Search Results for: niall ferguson

by Conor Clarke

I'm sure Niall Ferguson is a fine historian. But his real talent, it seems, is for digging ditches. Paul Krugman and Jim Fallows have written good posts on this already, but it strikes me as worthy of further attention that Ferguson is now doubling down and defending his original argument that what "pretty much sums up" the 44th president of the United States is that, like Felix the Cat, he is "not only black" but "very, very lucky."

Basically, Ferguson's response to the original criticism was to write a snippy blog post, and then email Henry Louis Gates to confirm that Felix the Cat was not African American, and, thus, that Ferguson is not a racist. Swell. Emailing Gates for help is really a whisker's length away from an explicit "but I have black friends!" argument, but let's put that aside for a moment. Ferguson's response has also done an impressive job of missing the point.

Fallows makes an important point:

A little earlier I had a testy on-stage exchange with [Niall Ferguson] about the United States and China. He said that U.S. budget deficits would lead to the certain collapse of the U.S.-China relationship, since China would cut off further credit to the spendthrift Yanks. I said that might sound like a neat theory but reflected no awareness of actual Chinese incentives and behavior, and that the showdown he considered "inevitable" in fact would not occur. As it has not.

Niall has made considerable contributions to the argument that holding US bonds is a strategic device advancing China's rise. Back in 2011, Fareed Zakaria broke down why this is off-base:

Here in the U.S. you hear many people worry that the Chinese government might stop buying American T-Bills. I think these fears are vastly overblown. The economic situation between China and the U.S. is the financial version of mutually assured destruction – that cold war doctrine of nuclear deterrence…. China is addicted to a strategy of export-led growth, which requires that it keep its goods cheap. This means keeping its currency undervalued. That's why it buys dollars.

In a 2010 post, economist Michael Pettis framed the issue in a little more detail:

Niall defends his article and, on the CBO Obamacare numbers, claims that I don't "understand the issue that well." He says that none of the critics have addressed the substance of the piece – and that it's all a liberal lynch mob. That's insane. He's right that calls for him to be fired are egregious … Continue reading Ferguson Returns Fire

Richard Green counters the above chart, taken from Niall's article: Niall Ferguson is horrified at the prospect that total Chinese GDP will catch the US in 2017.  Let us leave aside for a second the fact that if China's total GDP matches the US', its people will still be less than 1/4 as affluent, or the fact that … Continue reading Fisking Ferguson IV

In his cover-story, first fisked here, Niall writes: The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period. Krugman wants a correction: … Continue reading Fisking Ferguson II

A rip-roaring endorsement from my old friend, Niall. My thoughts later: