Prince of Hot Air
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity April 5th, 2010
Once a maestro, always a maestro.
Greenspan: What if the CBO got it wrong?
Heh indeedy.
Update. Via the comments, what Cap’n Ed said about the CBO and Medicare can’t be true since the CBO wasn’t created until several years after Medicare went into effect. But with a titan like Greenspan preaching the dangers of CBO estimates, who needs facts?
Posted in Going Galt, Good News For Conservatives
John McCain is playing 11-dimension shuffleboard:
April 5th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Greeny Being the renowned expert of getting it wrong. I now feel much more at ease the CBO got it right.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
What if Mr. Andrea Mitchell gets it wrong?
The horror!
April 5th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Shouldn’t he be too ashamed to ever open his yap about economics ever again?
As for Grumpy McCain—he’s right. He never was a maverick. He just called himself one.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
well, according to Mr. Greenspan’s pronouncements on the housing bubble being wrong is the only way to prove you are smart. If you were right about the housing bubble, that means you were just lucky and thus should not be heard in any future debates either.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
As an indicator of how clueless Greenspan actually is, the man keeps talking even after “no one could have predicted” is the best he could come up with to sum up the fiasco of his leadership of the Fed.
My 5 year old has better excuses.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Are you kidding? He should be looking for new and more spectacular ways of fucking up. Getting it wrong is the best thing for your media career these days.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Morrissey:
That settles it. If Cap’t Ed says they all went broke, they must have all gone broke. No need to link to any evidence of this fact.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Remember – the best defense is a good offense!
April 5th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
What if Def Leppard got it wrong?
/No more pouring sugar
April 5th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
So that link hurt my soul. But um someone should point out to Ed Morrissey that it would be impossible for the CBO to have wrongly projected the costs of Medicare and Medicaid as it was created nine years after their passage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....ct_of_1974
Incidentally if you are going to link to dumbasses like this you should probably mention in your post that things like this are incorrect
Not only did programs like Medicare and Medicaid cost more in the short term than the CBO predicted at the time, it cost vastly more than anyone predicted in the long term. The track record on entitlement program projections is long and almost entirely embarrassing,
April 5th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
/facepalm
For good measure, I was about to pull out the dictionary definition of “prediction.” Unfortunately, it fails in the circular sense. (A “prediction” is the result of predicting, and to “predict” is to make a prediction. Bah, useless.)
April 5th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Remember: If an estimate is in favor of Republican talking points, it is science fact. If an estimate favors Democrats, not only is it wrong, but it is always wrong in the direction that would favor Republican talking points, and the margin of error is always 100% or more.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
@Ailuridae
That’s even better than my example.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
What if they got it wrong? I dunno. What if there were no WMDs?
What if laissez faire financial regulation fucked the whole world’s economy? What if your wife never bothered to ask you that question?
What if the moon were made of green cheese?
April 5th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
@Ailuridae: and so goes Big Ed trying to rewrite history one unsourced blog post at a time. (See: Schoolbooks, Texas)
April 5th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I can’t believe we had this Randroid fool running the Fed for almost 20 years. Even more shocking is that he had so many people, Democrats included, convinced that he was a wizard at that job. Meanwhile, real economists like Joe Stiglitz are shrill DFH’s.
What if Bubbles Greenspan got it wrong? Oh, wait. We know that one. He did. About a great.many.things.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
What if the so called “reality” we perceive is an illusion, product of an evil socialist matrix? Surely, the broader reality in which this matrix resides behaves according to broader randian principles.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
If they got it wrong … people will still have healthcare.
That may well be what keeps Greenspan up at nights.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Moderation hell:
What if the so called “reality” we perceive is an illusion, product of an evil sowzeeahleest matrix? Surely, the broader reality in which this matrix resides behaves according to broader randian principles.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Zifnab, damn it.
I forgot about the Peter Principle of Media: The more one fucks up, the higher he shall be exalted.
balconesfault, you shoot, and you score! Nice rejoinder.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
No, no, you don’t understand. The prediction that the CBO would have made had it existed at the time was overly optimistic. That’s a well-established consequence of Quantum Wingerdynamics (QWD), in which potential events that could hypothetically embarrass liberals are shown to have actually happen, even in violation of global causality (the canonical example being how FDR caused the Great Depression even though he took office almost 4 years after it started).
-dms
April 5th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser started looking at this topic a few days ago. He has some good diagrams and explanation of a simple sensitivity analysis.
PPACA and “What If?” Scenarios
Menzie Chinn
March 31, 2010
Econbrowser
http://www.econbrowser.com/arc.....ank_o.html
April 5th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Can’t Andrea stick a sock in the old buzzard’s piehole and tell him he’s fucked things up enough now, have some warm milk go to bed? Is that asking too much, for the love of God? He very nearly caused the end of her world as she knows it, the hell with the rest of the world!
Seriously, are there any people who still listen to Greenspan? I knew he was full of crap when he said the interest only mortgages were okey-dokey, and I barely passed algebra in High School! When he said he never saw the melt-down coming, I figured it was advanced Alzheimer’s and stopped noticing he existed anymore. Others should do likewise, and that right quick.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
You can visit about any right wing blog currently, and for that matter teevee and radio stations, certain winger newspapers and letters, bill boards, etcc…../ I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing piper cubs flying over cities streaming banners saying “Obama Wants To Eat Your White Babies”. I kid you not.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Ah, but Greenspan’s Legacy? He is truly a heavyweight!
April 5th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Yeah but
all this means is that CBO can’t even estimate its own creation date!
And you Demon-craps want to use it to try and say that Obamacare won’t put us 80 million trillion billion jillion dollars in the hole while killing all our Maw-maws? Feh.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
And Ronald Reagan finally broke the back of the Depression by applying retro-supply side singularities across time and space. True Fact.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
@ Stuck
I was at an Easter Party with my Grandkids Friday and ran into one of these people. Dialogue was impossible, he just wanted to preach and be believed, so, in deference to my Hostess, I didn’t argue, I just walked away. I have second-guessed myself the whole weekend, and still think I did the right thing, but I really wanted to beat the living Bejeesus out of him for his stupidity. It was really discouraging. There are so many anti-Obama bumper stickers down here right now, I feel I need to buy some good ones for my car. Good thing my first payday is Wednesday-I can afford at least one. I’m so pissed I gave most of mine away to fellow travelers.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Bye the bye, what up with the reply icon?
April 5th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Quotes like this are always a double-whammy. You’ve got Social Security, that has been paying a positive balance since it’s inception in the 30s. Well before the existence of the CBO. Then you get to compare that to Desert Storm / Desert Shield / Iraq War 2 and the resounding financial clusterfuck that ensued following a thousand ardent assurances that the war would pay for itself. Look at Medicare Advantage and Medicare Plan D, both of which received abysmal scores from the CBO and were enacted regardless. Look at programs like the Peace Corps and the Pell Grant system, which have been paying dividends for decades.
:-p All so terribly laughable.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Now that the economy is in freefall, he’s no longer a Randian superman, but a Hayekian with painful awareness of the limits of human knowledge? WTF… wasn’t the time for him to have some self doubt about 15 years ago when he was pushing cheap Fed money?
April 5th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
@Leelee for Obama: Reply icon is lost and gone forever (maybe). John was foolin’ around with the plugins on Friday, and a bug crept in that caused all sorts of awesome shit, like comments getting embedded within other comments. Only way to fix it was to kill the reply option.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
@ Zifnab
Yeah, but those are social programs which, by definition, are failures before they begin. The glorious Wingnut(not paid for) programs fulfill their intended purpose by causing the deceived sheeple to believe Republicans care about them and are worthy of their votes. They have the added benefit of making Democrats try to make them continue with no money. A win-win for the Atwater class strategists.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
History tells us the answer. When the CBO gets it wrong in reviewing health care measures, it is wrong in understimating savings from reforms. You can’t expect Greenspan to tell us the simple truth, however.
Fuck Uncle Alan.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
@ Sentient Puddle
Jeebus, I go to work a few days, and the whole place goeth kabloowey!
April 5th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
@ Mark S. @ 9
That settles it. If Cap’t Ed says they all went broke, they must have all gone broke. No need to link to any evidence of this fact.
AFAIK there are only 2 countries in Europe in serious doodoo. One is Iceland, which showed that it is a bit of a problem to have banks with liabilities worth 5 times the GDP in a country with only 300,000 people (cf. too big too fail).
The other is Greece, which showed that allowing a large part of the population to retire in their 40s isn’t really good for the economy.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
What ‘social democracies’ was he talking about going bankrupt. Germany, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden; last I looked they were doing much better than us.
Wait he meant like Iceland, Greece, or Lithuania. The dominant economies of Europe. Because their problems were caused by socialism; not unregulated free-market capitalism-on-steroids unfunded banking bets.
PS
The only thing that can piss me off more than lying ignorant right wingers is hitting submit before I put my name and email in the correct fields.
