By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 14th, 2012 
Governor Romney’s selection of Congressman Ryan as his running mate assured the re-election of President Obama. Will Milberg already explained this from the point of view of the politics of economics a year and a half ago, while I first suggested my reasons in my review of Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address and Ryan’s official Republican response.
Romney has now firmly identified himself with a true-believing ideologist. The Ryan – Romney budget proposals, empowered by Ryan’s ideology, will hurt the guy who wanted Obama to keep his dirty, government hands off his Medicare, and many more people who depend on social programs in their daily lives. Thus, Milberg was quite sure when the Ryan plan was announced that the Republicans were finished.
And even though the nation is very divided, ideological extremism, even when it is in the name of the core American value of liberty, turns people, left, right and center, off, as the Republican nominee for president, Barry Goldwater learned in 1964.
Ryan’s ideology is not completely coherent. It has three sources: libertarian thought, a fundamentalist approach to the constitution, and a narrow understanding of natural law theory and the theological foundations of modern democracy. He recognizes tensions between these positions, but it doesn’t seem to bother him or slow him down. He still moves from theoretical certainty to practical policy as a true believer, and he does it with a happy and appealing smile on his face, which would be quite familiar to Milan Kundera, as he depicted such smiles in his novels A Book on Laughter and Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
The Congressman’s libertarianism comes via Ayn Rand, revealed in a speech he gave to the organization dedicated to keeping her flame, the Atlas Society. He explained:
I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about . . .
Read more: Paul Ryan: Ideologist-in-Chief (Obama Wins!)
By Daniyal Khan, June 12th, 2012 
“Do you think it matters, Daniyal? Do you think anybody cares about your senior project? All that matters is the people around you, and your senior project doesn’t make a difference to anyone.”
All I could do was to look at my friend with a blank expression, completely stunned and humbled. These words weren’t spoken with the least bit of aggression, as one might think. Rather, they were delivered with a straight, honest face and in a soft-spoken manner, and still managed to convey all the seriousness in the world. The words struck me more so for two reasons. Firstly, I consider my undergraduate senior thesis to be the culmination and high-point of a grueling intellectual journey undertaken over five years. Secondly, my project is dedicated to my friends because they have often been my most ardent supporters as well as my harshest critics during this journey. Yet, there she was, a friend mind you, effortlessly reducing my best academic work to a heap of worthless trash!
In retrospect, her attitude towards a piece of academic writing and a person who aspires to be an academic was not surprising at all. Current opinion on the value and worth of the institutional home of the academic — the university — is far from being conclusively positive. My friend had recently experienced and witnessed some of the worst tendencies of academia at a conference at which she presented a paper. Rather than asking a question about the presentation, a philosophy instructor in the audience had chosen to speak to my friend in a patronizing manner, suggesting that her interest in her chosen subject of inquiry was worrisome, thinking that it was unhealthy for a girl of her age.
Thus, understanding the source of her disdain towards my project was not difficult. Academics and university professors aren’t always worthy role-models, to say the least. Many people I’ve spoken to insist that academics don’t really do anything, just talk; and you can bet there’s going to be a lot of self-serving conversation (at academic conferences, for example, not to say that there aren’t constructive conferences). No wonder academics are often . . .
Read more: Academia: Reflections of an Undergraduate Student in Pakistan
By Michael Cohen, May 24th, 2012 
I welcome Will Milberg’s response to my book and was pleased with his appreciation of how the case of Argentina challenges conventional wisdom in economics. His review adds to the debate about Argentina, highlighting one of my motivations for writing the book: to show how the Argentine experience since 2001 flies in the face of economic pundits, both in the academy and in the financial press, and that it is important to pay attention. Milberg’s message was seconded by Paul Krugman in a NY Times blog posting in which he directly identifies “conventional wisdom” as obscuring accurate perception of strong Argentine recent economic performance.
I would carry this further to the case of the recent re-nationalization of the Argentine oil company, YPF. The exaggerated external critique and prediction of economic doom once again for Argentina fails to see that this decision makes sense if the government is able to achieve its own institutional objective of making YPF a well-run enterprise serving the national interest by expanding energy production. Commentaries by The Financial Times and The New York Times, with the exception of Krugman, sound eerily similar to their alarmist predictions in 2002 that Argentina would fall off the tip of South America after the default on its debt. Conventional wisdom, I believe, as Milberg notes, is sorely in need to revision.
And while I very much agree with most of Milberg’s observations about the Argentine case, and accept his friendly critique of some parts of my book, I think that he is too easily accepting some external views, from the U.S. and Europe, that “the country is once more on the edge.” This is not true in terms of its growth, balance of payments, fiscal deficit, growing investments in infrastructure, and most importantly reduced poverty and inequality. Low unemployment continues despite some slowdown in the construction sector.
Recent policy decisions and major legislative victories by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on critical issues of social policy and the reorganization of the Central Bank demonstrate continued . . .
Read more: Argentina Continues to Defy Conventional Wisdom: A Response to Milberg
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, September 9th, 2011 
As Will Milberg anticipated, President Obama gave a speech last night that did not just involve political positioning. It was a serious Address to a Joint Session of Congress about our economic problems, proposing significant solutions. The address was also politically astute, and will be consequential. Obama was on his game again, revealing the method to his madness.
His game is not properly appreciated, as I have argued already here. He has a long term strategy, and doesn’t allow short term tactics to get in the way. He additionally understands that politics is not only about ends, but also means.
Many of his supporters and critics from the left, including me, have been seriously concerned about how he handled himself in the debt ceiling crisis. He apparently compromised too readily, negotiated weakly, another instance of a recurring pattern. In the first stimulus, healthcare reform, and the lame duck budget agreement, it seemed that he settled for less, could have got more, was too soft. But, of course, this is not for sure. I find that my friends who supported Hillary Clinton look at me, as an early and committed Obama supporter, differently now and express more open skepticism about Obama these days. But I think, as was revealed last night, that Obama’s failures have been greatly exaggerated. (Today only about political economic issues)
A worldwide depression was averted. The principle of universal health care for all Americans is now part of our law, the most significant extension of what T. H. Marshall called social citizenship since the New Deal. And, a completely unnecessary American induced global crisis did not occur. None of this was pretty. The President had to gain the support of conservative Democrats (so called moderates) and Republicans for these achievements. But it was consequential. In my judgment, despite complete, and not really loyal, Republican opposition to every move he has made, he has governed effectively, steering the ship of state in the right direction, despite extremely difficult challenges.
And during his . . .
Read more: President Barack Obama: There is Method to his Madness
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