For the pidgeons

The tall handsome guy made of clay is Adam Smith. The great Scot is being honoured with a statue placed across Edinburgh’s City Chambers. The unveiling was on July 4th by one Smith, first name Vernon, Nobel Laureate and apparently one of the private donors that paid for the monument.

Adam is not the first economist to be cast in stone or bronze on public display. If you figure Marx as an economist then there are plenty of those to go around. Other philosopher-economists also shyly populate London. Adam has been made as monument at the South Western University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. So as history goes, this is remarkable as the first PUBLIC statue of ADAM SMITH.

I find it somewhat more peculiar that the statue comes soon after the Adam Smith twenty pound bill. It may be an outcome of political devolution, and less likely of Gordon Brown, that Smith is raised to the status of Scotland’s heritage away from the myths of bearded troglodytes wearing kilts. On the myths of scottish identity check the magnificient The Invention of Tradition.

We can sell memory

On Place de la Sorbonne, amidst the flood of tourists and vacationers, a set of panels bloc the view to the majestic building tucked inside the square. They are photos from the uprising that rooted out the pave stones of the Quartier Latin. The photos are humorous and respectful. The photos are titled and footnoted. First footnote, you can take the photos home in a book, which is literally in all bookshops. Second footnote, the celebration of anarchy is sponsored by HSBC, Epson and FNAC, among others.

I don’t want to put the past in a formaldehyde jar, locked in a cabinet. There is nothing in May 68 that I particularly care to preserve. I am merely fascinated by the irony, of how intentions of the past can matter so little for the uses of the present.

Wanted: historical punchline

Last week I attempted to enlighten some thirty potential future students into the arguments of economics in a promotion tour of the university that pays my bills. My department’s catch phrase is “more than economics,” which I translated into a “you have to know the history of economics to understand present economics.” A student then raised his hand and asked “how so?” Such a valid question. Why am I so deeply convinced that history of economics is important? I can’t explain.

Sporting economics

These days I try to read all the economic commentary I can find. High on my ranking of economic journalists is James Surowiecki of the New Yorker. He writes in his latest “Financial Page” column about the regulation proposals being thrown around the US Treasury Department. The selling pitch of the new regulation package is a move from a “rule-based” approach towards a “principle-based” approach. Surowiecki brings it all down to the turf with a sports analogy…

It’s something like the difference between football and soccer. Football, like most American sports, is heavily rule-bound. There’s an elaborate rulebook that sharply limits what players can and can’t do (down to where they have to stand on the field), and its dictates are followed with great care. Soccer is a more principles-based game. There are fewer rules, and the referee is given far more authority than officials in most American sports to interpret them and to shape game play and outcomes. For instance, a soccer referee keeps the game time, and at game’s end has the discretion to add as many or as few minutes of extra time as he deems necessary. There’s also less obsession with precision—players making a free kick or throw-in don’t have to pinpoint exactly where it should be taken from. As long as it’s in the general vicinity of the right spot, it’s O.K.

And Wall Street is apparently pro-soccer, which I gather is also very un-American.

Regardless of the subtext, what raises my thick eyebrows is the sports metaphor. If in trouble you can always illuminate love, war and economics with a story about youthful play. Life immitates sport.

The desert of the virtual

The past of the world wide web is the barren province of “Server not Found.” There are some beginnings of web archives, aptly called archive.org, but once you stop paying the annual rental or you turn off your server, the record disappears into an error message.

I found another kind of past trace that although less frustrating is somewhat haunting. Looking for more information on the Wall Street Journal former economic editorial writer, and “Suply Side Economics ideologist”, Jude Wanniski, I found the website of his Polyconomics, Inc.

The website survives in neglect. The web design is ancient, the “news” items are over three years old, the highlighted “essays” of the deceased Wanniski are on show as if he was alive and unrelenting in his familiar advocacy. If you look close enough, and long enough, you will see tumbleweed pass through your screen. And yet, hidden bottom left corner, the flame is still bright. A price ticker reports the current trading on precious gold, silver and platinum, remembering Wanniski and friends’ conviction in the gold standard. Eerie stuff.

Speaking to the dead

Yesterday, the guest of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was P J O’Rourke [video here]. He was there pitching his latest book: On the Wealth of Nations, a book about Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

I am not one to treat the “old masters” as a professional treasure, in need of constant attention and shelter. Nonetheless, I found O’Rourke disturbing, and not just for his nervous attempts at being funny. O’Rourke was “channeling” Smith. No one cares much about what O’Rourke thinks, so questions were posed to Smith. And O’Rourke diligently communicated the great Scot’s updated views on the sub-prime debacle, fiscal stimulus and the like.

I protest not because it’s unscholarly, but because it’s cryptic.

Krugman, slayer of Presidents

Paul Krugman visited us. In the days of yore, liberals gave public lectures when they were campaigning. Today liberals go on speaking tours to promote their books. In the event this sounds too cynical, let me correct and say maybe books are just good excuses to get invited to speak. Either way, there was a book involved: The Conscience of a Liberal. (I have not read or bought the book, but remain hopeful that father Xmas will give it to me.)

The Conscience of … is a much abused title. One finds besides liberals, christians, conservationists, pharmacists, statisticians and even lawyers (twice), all have a conscience. Krugman acknowledges Barry Goldwater’s 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative for his choice. I recently read J.K. Galbraith’s 1972 review of Chester Bowles’s biography and he made the lamenting remark that Bowles had been unduly marginalized by the Democratic Party. Bowles had a set of essays collected into the 1962 volume: The Conscience of a Liberal, of which Krugman made no mention. It seems Galbraith was right.

Krugman spoke to a packed foyer, people crowned the open staircases trying to catch a glimpse of his beard. Krugman’s thesis appears to be that the Republican Party’s electoral success has been due to a cultural divide in America. The white South, has been lost to the Democrats because of the fear of race. Krugman sees this changing as the South becomes less white and the American people more liberal in practical policy issues: health care.

I have no thoughts about this argument. I was at the lecture to see the public intellectual of economics. What made him distinctive? And how effective was he? He did not read a speech. He does not have a clear or pleasant voice and by the end sounded tired. He knew when to drop a joke to keep the audience’s attention. But he is not charismatic and his speaking ranks behind his writing. What is striking is that he argues (and thinks) like a social scientist. Rhetorically, he drops definitive numbers, statistics, dates, always appearing exact. Over and above this “trust in numbers,” he speaks through comparisons: labor market trends in US and Canada, cost of health care in US and France, now and the 1970s tax burdens.

For Krugman to convince is not to describe but to compare. Maybe that is why he mentions Goldwater and not Bowles, he favors the comparison.

Why can’t we be friends?

Lot long ago, natural scientists saw social theory critics as dangerous subversives, undermining science authority. The armistice was first settled in the UK. Social scientists were invited to cooperate with government and big science to engage a suspicious public. The exemplar was Labour’s risky GM Nation Debate.

The cooperative seems productive. At Harvard, Sheila Jasanoff set up a Science and Democracy Network, to examine the dialogue between experts and publics. The first academic output is Designs on Nature. But the impact of the effort is best assessed by scientists’ willingness to replace the words “truth” and “objectivity” with such social mush as “trust,” “persuasion” and “morality.”