April 5th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Every so often I check back in to Hot Air and then kick my own butt (hurts less than a face plant). They have completely lost it over there and the comments are even worse. The hate and vitriol spewed is enough to make one either laugh hysterically at the stupidity, or throw up in disgust. Sometimes both…
I fear for your Country (coz eventually the asinine things you guys do eventually makes it way to my beautiful Canada).
P.S. Canada, our great ‘Soshalist Country’ didn’t fall apart at the seams either…
April 5th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE …
April 5th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
So then who gave the initial cost estimates for Medicare? Were they correct or is the rest of Ed’s assertion correct on this score?
April 5th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Leelee
All you missed was John calling us assholes when the reply went belly up. It was nothing like when he called up jackasses to set the tone.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Leelee
All you missed was John calling us assholes when the reply went belly up. It was nothing like when he called us jackasses to set the tone.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
O/T but the RNC chief of staff has just resigned.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
As usual, Capt Ed is right because y’all don’t know your history. Hitler instituted universal health care which caused mass illegal immigration from Israel, swamping the government in runaway entitlement costs that even his ban on handguns couldn’t stop, ultimately leading to hyperinflation of the papiermark and having to sell their beloved Budweiser to US capitalists. Even that wasn’t enough to set the economy back on track and Reagan had to ultimately ask Chuck Norris to go in and liberate their health care camps by force. Only Texas has the courage to teach our kids that the introduction of universal health care was the real cause of WWII.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
@ Maude
Ah, a chuckle with my information, that’s the ticket! Did someone touch the doll in the wrong place again?
April 5th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Makewi:
Who is they?
April 5th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Martin-that post needs to come with instructions for removing sandwich bits from my monitor. I await your assistance.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Ah, conservatives, spreading nonsense and idiocy about soshalized medicine for the last 50 or 60 years. At least they’re consistent.
-dms
April 5th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Ailuridae
See my first question. The they refers to whomever is the answer to that.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Makewi: No, it doesn’t work that way. Greenspan and Cap’n Ed are the ones making the claim. They’re the ones who have to find the estimates and show that said estimates were incorrect. That they were citing the work of a nonexistent at the time agency casts a certain doubt on the reliability of their research techniques.
-dms
April 5th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Makewi:
The problem with not knowing history (and it is a common conservative trait) is that one doesn’t realize that the CBO was created largely because there wasn’t an attempt to accurately assess the cost or efficiency of a program from a non-partisan perspective. So asking who the they were isn’t really a relevant question because whoever they were didn’t attempt to provide the same service as the CBO does.
Check out David in NY’s link that NORC did on CBO scoring of health care programs since its inception. The CBO have underestimated the savings in health care reforms and overestimate the costs in health care entitlements. That’s the CBO’s actual record as it relates to this issue
April 5th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
OT, but Bill E Pilgrim FTW in comment 1:
April 5th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Absolutely, dmsilev. Since Greenspan and Captain ed don’t post comments here, I just wondered if anyone was interested in a) correctly identifying the original estimates and b) seeing if the estimates were accurate or not.
The original agency that gave the initial estimates for the 1965 legislation that gave us Medicare was the House Ways and Means committee. BTW.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Ailuridae
So you can’t get there from here? Actually, it would seem to me that you could look at other CBO estimates to see how accurate they tend to be.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
There is a kernel of truth behind the notion that the CBO’s projections would have been wrong.
First, who predicted that we’d have 6% inflation for over 10 years after having 2.5% inflation for 70 years? When Republicans bitch about these programs, they’re always talking about nominal dollars, not real dollars, so that they can make everything sound worse.
Second, the popularity of Medicare and Medicaid have made politicians expand the programs greatly over time. So of course they cost more – they do more. And nobody ever mentions what it would cost to administer the medical system if they didn’t have these programs.
Republicans couldn’t even predict that there’d be a recession when we were in the middle of it.
April 5th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Leelee for O, for what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing. There is no arguing with a person like that, and it would have just brought the rest of the gathering down to continue with it. I have to say, in your first comment, I was skimming and I read, “Andrea…fucked…” in context with Greenspan, and I nearly hurled.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Makewi
Its pretty obvious why the House Ways and Means committee in 1965 shouldn’t be used to criticize the estimates of the CBO, right? They aren’t remotely similar entities. So, indeed, there is no “there” there. But in this thread there is a link to an actual study that looks at the CBO’s ability to score health care related legislation and you seem to not want to address it.
So here is the link (again)
http://www.commonwealthfund.or.....orm_ib.pdf
And my summary (again)
The CBO have underestimated the savings in health care reforms and overestimate the costs in health care entitlements. That’s the CBO’s actual record as it relates to this issue
So Ed and this now near pervasive conservameme? Bull shit
April 5th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Ailuridae
It shouldn’t be used to criticize the CBO in particular, but it shouldn’t be discounted out of hand in that it is an example of a government estimate regarding health care costs that was wildly out of whack with reality.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
It has to be said: This is good news for John McCain!
April 5th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
asiangrllMNThanks, and yeah, skimming that sentence could very well lead to nausea. Sorry about that.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
No, it shouldn’t be used to criticize CBO scoring at all because the staff of the House Ways and Means committee wasn’t remotely similar in scope, expertise or mission as the CBO.
Again, when you actually look at the CBO record on scoring health care programs here it is:
The CBO have underestimated the savings in health care reforms and overestimate the costs in health care entitlements. That’s the CBO’s actual record as it relates to this issue
That’s it.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Ailuridae
There are some legitimate criticisms of the way in which this was scored by the CBO.
I’m trying to point you to reasonable criticism and you just keep shaking your head and saying the CBO’s word is given from on high.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Nice link, Makewi! By which I mean: your html fails just as hard as everything else you do.
You probably saved me a trip to worldnewsdaily or freerepublic or some such horse-shit anyway, but feel free to try again, you miserable cretin.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
I’ll try again. You miserable cretin.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
@Eric U.—
Also, being wrong about the Iraq War is the only way to prove you were serious. Those who opposed it are dirty hippies who just opposed it because they were dirty hippies. Funny, it’s like these debates take place in an alternate universe. And by funny, I mean I’m going to get a drink now.
April 5th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Makewi;
I’m not arguing about the CBO’s scoring of the bill. I’m arguing that anyone criticizing the CBO’s record of scoring health care by talking about the House Ways and Means committees estimates of Medicare and Medicaid as you did is either wholly ignorant or dishonest. Take your pick
And did you just link to something by Peter Suderman? He’s just fucking stupid. Anyone arguing that the CBO didn’t score the bill accurately because it didn’t score a provision that’s both uncontroversial and also not in the bill (the Medicare doc fix) is a dishonest hack. Seriously. Do you even know what the typical Senate vote on extending the Doc fix tallies at?
Given how consistently vacuous your commentary is here (I wonder if you will ever understand a risk pool) it qualifies as high comedy to have you describe me as a cretin.
April 5th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
@Leelee for Obama:
You need to pay John for Platinum membership to access that option.
April 5th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
File under snark, but…..
Isn’t it time somebody put together a 3 hour comedy documentary of ass clowns of the late 20th and early 21st century?
I mean Cap’t Ed ain’t no spring chicken, and satan won’t keep Darth Cheney around forever.
April 5th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
The CBO was created for exactly this reason.
The people pushing a program aren’t likely to give you a very accurate prediction of what it will cost.
That’s why the CBO is a nonpartisan, independent agency with a high level of technical expertise. If anyone knows what a particular program will cost, it’s the CBO.
By this stupid rationale, the government shouldn’t do anything, including pass tax cuts, because they’re no way to be sure exactly what it will cost.
April 5th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
ds:
This sort of institution is seen as a valuable resource by liberals and hated as an intrusion on desired beliefs by conservatives.
For the same reason, conservatives don’t just hate ‘liberal’ or ‘mainstream’ journalism—they hate journalism.
April 5th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
AAAAAND “Mission Accomplished” by CNN:
Erick Erickson gets a book deal because the TV box gave the Macon Moron enough face time to say something controversial on the radio box, i.e., that he would shove a shotgun in the face of a Census worker coming to his porch for the ACS poll.
Okay, it’s a Regnery book deal, not a real book deal, but once he has a book out, even by the famed fake right wing publisher, Urk Urksum will be even more visible as a guest on programs.
THANK YOU JOHN KING & CNN!
April 5th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
I’m just glad Greenspan didn’t 1. draft the health care bill or, 2. score the health care bill, because, as we all now know, unequivocally and without a doubt, Greenspan is lousy at predictions.
Christ. Can you IMAGINE the arrogance of this person?
Wandering through the wreckage he created, dodging responsibility, he has the goddamn unmitigated gall to question a COST PREDICTION? THIS person? The person who thought using the family home as an ATM was sound money management? And still believes it?
What’s his cost projection on what taxpayers will end up paying to clean up after him and his toxic dogma? Let’s focus on that, in the next interview.
April 5th, 2010 at 10:43 pm