Assault of Thoughts - 9/30/2010

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" - JMK

- Mark Thoma on the fact that "depression economics" should be a part of regular economics. One of the oddest misconceptions is that traditional Keynesian economics "dominates" economic education. It really doesn't. I got some of it in undergrad, but I didn't get any of it in grad school that I remember (Tom, if you're reading correct me if I'm wrong - Joutz certainly didn't cover any of those chapters in the Romer text). Anyway, needless to say I agree with Thoma.

- Arnold Kling has some critiques of Murray Rothbard and Austrians in general. He starts with an interesting prediction of Rothbard's coming out of the 80s that went horribly wrong. A counter-part for the Austrians is 1921 and 1946, which they regularly use as "disproofs" of Keynesianism. The thing is - no Keynesian that I'm aware of is really all that surprised by either episode (except Samuelson at the time, of course). We have a pretty obvious explanation. What is the explanation for why Rothbard's prediction went so wrong? Is there one, or no? Further down in the post, I think Kling uses "prophetic" a little too liberally.

- Evan has a good new post on his blog about Stephen Hawking and God.

- Does anyone know of a good online resource for sample GRE math questions? I've got a second test scheduled for October 25th. I had a 750 on the last one, but I got a 780 out of undergrad (scores are expired now, though) so I think I can do better, and I've heard 750 described as "on the edge" of what's considered by schools. Anyway - I got a new book that's more recent and more focused on harder problems than my old one, but I don't think all the practice problems in the new book are going to last me until the 25th! Going for gold on this one.

"Assault of thoughts" joke: "Two peanuts walk down a dark alley... one was a salted"