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I tell my students that reasoning by analogy can be very powerful but it's also quite tricky: one has to pick the right analogy. Paul Krugman writes that our projected debt-to-GDP ratio isn't that bad because it will be less than what we had right after World War II. And in the 50s and 60s we did fine, right?
James Hamilton argues: bad analogy.
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What I've discovered during the current downturn is the unheralded story of the '57-'58 recession. It is such a stronger parallel with today's events than '80-'82, right down to the political implications, but nobody talks about it.
Posted by: Ted Craig | August 31, 2009 at 10:28 AM
Does anyone take Nobel Prize Winner and Former Enron Adviser Paul Krugman as anything but a partisan hack any more?
Posted by: JorgXMcKie | August 31, 2009 at 12:04 PM