Recently in Obituaries Category

Alan Stockman, the Marie C. and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester, died January 14 after a long battle with cancer. He was 58.

A talented teacher, inspiring mentor, and respected scholar, Professor Stockman made major contributions to the fields of international finance and macroeconomics, publishing seminal papers on exchange rates and international business cycles. He is remembered by colleagues as a man whose infectious enthusiasm for economics was characteristic of his general approach to life.

"He had a passion for ideas and a childlike pleasure in all things," said Steven Landsburg, professor of economics at the University, who was a close friend of Professor Stockman since their days as doctoral candidates at the University of Chicago. "He had a sparkling, bubbling enthusiasm" that came through whether he was discussing economic theory, playing a guitar, or participating in one of the department's musical skits, Landsburg recalled.

"He was willing to talk to colleagues anytime and anyplace, whether it be about economics or anything else. He had a wonderful clarity of thought and an ability to analyze problems," adds Michael Wolkoff, deputy chair of the Department of Economics. "He was a very warm, generous person. He truly had many friends in the department and the profession."

I used Stockman's intro textbook most of the way through my grad school years as both TA and instructor and for a year or two when I first started teaching full time.  I still have a copy and refer to it occasionally for an example or exercise.  I corresponded with him on one occasion about the book and received a gracious reply.  Over the years, I heard only wonderful things about him.  He will be missed.

Rose Director Friedman passed away Tuesday, August 18, 2009, in her home in Davis, California, of heart failure. While the exact date of her birth is uncertain, she is believed to have been 98 years old.

She will be remembered both as a talented economist and an influential advocate of freedom. Her economic work helped to discredit the idea of government management of the economy, rolling back policies that were hindering wealth creation and thus helping extend the blessings of prosperity to millions around the world. And as a standard-bearer for human liberty, she contributed to the galvanizing of public opinion - especially in the 1980s - against the growing encroachments of intrusive government.

She will also be remembered as both the professional partner and beloved wife and friend of her late husband of 68 years, Milton Friedman.

And, in addition to her many other accomplishments, Rose had the distinction of being the only person ever known to have won an argument against Milton Friedman.

Leo Hurwicz, recipient of the 2008 Nobel in economics has passed away at the age of 90. He was the oldest person to receive the prize.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007

Here's my post from last October upon Hurwicz, Maskin, and Myerson receiving the prize.

From the NY Times:

Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

...

Among his legacies are Clarke’s Three Laws, provocative observations on science, science fiction and society that were published in his “Profiles of the Future” (1962):

¶“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

¶“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

¶“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The last of those I have heard quoted a lot. And did you know that geosynchronous orbits are called Clarke orbits? He dreamed of things that some thought impossible, and some of those dreams have come true.

William F. Buckley Jr. has passed away at the age of 82. I certainly wouldn't say that I agreed with him on everything. But I did enjoy Firing Line. (Some episodes are available online at the Hoover Institution.) Wherever you stood on the issues, those shows did a lot more to advance the public debate than the fluff you see on cable news shows today.

I think the most fitting thing to post today would be to recall my post on the death of Buckley's intellectual sparring partner and friend, John Kenneth Galbraith. Here's the last paragraph of my comments from that post, with only the name changed. It sounds just as true.

Tonight, I cannot help but reflect on what it means to be liberal or conservative in the major policy debates of today and how our debates and the circumstances of our time will influence the intellectuals of the next generation. I hope that our time can produce a few liberals and conservatives with the passion and conviction of Buckley, but I suspect that there will never be another quite like him.

Links: NY Times Obituary, WSJ Commentary by Buckley on how he and others neutralized the influence of the John Birch Society, some previously published material in Slate, a remembrance from Robert Lawson of the Division of Labour blog, comments from Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution--including a link to some YouTube videos. I know I'll be watching a few of them.

This blog will proudly wear the colors of Northern Illinois University until Monday evening. Western Illinois University is also paying tribute on their web site with NIU colors. A vigil will be held at 3pm on Monday in the University Union.

Clip art by T.C. Design

Edward "Ned" Gramlich, who warned of the consequences of lax standards in the banking sector while a governor at the Federal Reserve, has passed away at the age of 68.

From a Bloomberg article on Gramlich today:

"Sometimes one's advice must be weighted toward economic practicality, sometimes toward humanity,'' Gramlich told the Senate Banking Committee. "A good economist should know how to balance both objectives.''

By that measure, Ned Gramlich was a "good economist".

Here are some of the links to articles reporting on Gramlich's passing.

Wall Street Journal

Months ago Mr. Gramlich agreed to give a luncheon address at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Since he was too sick to attend, his prepared remarks were delivered Friday by David Wilcox, deputy director of research at the Fed. Mr. Wilcox, before delivering the remarks, said he and the rest of the staff felt a special bond to Mr. Gramlich because he had been a staff economist there in the 1960s. Mr. Gramlich found "it perfectly natural to treat us all truly as colleagues when he returned as a governor."

