The following are in response to Robert Huebscher’s article, The Misreading of Reinhart and Rogoff, which appeared on January 10:
Dear Editor,
The article challenging Reinhart and Rogoff was an astonishing piece a drivel. To try to rationalize "good deficits from bad deficits" by euphemistically calling massive government bureaucracy an investment shows the extent to which Keynesianism has become religion. In a mere 150 years we took a barren wilderness and turned it into a world economic superpower, all while funding a federal government that consumed about 3% of GDP – until Woodrow Wilson, the father of modern liberalism, took office and began our global nation building and planted the seeds for public entitlements.
And for you to even mention global warming in this article is beyond laughable. Even after "climategate" and all the real science done by Dr. Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, and Dr. Ian Plymer (the world's preeminent climate expert and author of Global Warming – The Missing Science) exposing the junk science and outright lies, for you to still hold on to such religion calls into question your objectivity as an analyst.
Just an aside, are you aware that the two French UN scientists who first posited advanced global warming theories back in 1988 recanted their concerns a few years ago? Thank goodness there is still some unbiased objectivity remaining in the scientific community, even in Europe! As Patrick Moynihan proffered, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."
Regards,
James P. Martin, CFA
Greystone Financial Group, Inc.
Troy, MI
Dear Editor,
Your article covered some good points, but simply put we need to have wide-eyed knowledge to make good policy decisions to allow the US to grow its way out of trouble. We have done it before and with good policy we can do it again. It is what free enterprise can do… if it is freely practiced.
However, Huebscher lost me when he said that cap-and-trade was good-debt policy, for it is bad policy. I agree that debt paid for beneficial growth-oriented investments that is paid back over time is good for us all. But debt that supports bad policy that does not create growth is suicide.
As a 38-year industrial scientist who has studied the science behind global warming, I offer some facts for review:
- During the Ice Age, there was one mile of ice over what is now the mid-west of the US. Now we have the Great Lakes, all created by natural global warming without human intervention.
- Archeologists have proven that Greenland was actually green from around 900 to 1300 AD, having found farm implements along the coast and well inland of Greenland. Good wine was made in Britain during that time by the Romans. Compared to today, there was very little carbon burned during this time.
- From around 1300 to 1850, the earth cooled and it is well documented during the Revolutionary War at Valley Forge, and when Washington crossed the Delaware.
- Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) was the German physicist who invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709 and the mercury thermometer in 1714. In 1724, he introduced the temperature scale that bears his name – the Fahrenheit Scale. Recorded history began. Wide use of thermometers began in the mid 1800s.
