famous economist defends exploitation (bit long)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue May 8 09:10:49 PDT 2001


Gregory Geboski wrote:


>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
><< But what a waste of goddam time they are. >>
>
>Except for the "rentiers and hired hands" in whose interests they
>are written. Or do they not care, really?

Some Wall Street types take theoretical finance seriously; some think it's just wankery. Every corporate planner uses discounted cash flow analysis, but most of that isn't terribly sophisticated. As for the stuff in econ journals, I don't know - an awful lot of it wouldn't be relevant to policymakers. I recently talked with a very prestigious academic economist, who's done plenty of policy advice and consulting work, who's real good with math but who didn't have any idea how the U.S. employment figures were put together or how they should be interpreted.

Doug



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