Reuters
Forbes
Washington Post
Statement from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke
Urban Institute Press Release

From the NY Times,

Don Herbert, who unlocked the wonders of science for youngsters of the 1950s and ’60s as television’s Mr. Wizard, died yesterday at his home in the Bell Canyon section of Los Angeles. He was 89.

The cause was bone cancer, his son-in-law Tom Nikosey told The Associated Press in confirming the death.

Mr. Herbert held no advanced degree in science, he used household items in his TV lab, and his assistants were boys and girls. But he became an influential showman-science teacher on his half-hour “Watch Mr. Wizard” programs, which ran on NBC from 1951 to 1965.

And the LA Times recounts this story. (Hat tip to Betsy's Page for the article.)

Not every Mr. Wizard experiment went according to plan.

In "Saturday Morning TV," a 1981 book by Gary H. Grossman, Herbert recalled pouring two colorless solutions into one glass and then announced that the solution would turn black before he counted to nine.

"I got up to 20 and decided I'd better stop," he recalled. "I explained that apparently other factors like temperature and acidity had interfered with the experiment."

But as he finished his explanation, the liquid changed color.

"It was embarrassing, certainly, but I discovered the answer," he said. "We hadn't used a fresh solution, so the reaction was slower than expected."

I am not old enough to remember the original NBC series, but I have seen some of those episodes shown on The Science Channel. By the time he revived the concept for the Nickelodeon network in the 1980s, I was a little older than his target demographic, but I still was fascinated by it. I remember thinking, "Why isn't there more stuff like this on TV?" Today we have The Science Channel, Bill Nye, and of course, the Mythbusters; but Mr. Wizard started it all and no one has done it quite like he did.

And he did it with class. No big budget effects. No gimmicks. You could try it at home.

A lot of us did. Thanks, Mr. Wizard.

The official Mr. Wizard website.

UPDATE: Wired News interviewed Herbert last month. It doesn't surprise me at all that he liked the Science Channel too.

WN: Are there any current science shows that you find particularly educational or entertaining?

Herbert: The Discovery Science Channel.

WN: Do you think that you were an inspiration for the science programming that has become very popular on the Discovery Channel?

Herbert: Maybe.

Go read the rest of the interview.

David Warsh places Richard Musgrave's work in the context of one of the more interesting discussions in economics. Economists are increasingly speaking of goods being either rival or nonrival rather than public or private. The distiction between rival and nonrival deals essentially with the question of whether the good can be enjoyed by more than one person at once. The pen in my pocket is rival. The movie I saw on the screen in the theater a couple weeks ago was nonrival. Musgrave originated the use of that terminology, but it took a while for it to enter general use.

Go read it at Warsh's site, Economic Principals. A Week, Long Ago, in Biarritz

PGL at Angry Bear picks up on my comments from last night, as I hoped someone would. He quotes extensively from the 10 point WIN proposal and notes that Ford also called for capital gains tax cuts and investment tax credits. So allow me to call attention to point number nine:

Number nine: Federal taxes and spending. To support programs, to increase production and share inflation-produced hardships, we need additional tax revenues.

I am aware that any proposal for new taxes just 4 weeks before a national election is, to put it mildly, considered politically unwise. And I am frank to say that I have been earnestly advised to wait and talk about taxes anytime after November 5. But I do say in sincerity that I will not play politics with America's future.

Our present inflation to a considerable degree comes from many years of enacting expensive programs without raising enough revenues to pay for them. The truth is that 19 out of the 25 years I had the honor and the privilege to serve in this Chamber, the Federal Government ended up with Federal deficits. That is not a very good batting average.

By now, almost everybody--almost everybody else, I should say--has stated my position on Federal gasoline taxes. This time I will do it myself. I am not-emphasizing not--asking you for any increase in gas taxes.

I am--I am asking you to approve a 1-year temporary tax surcharge of 5 percent on corporate and upper-level individual incomes. This would generally exclude from the surcharge those families with gross incomes below $15,000 a year. The estimated $5 billion in extra revenue to be raised by this inflation-fighting tax should pay for the new programs I have recommended in this message.

Ford was not a Pigouvian--that much is certain. However, one can see that his understanding of fiscal policy was probably more nuanced than that of many presidents due to his experience in the House. In point number five, he asked for spending to help provide public service employment during the time of recession (you might think he sounds like a quaint New Dealer at this point). But he realizes that this together with the investment tax credits would balloon the deficit if there wasn't some kind of offsetting tax increase. This is the point that I wanted to make earlier, and I thank PGL for the comment that gave me an excuse to refine the point.

This point number nine in the WIN proposal was, however, the only place I could find reference to Ford calling for tax increases, which is why in yesterdays post I was careful to state that he called for tax cuts as well. But, like PGL, I found this to be a rather curious thing. As PGL points out, Ford also calls for monetary restraint and lower interest rates as well. There were some contradictions there. After reading the whole proposal, I get the feeling that he was trying to be revenue neutral (increasing some taxes and decreasing others) while stimulating economic growth and reducing inflation. The cynic in me wonders why he didn't ask for a pony as well, since this was already an impossible list.

