I was just thinking again about that time Cochrane was spotted dining with Paul Ryan-and a rich hedge fund manager-actually, they were 'sipping expensive wine', a $700 bottle of wine.
"It didn’t take long for TPM readers to identify the two like minded conservatives with whom Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) shared two pricey $350 bottles of Pinot Noir Wednesday night."
A few interesting asides. The number 700 is kind of interesting as it vaguely recalls another 700, namely the $700 billion of the initially TARP bank bailout. Also I remember Sumner's reaction at the time when this became a story back in 2011. It was in July, so right in the middle of the first round of debt ceiling chicken and here he was sitting in Paul Ryan's lap-who just happened to be one of the leading hostage takers. Doesn't the 'fuck you' to Feinberg kind of feel like what Cochrane and his friends answer was to the larger public-that he basically has told us all to 'F-off?'
Someone had made a rather acerbic reference to this expensive dinner in the Money Illusion comments section and Sumner had-naturally-defended his esteemed friend-Cochrane, along with Lucas and Prescott- is almost a kind of father figure for Sumner. He insisted that Cochrane was in no way being bribed by expensive wine-he was a man of fearsome integrity.
I certainly don't think that this dinner in any way shaped anything he later would say. I mean he'd been a true blue believer in the self correcting market-provided it's left alone-when Ryan was in diapers, if not before. Still the experience does in some way recall Zizek-and therefore by definition Lacan-on the question of enjoyment-'jouissance'-and morality-'doing the right thing.'
While in Zizek, if you do something because you enjoy it, you are not engaging in what he calls 'a proper ethical attitude', ergo doing something because ou enjoy it is not an ethical act, he did make the interesting point once that on the other hand there's nothing if you do the right thing for some other reason and it just so happens that you at the same time get what you want anyway.
He then had some anecdote about a psychoanalyst he told his analysand that he should break up with his wife as they weren't right for each other anymore and later the man saw his doctor out with his wife. Zizek argued that in this case the analyst did nothing wrong as he didn't lie to the man in order to get his wife, he told the truth. Basically, fortuitously for this doctor two things just happened to be true:
A). His patient and his wife were no longer right for each other
B). His patent's wife along with he himself were now right for each other.
So he behaved in a properly ethical way and got what he wanted all in one fell swoop. For some background on Zizek, and a major paper where he discusses what constitutes the Ethical Act-for he and Lacan-see here.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/kant-and-sade-the-ideal-couple/
Sometimes you're just a lucky ducky he's ethical duty and selfish wants mesh. Sometimes they don't and you're not so lucky, In this case the Doctor was lucky, his patient unlucky. Similary, Cochrane was lucky, others-like us 47 percenters-were less lucky.
What got me thikning about this was actually that I'm in the middle of an excellent book by Phillip Mirowski Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown.
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Serious-Crisis-Waste-Neoliberalism/dp/1781680795/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379251596&sr=1-1
Note that's Neoliberalism not Neoclassicalism a mistake I myself made initially. NC is a problem for Mirowski, but NL is a horse of another color-it traces its lineage back for Hayek, Friedman, and von Mises and the initial meeting of the Mt. Perelin Society in the late 40s. It's fascinating as he both starts from a very specific group of people who are the Neoliberals-avoiding simply calling everyone you might think is too 'Right of Center' as being yet another Neolib-thereby taking away any meaning to the designation at all.
He managed to trace from this group-even now the NLs are a clear, limited group of people-those in the MP society and some people who are associated with them. The book certainly doesn't just take easy shots and stop as superficial criticism. Indeed, early in the book-on the first page I believe-he makes me wonder if this is in fact a Waite-y book, with an allusion to Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence of the Same, suggesting that the non-death of NL was such a case of ER.
By 'Waite-y' I mean in the spirit of Geoff Waite
http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsches-Corps-Technoculture-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822317192/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379257102&sr=1-1&keywords=geoff+waite
Then later on in discussing austerity and the pain lenders inflict on borrowers he invokes Nietzsche again as the 'Philosopher of Cruelty.' Another Waite-y aspect is his talk of the 'everyday experience of Neoliberalism.' Anyway, what got me on Cochrane is I just got to where he mentioned Cochrane's $700 glass of wine.
Another who has read Mirkowski here is Mike Norman.
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/07/mike-konczal-mirowski-on-vacuum-and.html
Whether or not Sumner would qualify as a NL-and I agree that Mirkowski is totally right in not allowing to many to be Neoliberals-I think he's had no little impact in favor of NL either. I don't know if he's familiar with Sumner but I think Sumner has had a huge impact. Just how much and in what way will only be clear later-as well as it's more for good or ill.
UPDATE: For a quick intro to Mirkowski see this 'interview.'
http://estudiosdelaeconomia.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/facebook-teaches-you-how-to-be-a-neoliberal-agent-an-interview-with-philip-mirowski/
"It didn’t take long for TPM readers to identify the two like minded conservatives with whom Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) shared two pricey $350 bottles of Pinot Noir Wednesday night."
"The two names repeatedly flooded into TPM’s e-mail since our story on Ryan’s big spending night first ran Friday, and we spent the next 24 hours trying to reach the pair to confirm their identities and get their side of the story."
