Good Work, Guys

Amaranth grain, native to South Africa, but somehow growing in our garden.

First, a quick up-date on yesterday's post. Last week the Occupy movement had moved to 640 cities world wide. Today, that number has risen to 1200 and on Saturday 20 Canadian cities will see Occupy rallies. Because we have a relatively healthy economy, I would suggest that the rallies, at least here in Canada, will attract a myriad of groups of activists with a myriad of causes. Protest for protest's sake.

But today we hear about two fellows who have been working for years in the field of economics. They have developed economic models to determine the effectiveness of government fiscal policies. Finance ministers, banks, and universities all over the world have been using their models.

“Central to research the two conducted separately in the 1970s were efforts to model and quantify cause and effect in economies,” explained the wire story, “including the complex interplay of state and central bank policy with the expectations of people and businesses.”

“One of the main tasks of macroeconomic research is to comprehend how both shocks and systematic policy shifts affect macroeconomic variables in the short and long run,” the Nobel Academy waffled on in a typically lofty statement. “Sargent’s and Sims’s awarded research contributions have been indispensable to this work.”

This not a joke. These two have had a hand in the biggest world wide economic disaster of the last century, and their recognition and reward? They have been awarded the Noble Economic Prize!
Reminds me a bit of a few years ago when Yaser Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize.