Jeremiah, Economists and the American Dream

Dear George,

We need a quick rendition, here. We have an economist spinning out of control by attempting to shine a light on the upset apple cart that is the American economy. I am speaking on none less then that Jeremiah of the Dismal Science, Nouriel Roubini.

Listen to the nonsense he is putting out. According to one writer:

In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt.

That was in 2006, when the economy was humming along beautifully. Look what happened: the son of a bitch opened his mouth and our house of cards started tumbling down.

An economist has but one function and that is to act as a cheerleader for the economy.

Economists are supposed to spend their time drawing up elaborate schematics composed of arcane mathematical formula that they mistake for reality. They are like the man with a broken television who takes a schematic of the set and convinces himself that the set will start working as soon as he draws a line from Point A to Point B. The only difference between the man with the broken TV and the economist is that a TV is inanimate and can’t be scammed. People can.

Economists don’t scream “Tsunami coming!” They shout, “Surf’s up!”

Make believe only works if people believe it. People have to believe that our economy is outfitted in Prada and Ralph Loren. We can’t have fools like Roubini running around pointing out that our economy is buck-assed naked.

Roubini is a shoo-in for rendition. He’s an Iranian who spent time living in Tehran where he was no doubt indoctrinated by the Ayatollahs, even though he’s Jewish. I think a cozy little cell in Saudi Arabia would do the trick. There he could be reeducated and ultimately returned to polite society as a skilled practitioner of economic boosterism.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones