Ken Rogoff, you shoulda stuck to chess...

Give this a read. Like making fun of a retarded kid, it's really too bad to criticize.

Ken says we shouldn't use so much monetary and fiscal policy to fight recessions, and that the government impeded long-run growth by interfering in the Great Depression.

Those are fightin' words to an economic historian.

What's often lost is that, in deep recessions, R&D budgets are cut. R&D budgets in Japan today are certainly much smaller than they'd have been had Japanese central bankers figured out 15 years ago that all they need to do is print money. Instead, Ken tells us, what we need is less focus on these short-term issues like recessions, and instead simplify the tax code. This will lead to faster productivity growth, says he.

I feel like I've been fianchettoed...