Professor Peter Boettke of George Mason University.
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By Dr. Pitchfork
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Last week, the Wall St. Journal published a glowing profile of George Mason University economics professor, Peter Boettke (pronounced "bet'-key"). Boettke is one of the leading academic economists working in the Austrian tradition and he writes frequently for Coordination Problem (formerly known as The Austrian Economists blog). The WSJ article notes that "as the economy flounders, debt mounts and growth—revised downward Friday—flags, Mr. Hayek and his Austrian-school adherents like Mr. Boettke are resurgent as their views resonate with more people." On bailouts and "stimulus," the article quotes Boettke as saying:
What I'm really worried about is an endless cycle of deficits, debt, and debasement of currency. What we've done is engage in a set of policies that's turned a market correction into an economy-wide crisis.
For Daily Bail regulars, he's preaching to the choir, but the profile of Boettke, which includes quotes like this one, is an encouraging sign that our side of the argument on bailouts, Keynesian "stimulus," deficits and debt, is finally getting a hearing.
Still, that didn't stop some free-market, Austrian-leaning folks from using the occasion to stir up a good old-fashioned cat fight. David Kramer, writing on the Lew Rockwell blog about the Boettke piece, sputtered:
Yet, “somehow,” one of the biggest One World Government propaganda rags—the War Street Journal—wrote a puff piece on Prof. Boettke of George Mason University who (according to this rag) “is emerging as the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economic.” Perhaps in the minds of Peter Boettke and the folks at the War Street Journal. Now why in the world would the WSJ print such a baldfaced lie when Boettke could not even shine the shoes of the greatest living Austrian economists in the world today—Hans Hoppe, Walter Block, David Gordon, Joseph Salerno, Guido Hülsmann (I could go on)? Hmmm…could it be…could it be…could it be because Prof. Boettke is still a believer in one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on human civilization [i.e. the Fed]?
If you didn't know already, the world of Austrian economics is bitterly divided into two, more or less distinct camps. The Austrians associated with George Mason see themeselves as the right-thinking, cosmopolitan standard-bearers of the tradition of Mises, Hayek, Kirzner and Rothbard. They view the Austrians associated with the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell.com (generally speaking) as cultish, gold-bug conspiracy theorists whose understanding of Austrian economics is obsolete, and whose politics give aid and comfort to neo-confederates and racists. By the same token, the Mises Institute/Lew Rockwell crowd (generally speaking) regards the GMU Austrians as sellouts who would rather be cosmopolitan than libertarian, and respectable rather than radical. Besides, the GMU Austrians aren't "real" libertarians at all, they're "Beltway" libertarians.
The recriminations from either side have more than a grain of truth in them, but for Pete's sake! Does it really make sense to rehash petty squabbles (that almost no one gives a crap about) when people like Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner are still on the loose, and wreaking all manner of havoc with the economy our children will inherit? Even worse than being a waste of time and energy, some of the things Kramer claims about Boettke aren't even true. He claims that Boettke is "a believer" in the Fed (aka "one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on human civilization"). He also suggests that Boettke (like all those other "Beltway" libertarians), would rather praise the moderately pro-state Hayek than the more radical Mises, who many people regard as a crackpot. Kramer writes:
And guess who is the only Austrian (albeit barely) economist that the rag [i.e. the Wall St. Journal] mentions in conjunction with Boettke and the Austrian school of economics? Friedrich Hayek. You know, the “Austrian” economist who once stated that the welfare state works.... I guess that’s why the Socialist members of the Nobel Price committee gave Hayek the Nobel Prize in “Economics” rather than the exponentially superior Ludwig von Mises (the number one Austrian economist—and, for that matter, economist—in history)
To which, I can only say: You Cannot Be Serious!
Responding to a David Frum attack on Ron Paul's views on monetary policy, Boettke once wrote:
Mises was not a crackpot, but perhaps the most insightful economic thinker in the world at a time when the world itself was upside down. He was an anti-socialist when the world looked upon socialism with hope, and he was an anti-Keynesian when the discipline of economics all moved in the Keynesian direction. Subsequently we learned that socialism led not to hope but to political tyranny and economic deprivation, and Keynesianism was logically flawed in lacking microfoundations, and practically flawed in leading to world-wide inflation and economic stagnation. In other words, Mises was right! In fact, I think one could make a reasonable argument that Mises was right on every single controversial position he held --- from methodology to public policy.
That's right, this is the same Peter Boettke who Kramer accuses of treating Mises as some kind of crazy uncle you try not to mention by name.
And what does Boettke think of central banking (i.e. the Fed)? Like any good Austrian, he rejects the notion that a central banker has the requisite knowledge to set interest rates or manage the money supply. And like Peter Schiff, he has grown fond of pointing out how the Fed continually throws the economy out of whack with artificially low interest rates -- or, what Boettke calls "the crazy juice." So, let's get this straight. Peter Boettke says the Fed cannot possibly do the job it is tasked with doing, refers to Ben Bernanke as a purveyor of "crazy juice," and David Kramer wants to believe that Boettke is just another Fed apologist? Good grief. It seems Kramer must be the one drinking the crazy juice.
Personally, I read Lew Rockwell.com every day. I think people like Tom Woods, Robert Murphy and Walter Block -- to say nothing of Rockwell himself -- have done great work over the years advancing the causes of liberty and sound economics. And within the field of economic science, so have academics like Boettke and GMU alum, Steve Horwitz, who runs Coordination Problem/The Austrian Economists blog. But the cat-fighting that goes on on these occasions is just stupid. In a saner moment, even David Kramer would have to agree that it's a waste of time and energy and it needs to stop. Especially when you consider that these central-planning geniuses are still in power:
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