>Well, I was thinking of the "new economy" intellectuals as the articulate
>ones.
>
>And I may have to eat my words: if you notice *both* Krugman's quote (and
>Bhagwati's use of me as a straw man to beat up on) are taken *from*the*web*.
>
>If not for the web, Bhagwati would not have been able to rip two sentences
>from a Los Angeles Times op-ed out of context for his purposes; and Paul
>Krugman wouldn't have found the passage so handy.
Does that count as productivity-enhancing? Or is it just a way to incorporate bad information into discourse more quickly?
So if Bhagwati took you out of context, what is your position on capital flows? Greenspan has been all over the place lately giving speeches that start by asserting the wondrously wonderful effect of free capital flows, but then, when he gets down to the heart of his speech (if there is such a place), he talks about how market participants and central bankers don't really understand the risks. Here's a sentence from yesterday's speech at the FRB Chicago:
"Specifically, we need such an understanding if we are to minimize the chances that we will experience a systemic disruption beyond our degree of comprehension or our ability to respond effectively."
This is more than a little scary - here's the single most important individual in world finance confessing that we may be in over our heads. But, true to form, he concludes by saying that the risk is worth it because the payoff is so huge. But where's the payoff?
Doug