Sure you've got a Nobel Prize, but are you QUALIFIED???

by: Paul Rosenberg

Mon Oct 11, 2010 at 18:30

In quick hits, Mark Matson notes:

Obama Fed Board Nominee, Whom Republicans Hold Up Due To "Qualifications", Wins Nobel

From Krugman

My former colleague Peter Diamond, along with Dale Mortenson and Chris Pissarides, has won the Nobel. Richly deserved. The prize is for work on frictions in markets, which is very important stuff; but Peter, an incredibly profound thinker, has done much much more.

And yes, this is the same Peter Diamond whose nomination to the Fed board has been held up because of Republican doubts about his qualifications.

Here's Krugman's earlier post on the blocking of Diamond:

Peter Diamond, Macro Maven
This is disgusting: Senate Republicans holding up Peter Diamond's nomination to the Federal Reserve Board on the grounds that he may not be qualified to make monetary policy. Aside from the fact that the same Senators cheerfully confirmed Bush nominees who didn't know much about economics of any kind, this is especially stupid right now.

Why? Because right now one of the hot topics is whether the apparent shift in the Beveridge curve signals a rise in structural unemployment - and Diamond wrote the seminal paper on the whole subject - the top result on Google scholar.

Diamond is exactly the man we need - which, given the way things have been going lately, probably means he won't get confirmed.

Update: Some commenters note, correctly, that there's an ongoing dispute over what the rise in vacancies without a corresponding fall in unemployment means. But that's precisely the point: we want Peter Diamond, who pioneered the whole study of this subject, in the Fed, where he can help make sense of the situation.

But there's really not that much new about this.  Republicans have long had contempt for science, and for the Nobel Prize (whether or not you count economics as a "science").  All that's different now is that they fillibuster everyone in sight.  But the Nobel prize is purely an incidental matter so far as that's concerned.

The book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway is one long horror show of conservative/GOP animosity towards science--often carried out by scientists themselves whose own ideological commitments overwhelmed their common sense and common decency, as well as their grasp of their proper roles as scientists.

Via Brad DeLong, a little more detail on Diamond:

Forgive Me Godwin, For What I Am About To Do

by: Paul Rosenberg

Sat Dec 13, 2008 at 16:29

I think of Nazi Germany first of all because of how incredibly destructive of their own nation our superpatriots are.  I think, as well, of how popular they were when they were on a roll militarily.  And I think of how fragmented and irresolute the opposition is, as well.

I say "Forgive me, Godwin," because none of this is meant to argue that the GOP are Nazis.  They are, of course, ruthless, amoral authoritarians.  But that only makes them kissing cousins.  And the Nazis have oodles of them.  No, it's sheer destructiveness of their self-righteous fury in taking down a once-mighty nation that has captured my attention.

That, and Valkerie, which is based on the 20 July Plot, itself the fruition of a long-simmering conspiracy among the German intelligence agencies and military to get rid of Hitler--a conspiracy that first got under way well before the beginning of WWII.  And the ultimate sheer futility of this effort reminds me of different things across our political specrtum, not least of which are the quaint attempts of different folks to rehabilitate conservatism, just as conservatism takes a bead on the Great Lakes area (gun country!) and prepares to blow it all away.