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Hackononics, Part II

Sunday, July 06, 2008 | 09:28 PM

in Economy | Federal Reserve | Psychology/Sentiment | Wages & Income

More nonsensical tripe foisted upon the world by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm again.

For those of you who may not recall, they are the senior vice president/chief economist, and the senior economics writer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

These two have started a cottage industry dedicated to proving how great things are economically. This is now the third attempt at this sort of intellectual dishonesty, and if I didn't know better, I would suggest that they have a political agenda. Of course, that's impossible for any Federal Reserve Bank, even one in Texas.

Rather than spill too many pixels on the likes of these two, I will instead direct you back to the last time these two characters pulled similar shenaningans. You may recall back in February they attempted to show how little income disparity there was in the US through the use of misleading quintile data. I called their deceptive fraud for what it was in Hackonomics.

Their latest junk economics is in The American Magazine, titled How Are We Doing?

The duo repeat their consumption arguments, hoping that the third time will be the charm. Perhaps repetition might succeed where reasoning and logic failed.

Amongst the various bensteinery in their rhetorical arsenal, my favorite is the temporal arguments they seem to favor. We addressed this sort of economic silliness back in 2004's What is Wealth?.

Here are a few colorful pieces of silliness form the article.
>

Congratulations! You've rediscovered the Technology Adoption Lifecycle and production quantities of scale!

For more on this, see #3 Comparing Household Consumption.

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Nearly 100 years later, we are more efficient and productive. Go figure.

I will be fishing with one of their Dallas Fed coworkers later this month, and I will be sure to ask what the real deal with these guys are.

Previously:
What is Wealth? (May 2004)
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2004/05/what_is_wealth.html

Hackonomics (February 2008)
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/02/dishonest-econo.html

Source:
How Are We Doing?
W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm
The American Magazine, July/August 2008
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-august-magazine-contents/how-are-we-doing