Since it's Friday, let's review Steve Colberty's report on Austerity:

[truedelphi]

http://www.hulu.com/watch/482400?utm_content=4003003&PID=4003003&utm_source=cjlink&utm_campaign=cj-affiliate&AID=10947797&cmp=30&SHID=11k9hw083i4nf&partner=cj&utm_term=10947797

Funny to find out hat the Noted Economics Duo never even had their theory peer-reviewed!



And as Krugman noted last Monday, "Thomas Herndon, the graduate student who received the excel spread sheet after much persistence that Reinhart and Rogoff used to justify their pro-austerity theory, does not accept the viewpoint that the errors were minor:



" 'We showed that the negative correlation above 90 is not statistically significant. I don’t see how that confirms their results. We challenged the claim that this (debt-to-GDP ratio of) 90% line exists for all time and space. That’s their claim, looking at two centuries and for all countries ever. But we show that the negative correlation that does exist–and that’s not causation at all–reduces the closer we get to the present time. If you look at the most recent time period of 2000 to 2009, growth in the over 90% category was actually higher than growth in the 60 to 90 category. That also is not at all consistent. One more thing that I’d like to point out–and these are points that I raised in a blog posting–in their public response, they admit the spreadsheet error that was in Table 2 but then they point to Table 1 and they say the spreadsheet error is not in Table 1.' "

In any event if you are already mixing drinks for tomorrow's Derby, you can skip the heavy stuff and just go to the site with Colbert's comments (er jokes.)

And Happy Weekend.