Austerity Economists Continue To Defend Discredited Study

[Snarkoleptic]

Since they're not part of the fact-based community, this is about as surprising as saying "Duck continues to quack." IHMO

But not Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Instead of admitting their failure, they have refused to admit their mistakes and instead tried to attack their critics. They dismiss both the mathematical error as important, and dismiss the revelation that the two economists cherry picked their data by selectively ignoring whole nations in order to achieve the results desired. They then pointed to a new paper to defend themselves, but a simple checking of their reference material reveals that their numbers in this new paper came from their original piece, the one which has been discredited. This takes their defense and effectively eliminates it.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/04/27/refusing-to-admit-failure-austerity-economists-continue-to-defend-discredited-study/

[RKP5637]

1. 2 people, recking country economies and millions of

peoples lives. There really needs to be more fact checking before jumping off a cliff. ... many will still keep their blinders on ...

[tex-wyo-dem]

20. It's the RW paradox don't you know...

Two (2) economists can say "austerity is the way" and everyone jumps, yet +95% of climate scientists, hundreds of them, agree climate change is caused by humans, yet the RW says there is no consensus and it's an unproven a science, or better yet, a hoax.

[RKP5637]

22. Yep, truly a mix of denial, rationalization and delusions. No

intellectual discovery, validation and factual analysis permitted ... we are the experts ... do not question us.

[Newest Reality]

2. Tighten your belt!

Toe the line!

Pinch those pennies!

Cut down and back!

We have important and crucial things to do America #2. There are wealthy people that we must make wealthier. That brood of defense contracting chicks have their massive maws open again for another, regular and copious feeding. There are corporations to subsidize, because, well, you just can't sit on enough profit these days.

Now, let's rip the wheels off the meals and scrape some more meat off of our own bones for those who insist, due to entitled and sacred privileges, that they need even more than more, ad infinitum. Can't we become even more creative in taking away what the poor and old and weak are holding back and being so needy about? If we can pull off austerity by calling it a sequester, we can do anything. America! Yeah!

That's the way to run a society! Now I am off to have my body harvested so that somebody can profit in order to make my contribution to this Great Society! I could fetch up to $250,000 on the open market, don't ya' know.

Syndicate Bosses and the Godfather approve this message.

[Snarkoleptic]

3. I can't help but consider their self-righteousness and refusal to admit the error

in the context of how many children go to bed hungry, seniors who skip meds, essential services slashes, etc.
The austerity trap is also a negative feedback loop as it slows economic growth.

[midnight]

7. 1,065,794 homeless children enrolled in America’s preschools, kindergarten and grades 1 to 12

http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/04/koch-brothers-wealth-grew-by-33-billion-in-3-years-as-americas-schools

[bemildred]

4. They have nothing else, so they will stick with the well-paid bullshit. nt

[Snarkoleptic]

5. As you said...

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

[MisterP]

6. that's always why I give Rampton and Stauber books to my closest friends--not to "turn" them on any

one issue but to undercut the hegemony of corporate-think and teach them to alert themselves

[drm604]

8. There's a lot of money behind that study and the attempts to defend it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022767592

[elleng]

9. Their 'defense' here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/111634423

[salib]

10. They need to withdraw their paper from American Economic Review

Or the publication needs to print a retraction and remove it.

Academic journals should not tolerate fraud, and it is quickly rising to that level.

[n2doc]

11. They should just come clean and admit it - Austerity is a religion

And it has the same backing in reality of any other religion. It is simply belief, nothing more.

[Snarkoleptic]

12. Greed is the religion and austerity is an article of faith. IMHO

After futher contemplation, I suspect Wall Street types such as Peterson are also motivated by the fact that gov't debt holdings provide a safe alternative to the Wall Street casino they would (oh so) like to have us all 100% invested in.

[blkmusclmachine]

13. .

.

[PATRICK]

14. Stupidity, Cupidity,Incompetence and Arrogance

Lots of money and fear to fire on all those burners. Not once do the insane over entitled jerks ever make a serious effort to smartly fix the data the way that is necessary to make justifiable attacks difficult and remote. They, don't won't, can't even try. Given the low moral intelligence of these gifts local imperialists an apology is the very last thing one would expect or imagine them capable of.

Of course it was easy to discredit electronic voting machines, the GOP Congress the Iraq war and on ad infinitum. The issue whether discrediting the entire rationale for screwing over the people of this country means it will change is not even up in the air yet. They just have to sniff and wail like a baby and get that nose up in the air, this current generation of under qualified rapists. They will not relinquish their power over money unless you pry it from their cold clammy hands.

[byeya]

16. Low Moral Intelligence - good one! LMI? So Mr Cheney, you have an LMI of -16, Do you have

any comments?

[Snarkoleptic]

17. Seems like you were channeling Hunter S. Thompson there. Nice!

"They just have to sniff and wail like a baby and get that nose up in the air, this current generation of under qualified rapists. They will not relinquish their power over money unless you pry it from their cold clammy hands."

[byeya]

15. Caught with their pants down: "Oh no, our pants are up; we have tenure" and

apparently, they know where their grant money - and other money? - comes from. Another in a long line of embarressments for Harvard. Maybe Harvard will convert to an online for-profit Uni.
The University of Phoenix, Cambridge Satellite.

[wilt the stilt]

18. If any of us wrote a term paper

and justified this premise with their excel file we would receive a big fat F for the paper.

[RKP5637]

21. Yep, I never would have made it out of my 2 semesters in statistical analysis. n/t

[AverageJoe90]

19. Just as predicted.

Just as creationists continue to defend Young Earth hooey; as climate doomers continue to defend their "inevitable/possible/whatever total civilization collapse/human extinction thru AGW/runaway Venus warming on Earth/etc." woo; and as warmongers continue to defend the invasion of Iraq....the austerians continue to deny reality as it exists.....but what do you expect?