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VDare has an interesting observation on the subprime crisis

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geo8rge posted on Tue, Jul 28 2009 12:54 PM

VDare, which is an anti immigration website disliked by many including the SPLC, claims that the large number of non english speaking economics students meant that the subject of economics had to be come more mathematical and less descriptive to accomodate the fact that the people communicating could not speak the same language.

I personally would add that as they expanded the number of undergraduates they needed to create an easily graded curriculum, that stressed mathematics not writing. 

Did Immigrant Economists Sink the U.S. Economy?

http://vdare.com/rubenstein/090727_nd.htm

 

 

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Sounds like they really hate immigrants.

Don't see any evidence for their claim.

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Laughable. Really.

How it relates to subprime crisis?

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azazel replied on Tue, Jul 28 2009 5:50 PM

Is FED run by  immigrant economists?

 

 

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azazel:

Is FED run by  immigrant economists?

Well, depending on who you ask, the US Federal Reserve is run by British people or aliens, though presumably only the latter would operate in the US itself.

 

Seriously, though, you raise a good point. It's true that it was a British man whose theories can be found at the heart of some of the causes behind the global economic recession and the subprime crisis, but it was Americans who were promoting and implementing the policies that led to them.

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Thanx for the link. This is a nice, new angle. It's interesting how a number of factors all contributed together to the crisis. I remember reading a story about Li's equation in the Toronto star. This article puts alot of things into perspective.

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Sam: I hurt somebody's feelings once.

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Rooster:
Sounds like they really hate immigrants.

Or maybe just immigration. The two are not the same thing. Nice try.

Rooster:
Don't see any evidence for their claim.

You don't go or haven't gone to university. Do/have you?

Spence: You ever kill anybody?

Sam: I hurt somebody's feelings once.

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Juan replied on Tue, Jul 28 2009 10:06 PM
They hate immigrants Forde - why not admit it ?

February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church.
Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."

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geo8rge replied on Tue, Jul 28 2009 10:14 PM

VDare is very anti immigrant but this story is interesting as it suggests a trend in economic theory was caused by lack of communication in a human language.  That resulted in highly mathimatical modeling being substituted for other types of thinking.   

I suspect the growth of computing power also contributed.

This is related to sub prime as the justification for derivatives is mostly mathematical.

 

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scineram replied on Tue, Jul 28 2009 10:25 PM

emph.

vdare:
But there is one problem: while the Asians students are whizzes at math, they generally do not speak English well. Had they been high-schoolers, remedial English classes would have been mandatory for most of them.

But instead, university economics departments took the easy way out: they altered the curriculum to accommodate the foreigners!

Gone was the history of economic thought. Gone was the economic history course that exposed students to market failures and the importance of psychological factors—what Keynes dubbed “animal spirits”—to a prosperous economy. In their place: mathematically-oriented courses devoid of any historical content or context.

WORD.

 

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Rooster replied on Tue, Jul 28 2009 10:50 PM

Stephen Forde:

Rooster:
Don't see any evidence for their claim.

You don't go or haven't gone to university. Do/have you?

Why, are you more edumacated than me?

The fact that economics is highly mathematical is not evidence for their immigration theory.

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Stephen replied on Wed, Jul 29 2009 12:37 AM

Juan:
They hate immigrants Forde - why not admit it ?

Peter Brimelow is himself, a British immigrant.

Spence: You ever kill anybody?

Sam: I hurt somebody's feelings once.

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Stephen replied on Wed, Jul 29 2009 12:44 AM

Rooster:
Why, are you more edumacated than me?

If you went to a university, you would see how many non-western students there are.

Rooster:
The fact that economics is highly mathematical is not evidence for their immigration theory.

Once again, if you attended university you would understand the effect of bell-curving and readjustment of course material to try to fit student grades into a nice range of percentiles. Profs don't like the outcome were most of their class gets A's or most of their class gets D's. It looks bad on them. They try to fit most of the class into the C-B range.

Spence: You ever kill anybody?

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Rooster replied on Wed, Jul 29 2009 12:50 AM

Stephen Forde:

Rooster:
Why, are you more edumacated than me?

If you went to a university, you would see how many non-western students there are.

Rooster:
The fact that economics is highly mathematical is not evidence for their immigration theory.

Once again, if you attended university you would understand the effect of bell-curving and readjustment of course material to try to fit student grades into a nice range of percentiles. Profs don't like the outcome were most of their class gets A's or most of their class gets D's. It looks bad on them. They try to fit most of the class into the C-B range.

Right, so that means they made it more mathematical instead of just curving their grades.

Oh, and you are the first person to ever go to college. Congratulations, nice gown!

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VDare is ok with immigration if you are a white western-european immigrant.  If you are non-white you are definitely out of luck.

I've had an epiphany about immigration, and I don't know fully what that means until I have time to digest it.  But certainly, these folks are very pro-state, and I no longer believe the argument for immigration enforcement by the state as a second best is a defensible libertarian position.

Ha, you'll like that Juan.  I get less conservative every day.

If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North

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