ben Bernanke, the bearded sage, comfortingly citing statistics that show how government remedies are working their way through the economy (however egregiously wrong he may be).
And see how the lead paragraph of the Time peace fits that image perfectly:
A bald man with a gray beard and tired eyes is sitting in his oversize Washington office, talking about the economy. He doesn’t have a commanding presence. He isn’t a mesmerizing speaker. He has none of the look-at-me swagger or listen-to-me charisma so common among men with oversize Washington offices. His arguments aren’t partisan or ideological; they’re methodical, grounded in data and the latest academic literature. When he doesn’t know something, he doesn’t bluster or bluff. He’s professorial, which makes sense, because he spent most of his career as a professor.
And I see another trend. In Newsweek’s profile of Paul Krugman, they wrote:
Krugman says he found himself in the science fiction of Isaac Asimov, especially the “Foundation” series”. It was nerds saving civilization, quants who had a theory of society, people writing equations on a blackboard, saying, ‘See, unless you follow this formula, the empire will fail and be followed by a thousand years of barbarism.’”
And now, Time writes of Bernanke:
He is not, in other words, a typical Beltway power broker. He’s shy. He doesn’t do the D.C. dinner-party circuit; he prefers to eat at home with his wife, who still makes him do the dishes and take out the trash. Then they do crosswords or read. Because Ben Bernanke is a nerd.
He just happens to be the most powerful nerd on the planet.
Well, as we all reap what Krugman and Bernanke has sowed for us in the coming years, it’s going to give the phrase, “Revenge of the Nerds” a fresh, terrible meaning
{ 19 comments }
When small men have large shadows, it means the sun is setting.
In my experience, real nerds are useful people who can actually create something useful. I’m hard put to include Bernanke and Krugman in that class.
But he saved the economy!
(And by economy, I mean incompetent bankers, investors, and home buyers).
Spoiler Alert!:
If Bernanke had read the Foundation novel’s to Asimov’s end, he would have seen that the only way the story could have made sense was that the nerds themselves, thinking they were the puppeteers were just aimless pawns in a larger design run by a uber-hidden, ageless, super-computing R. Daneel Ovilaw.
There is no “Foundation” that can run the affairs of men, just as there is no warp-drive, no matter replicator, and no zero-cost energy. Science Fiction should not be a model on which our govt is based.
The real lesson from The Foundation novels is that the cyclical boom-bust nature of civilization is driven by centralization, and without the fantastical (and impossible) theory of psychohistory, the only way to avoid returning to dark-ages after a period of growth is to not burden an entire society with the costs of that growth, but to allow each entrepreneur to bear his own costs and risks of failure.
Krugman is quite the one who can make psychopathic statements.
“When small men have large shadows, it means the sun is setting.”
Nice.
Remember, Hitler was once Time magazine’s Man of the Year. Bernanke is is good company….
Kerem Tibuk,
“When small men have large shadows, it means the sun is setting.”
I thought this was nice too, really poetic. Is it from somewhere, or did you just say it now? If I quote you, I’d like to make sure I give proper credit.
So the American Way of Life is now dubbed “nerd culture” ? I’m a bit disappointed.
“like an Egyptian vizier allocating slaves”
They’ve got to be kidding !?
Todd said
“Remember, Hitler was once Time magazine’s Man of the Year. Bernanke is is good company….”
Time selection is racist. If what Ben Bernanke has accomplished merits the Time Person of The Year Award, then why the snub of Dr. Gideon Gono?
Time isn’t supporting Bernanke, but rather Bernanke is dragging down Time. The dinosaur media just refuses to wait for the asteroid.
It’s shallow fashion-baiting. We had NASCAR fans and fundamentalist Christians during the anti-intellectual Bush years; now in fashion are professorial nerds for the intellectual wannabe’s who voted Obama in.
Jesse Forgione, “When small men have large shadows, it means the sun is setting” is a quote from Lin Yutang (October 10, 1895 – March 26, 1976), a Chinese writer and inventor (Wikipedia).
“We tend to imagine such an employee of the state poring over statistics as an ancient Greek priest might examine entrails, and carefully allocating resources like an Egyptian vizier allocating slaves.”
Seems like a perfectly reasonable comparison to me. Keynesian economics is based on inane superstition and quashing the liberty of people.
Just want to point out…
“We tend to imagine such an employee of the state poring over statistics as an ancient Greek priest might examine entrails, and carefully allocating resources like an Egyptian vizier allocating slaves.”
That quote is from the author of this blog post, not Time.
I think I should have been named Person of the Year instead.
Let us not forget Arnold “Global Government Can Fix Really Awful State Government” Schwarzenegger.
Surely there will be a prize for him too, for helping to bankrupt his state and then crying all the way to Copenhagen to announce that a carbon tax is the new secret weapon in the War Against the Laws of Economics.
Jesse,
I wished I could come up with proverbs like these
I think it is an ancient Chinese proverb.
I’ve seen that quote attributed to Lin Yutang (Chinese, but not so ancient). There’s also a similar line from “Oedipus”, by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee:
Who Else Besides Bernanke Could Be The Federal Reserve Chairman?
Who would be the best counterfeiter?
Helicopter Ben did not get that nickname for nothing. He is so indoctrinated by economic fallacies that he actually spoke openly, while pursuing his ambition to become the chairman of the Federal Reserve, about never allowing a lack of cash to stifle the economy. He used the analogy of throwing dollars out of a helicopter if that is what it took!
Who could be a better counterfeiter? Could some other ambitious economic imbecile make an even more exagerated claim, like, imposing a regulation on banks that permits everyone to go into any bank whenever they want and take out as much as they want. This surely would put out of business the small time crooks – the bankrobbers – but it sure would make it very evident how the whole racket is nothing but theft.
Such a bold counterfeiting scheme may not win approval. How can that much money be made available? The same criticism goes for Bernanke’s helicopter scheme. There are other requirements other than just printing the money. The counterfeit scheme has to include electronic transfers and sly distribution.
So we are then back to square one, who is the best counterfeiter? Bernanke has made all kinds of secret arrangements with the Treasury Department, and with central banks around the world, and with Wall Street scoundrels, which gives him the upper hand. These sleazy and corrupt arrangements made Bernanke ‘Person of the Year.” Apparently he is the best counterfeiter!
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