"Niall Ferguson's Horrible Track Record On Economics"

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Niall Ferguson's Horrible Track Record On Economics

by Joe Wiesenthal at Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/niall-ferguson-bad-track-record-on-economics-keynes-comments-2013-5

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His most spectacularly incorrect call came in in the Summer of 2009, when he took a victory lap, proclaiming that since interest rates were rising, he was correct that the bond vigilantes were rebelling against the large stimulus and historic deficits.

On Wednesday last week, yields on 10-year US Treasuries - generally seen as the benchmark for long-term interest rates - rose above 3.73 per cent. Once upon a time that would have been considered rather low. But the financial crisis has changed all that: at the end of last year, the yield on the 10-year fell to 2.06 per cent. In other words, long-term rates have risen by 167 basis points in the space of five months. In relative terms, that represents an 81 per cent jump.

Most commentators were unnerved by this development, coinciding as it did with warnings about the fiscal health of the US. For me, however, it was good news. For it settled a rather public argument between me and the Princeton economist Paul Krugman.

It is a brave or foolhardy man who picks a fight with Mr Krugman, the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics. Yet a cat may look at a king, and sometimes a historian can challenge an economist.


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[BainsBane]

1. No surprise there. I never could stand him.

Most of these historians who get on the television get on my nerves. Douglas Brinkley is an exception.