Actually, Tresy is really out to lunch on this one. Brad DeLong is this list's closet big cheese economics establishmentarian. Not only is he at one of the "Top Seven" economics departments in the US (may have fallen some recently in the standings for all I know), but he gets quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and is a coeditor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, one of the three journals published by the American Economic Association, and he used to be some kind of high muckety-muck at the Treasury Dept., much to Louis Proyect's consternation. In short, although he may be off in its left-liberal wing, our Brad is a serious big cheese Establishment Economist, unlike most of us who are a bunch of flako-wacko radicals in the eyes of most of the profession.
I must admit that I have been curious for some time as
to what the heck he is doing on this list. I have several
not necessarily mutually exclusive hypotheses:
1) He thinks of himself as a sort of closet radical and
this is his outlet for that tendency.
2) He has written a lot on speculative bubbles and may
want to keep his ear to the ground for what Chairman Doug
has to say about the markets in case he might pick up on
some nifty tidbits before the more staid analysts do.
3) He is keeping his eyes out for possible interesting
ideas to pursue or have pursued for the JEP or other
establishment outlets that might just show up here on this
radical fringe zone.
4) He is an internet junkie and can't get enough of it,
:-).
In any case, I am glad he is on the list as I find him knowledgable and intelligent on many topics, even though I disagree with quite a bit of what he has to say. Barkley Rosser On Wed, 04 Nov 1998 02:27:03 -0800 (PST) Dennis R Redmond <dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Tresy Kilbourne wrote:
>
> > why he's a nonentity at some diploma mill, popping off on an
> > insignificent mailing list about a book he apparently hasn't read, while
> > Barlett and Steele share a Pulitzer and an audience of millions.
>
> On the contrary, LBO-talk is the nerve-center of the capitalist
> world-system. This is where the central bankers of the world gather to
> plot our dominion over the earth, you know -- by dressing up as Reds and
> spouting off in Marxian neologisms, everyone ignores us, allowing us to
> lead an extensive and constructive debate about how things are to be run.
> I'm not going to name names, but let's just say that I'm in charge of a
> certain European central bank (thus the occasional lapses into German); a
> certain poster associated with Linux announcements is actually
> a leading software CEO worth tens of billions of dollars; etc. The best
> place of hiding something is always in plain sight, yes?
>
> Well, must run -- a small matter of a currency unification, you
> understand.
>
> -- Dennis
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu