Monday, January 25, 2010

Dropping knowledge - economics y'all.

Dolla dolla bills y'all.


Rap battle between Austrian (Hayek) and Keynesian economic theories. Heard about it on NPR today.

So who's got it right? Discuss...

Things that make you go hmmm.

2 comments:

Mr. Pony said...

Hayek's point about the self-driven cycle ("The boom plants the seeds for its future destruction") echoes the general reporting of the current financial der stinkle, but as the video point out at its close, people only think what economists tell them to think.

Also seems like economics has a POV problem. It's hard to imagine real good times during bad times, and vice versa. Maybe Hayek's theories are better for understanding a boom when we're in a bust, and Keynes' theories are better for understanding a boom when we're in a bust.

Also, I'm no economist, but I think songs trying to maintain their humorous angle shouldn't have a repeating chorus, especially a chorus that repeats verbatim.

Lungclops said...

Well, you know what the great and honorable Dr. Paul says. This excellent gentleman from Texas, the only Austrian proponent in Congress, says that while the bailout-stimulus-whathaveyou has given us a temporary reprieve from the housing/derivatives-bubble-wrought recession, this dubious cure is itself inflating another bubble, a dollar/bond bubble, and when that baby bursts, well, let's put it this way: I wouldn't want to be on a resourceless island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean*.

For according to the Austrians, it was loose money got us into this mess in the first place. How's making it looser gonna fix things long-term, Dr. Paul pipes up, in his cute, reedy tenor. On the plus side, whether the possibly-racist old codger is right or wrong, we'll have our answer in the next, oh, ten years. If we make it to 2020 with no massive crash, one will have to concede the strong likelihood that the Austrians are all wet. And I hope to James Tiberius Kirk that they are. It rankles one's chancre something fierce when the theory that makes more sense to one's layman brain predicts total collapse.

*And you're not allowed to joke about the resourceless island I live on, because of this here note.