Being an Asshole does not make you Right (Alan Simpson edition)
Alan Simpson is not a straight-shooter. He is an asshole. There is a difference.
Since Simpson is an asshole he tends to say whatever childish, disagreeable thing enters his head. And since he is a crank his self-image is that everyone except Alan Simpson is wrong.
This all has the statistical result that Alan Simpson sometimes says rude things about bad people.
This does not mean that he is a good guy, an honest guy, or a well-informed guy.
He is just an asshole.
Simpson happens to be spectacularly wrong in his economic theories—so wrong that he might as well be demanding a return to the gold standard, or arguing that the Earth is 5,000 years old.
Simpson "knows" that if we do not cut entitlements in a big hurry, interest rates will go "way up" and "soon."
Simpson has been saying exactly the same thing continuously since 1980.
Will interest rates go up? Well, since the Fed overnight rate is zero and mortgage rates and T-bill rates are at all-time lows it is likely that at some future time rates will be higher than they are today.
Will they do whatever Alan Simpson insists they will—go way up soon in specific response to federal debt demand independent of the overall debt demand in the economy and independent of inflation and economic growth to levels that will, taken all together, retard the economy more than Simpson's 'solution' would retard the economy?
I don't know of any theory making that claim that has not already been hammered into ruin by being consistently wrong every day for the last five years, but if Simpson has some evidence then he should present it.
When you put forward an economic theory that offers the same predictions about interest rates independent of unemployment, independent of growth, and even independent of interest rates (!) you are a crackpot. You do not have any economic ideas, but rather a religion masquerading as a theory.
And oddly enough, even dancing Gangnam Style does not make a crackpot less of a crackpot.
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