"The three men were spotted ordering the $700 worth of wine at Bistro Bis on Capitol Hill by an associate professor of business at Rutgers University named Susan Feinberg. After dining in the same restaurant with her husband, Feinberg confronted Ryan and his pals about the high-end wine. The exchange became contentious. Ryan professed not to know the price of the wine, and one of his buddies responded to Feinberg’s chastisement by loudly saying, “Fuck her,” Feinberg told TPM.
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/07/mike-konczal-mirowski-on-vacuum-and.htmlA few interesting asides. The number 700 is kind of interesting as it vaguely recalls another 700, namely the $700 billion of the initially TARP bank bailout. Also I remember Sumner's reaction at the time when this became a story back in 2011. It was in July, so right in the middle of the first round of debt ceiling chicken and here he was sitting in Paul Ryan's lap-who just happened to be one of the leading hostage takers. Doesn't the 'fuck you' to Feinberg kind of feel like what Cochrane and his friends answer was to the larger public-that he basically has told us all to 'F-off?'
Someone had made a rather acerbic reference to this expensive dinner in the Money Illusion comments section and Sumner had-naturally-defended his esteemed friend-Cochrane, along with Lucas and Prescott- is almost a kind of father figure for Sumner. He insisted that Cochrane was in no way being bribed by expensive wine-he was a man of fearsome integrity.
I certainly don't think that this dinner in any way shaped anything he later would say. I mean he'd been a true blue believer in the self correcting market-provided it's left alone-when Ryan was in diapers, if not before. Still the experience does in some way recall Zizek-and therefore by definition Lacan-on the question of enjoyment-'jouissance'-and morality-'doing the right thing.'
While in Zizek, if you do something because you enjoy it, you are not engaging in what he calls 'a proper ethical attitude', ergo doing something because ou enjoy it is not an ethical act, he did make the interesting point once that on the other hand there's nothing if you do the right thing for some other reason and it just so happens that you at the same time get what you want anyway.
He then had some anecdote about a psychoanalyst he told his analysand that he should break up with his wife as they weren't right for each other anymore and later the man saw his doctor out with his wife. Zizek argued that in this case the analyst did nothing wrong as he didn't lie to the man in order to get his wife, he told the truth. Basically, fortuitously for this doctor two things just happened to be true:
A). His patient and his wife were no longer right for each other
B). His patent's wife along with he himself were now right for each other.
So he behaved in a properly ethical way and got what he wanted all in one fell swoop. For some background on Zizek, and a major paper where he discusses what constitutes the Ethical Act-for he and Lacan-see here.
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/kant-and-sade-the-ideal-couple/
Sometimes you're just a lucky ducky he's ethical duty and selfish wants mesh. Sometimes they don't and you're not so lucky, In this case the Doctor was lucky, his patient unlucky. Similary, Cochrane was lucky, others-like us 47 percenters-were less lucky.
What got me thikning about this was actually that I'm in the middle of an excellent book by Phillip Mirowski Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown.
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Serious-Crisis-Waste-Neoliberalism/dp/1781680795/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379251596&sr=1-1
Note that's Neoliberalism not Neoclassicalism a mistake I myself made initially. NC is a problem for Mirowski, but NL is a horse of another color-it traces its lineage back for Hayek, Friedman, and von Mises and the initial meeting of the Mt. Perelin Society in the late 40s. It's fascinating as he both starts from a very specific group of people who are the Neoliberals-avoiding simply calling everyone you might think is too 'Right of Center' as being yet another Neolib-thereby taking away any meaning to the designation at all.
He managed to trace from this group-even now the NLs are a clear, limited group of people-those in the MP society and some people who are associated with them. The book certainly doesn't just take easy shots and stop as superficial criticism. Indeed, early in the book-on the first page I believe-he makes me wonder if this is in fact a Waite-y book, with an allusion to Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence of the Same, suggesting that the non-death of NL was such a case of ER.
By 'Waite-y' I mean in the spirit of Geoff Waite
http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsches-Corps-Technoculture-Post-Contemporary-Interventions/dp/0822317192/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1379257102&sr=1-1&keywords=geoff+waite
Then later on in discussing austerity and the pain lenders inflict on borrowers he invokes Nietzsche again as the 'Philosopher of Cruelty.' Another Waite-y aspect is his talk of the 'everyday experience of Neoliberalism.' Anyway, what got me on Cochrane is I just got to where he mentioned Cochrane's $700 glass of wine.
Another who has read Mirkowski here is Mike Norman.
http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2013/07/mike-konczal-mirowski-on-vacuum-and.html
Whether or not Sumner would qualify as a NL-and I agree that Mirkowski is totally right in not allowing to many to be Neoliberals-I think he's had no little impact in favor of NL either. I don't know if he's familiar with Sumner but I think Sumner has had a huge impact. Just how much and in what way will only be clear later-as well as it's more for good or ill.
UPDATE: For a quick intro to Mirkowski see this 'interview.'
http://estudiosdelaeconomia.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/facebook-teaches-you-how-to-be-a-neoliberal-agent-an-interview-with-philip-mirowski/
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