No need to review the bidding: other parts of the InterWebs have thoroughly demolished the Joe Scarborough-Jeff Sachs op-ed refuting arguments that Krugman never made. (The WaPo website served it to me with an ad for a stock tout, an ad for money-launderer HSBC, and “Three Early Signs of Dementia.” No, dammit, I am not making this up.)
But I do have a question: why should a journalist and former Member of Congress put his reputation at risk by co-authoring with a notorious charlatan whose promotion of “shock therapy” (itself a plagiarism from Milton Friedman’s “shock policy”) inflicted damage from which Russia may never recover, and who once proposed that Bolivia solve its coca-production problem by buying the land where the coca is grown?
Thanks for the chuckle Mark.
I think Mr. Chait has the answer why an insightful journalist like Morning Joe would risk it. Here is his analysis of an op-ed Mr. Scarborough flew solo on:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/02/scarborough-trying-to-make-debt-deniers-happen.html
By the way, did anybody else read Erick Erickson’s diary today!? This is absolutely delightful stuff. Almost as fun as Mr. Chait:
http://www.redstate.com/2013/03/11/the-so-called-adults-within-the-gop-are-stupid/
You are probably overestimating the influence of foreign carpetbaggers like Sachs on Russian policy, as against local Wa-Benzi. According to the sketchy Wikipedia article, Chubais had criticised as unfair a voucher privatisation scheme advanced in 1980 as a thought experiment by another liberal Russian economist, Vitaly Nayshul. But when he had power under Yeltsin, that’s what Chubais carried out. Chubais and his pals were quite as able as Sachs and much, much less innocent.
Dont’ forget the thinking of the economist Ronald Coase on Russia’s economics problems post-USSR. His arguments of naturally occuring markets was one of the main drivers of how voucherization would be all cool in the end…
I didn’t know you were such a hater on Sachs Mark?!? I used to think more highly of him until recently, when he went contra Krugman against stimulus efforts.
And I dont’ really get his whole economic development model, theories, etc. He seems to ignore the obvious success stories, such as the East Asian tigers, while attacking everyone who does not embrace his flavor of the month.
For a second I thought the title was: Scarborough–Dunning–Kruger.