Audit the Fed

ApplePion

<<Yes I was aware of Cochrane's science background and as an engineer myself I'm all the more interested in his views.>>

Apparently JC has gone off the deep end--he is affiliated with the Cato Institute. Back at MIT he was actually very liberal and I was very conservative, and we had some political discussions.

But the problem with Cato is not that they are conservative. It is that they are dishonest and irrational.

mheslep

That sounds ridiculous. Cochrane has a large body of scholarship to his name and continues to publish, but you state here he as gone 'off the deep end' not because of anything he's said or written but because of someone with whom he's affiliated? BTW Cato has a libertarian viewpoint, not conservative.

ApplePion

<<That sounds ridiculous. Cochrane has a large body of scholarship to his name and continues to publish, but you state here he as gone 'off the deep end' not because of anything he's said or written but because of someone with whom he's affiliated?>>

Yes, I do think that who someone choses to affiliate themselves with is reflective of them. If someone chose to be an official economist for the American Nazi Party, would that not make such a person suspect to you? Yes, I realize that the Cato Institute is not nearly as bad as the Nazi Party, but my point was qualitative.

The Cato Institute really does lie a lot--as a person with a science background you should know that, and they try to distort reality to always fit their ideological prejudices.

<<BTW Cato has a libertarian viewpoint, not conservative.>>

That's true, but nevertheless his views when he was a liberal would still be quite different from libertarian views. It was so long ago that it is a bit difficult to remember, but I still am pretty sure he strongly favored redistribution of wealth.