Children and monetarists beware

For those of you who delight in the spilling of ichor – the blood of intellectuals – hie ye to Mark Thoma’s Economist’s View, which reprints Jamie Galbraith’s address on the 25th meeting of the Milton Friedman society. A sign of the times that they would invite Galbraith, son of Friedman’s blood enemy. Galbraith begins with a few courtesies, and then utterly destroys Friedman’s work, and then makes like Jack the Ripper with Bernanke’s reputation. It is a rare sight to see such thorough slaughter. There must have been a long pause after it was all over. Did anybody move? Did the master of ceremonies heave himself out of his seat and finally say, what a veeery interesting talk, Professor Galbraith. Oh dear, you have some kind of foaming ectoplasm all over the front of your tuxedo.

The society should pay attention to this useful film about not accepting rides from strangers.

PS – the music of America! that barbaric yawp is still spawning rib tickling vocables. For instance, this is a Wall Street term that comes from the very heart of the Bush culture. From Frank Norris at the NYT:
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/how-much-capital-do-the-banks-need/
Carlyle has done its part to create those holes. Mr. Rubenstein delivered a hilarious recollection of the credit markets at the top of the market, in which Citigroup and J.P. Morgan competed to lend, offering low interest rates, no covenants (covenant-light in the jargon) and toggle-PIK, meaning the company could pay in kind, with more securities, if it did not have the cash.
As he told it, with a hypothetical billion dollar acquisition, Carlyle funds put up $350 million and borrowed $650 million.
When the music stopped in the credit market last year, the bank was unable to sell such loans in the securitization market — to investors Mr. Rubenstein called the “stuffees.”
The stuffees! Don’t you love living under the Great Fly? Forget comrades, forget citizens, forget motherfuckers. It is a nation of stuffees. And happy to be stuffed!