But the better part of me wants to cut him some slack. This was two months after taking office in a most undesirable way and one month after making a tough decision that cost him politically. Why not lay it all out on the line? WIN was an impossible dream. Anyone who thought it would whip inflation and bring back prosperity before the 1975 State of the Union Address was not being honest with himself. But Ford did start the ball rolling on some important initiatives that included tax reform and regulatory reform. And the WIN speech was where some of those ideas were rolled out. As usual, Gerald Ford was thinking beyond the next political cycle. Such thinking tends not to get one re-elected, but we could use a bit more of it. The biggest problem with WIN, as I see it, was that it was bound to fail as a short-run solution even though certain aspects of it would have carried long-term benefits. That is a familiar problem in political economy.

As the months wore on, it was the tax cuts that took center stage in Ford's economic policy, but his was not a policy of tax cuts for the wealthy alone. He vetoed a bill that didn't include enough tax relief for the middle class and that didn't include spending cuts.

PGL concludes:

By the time Gerald Ford made this speech, the unemployment rate had increased from 4.9% to 5.9%. By May 1975, the unemployment rate reached 9% and still at 7.7% when voters went to the polls to decide between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. My problem with the WIN program was less its details and more with the fact that this President seemed to ignore the fact that we were on the verge of a rather significant recession.

Check that. By NBER dating, the economy had already been in recession for just short of a year when he made this speech and was only 5 months away from pulling out of it. The labor market is a lagging indicator, so while the unemployment rate was still high, it was trending downward as Carter took office. He was a victim of poor timing in that regard. That is, unless you are going to tell me that the continuation of that trend and a decline of 1% in the unemployment rate in Jimmy Carter's first 12 months in office was due to Carter's economic policies. If so, I would respectfully disagree. Remember also that Ford had to work with a heavily Democratic congress. The wheels turned slowly. The divided government, while perhaps slowing the recovery, also kept either side from pushing the pendulum too far to either side and led to a slow but sustained recovery until the oil crisis reared its head again in Carter's term.

President Ford was dealt a really bad hand. He restored a measure of respect to the office and kept a bad economy from deteriorating any further. He used the power of the veto pen to stand up for fiscal responsibility. He put the nation's interests ahead of his own more than once. He did all this with civility and grace that is becoming ever more rare. He is not the sort of person we tend to elect, but he was there when his country called. He leaves a meaningful legacy to American politics.

UPDATE: Macroblog has more discussion of WIN. David Altig writes:

Seen through contemporary eyes, it is clear that the President Ford's speech hopelessly entangled shocks to relative prices with ongoing inflation of monetary origins.

Indeed. It was, to be blunt, a rather confused attempt to set out inflation's cause and cure. It was a political attack on a monetary problem. It's more about taxes, spending, and conservation. Altig continues:

Are there are any kind words to be found about all of this? More thoughts to follow.

I have tried to find kind words. However, I want to be clear that my kind words are more about what Ford's longer term objectives may have been, and what some of the WIN proposals, and indeed Ford's proposals more generally, were designed to do. I still think that WIN was misleading advertising and a set-up for failure in the short-term. But it was better than Nixon's price controls. Are those the kindest words? I look forward to hearing David's additional thoughts.

UPDATE: Altig does have some nice words to say. James Hamilton, on the other hand, is less charitable. Hamilton says:

And, despite the clever arguments that Dave brings up in the WIN button's favor, I think one great disservice of that campaign was to cultivate the misperception that inflation is somehow the responsibility of ordinary U.S. citizens. In my view, maintaining the purchasing power of a dollar is instead exclusively the responsibility of the people who control how many dollars get printed.

In the long run, yes. In the short run, other things do affect measured inflation, and WIN tried to affect some of these. I still think that it was ill-advised and a set up for failure because it created expectations that could never be fulfilled in the short run (because of politics and policy lags) or the long run (because of Hamilton's argument). Though you must admit that Ford was between a rock and a hard place on this, and although the buttons may have been overkill, some of the policies were worth a shot.

Washington Post obituary

John Palmer (EclectEcon) writes:

Two decades ago, while I was visiting the University of Hawaii, I off-handedly threw out the opinion that Gerald Ford had been the best president in the history of the United States. Mac, an economic historian there, allowed that I might have been right (but also offered up Warren G. Harding).

My statement was based on the complaint that so many people had about Ford: he didn't do anything. I always replied, "I rest my case."

King Banaian at SCSU Scholars writes:

It's hard to go back and find the policies that would have whipped inflation in 1975-76 given how buggered the economy was under Nixon's wage and price control policies and the ending of Bretton Woods. There's little question that Jimmy Carter's misery index lines in his stump speech helped push Ford out of the White House (I have never thought it was just the pardon.)

At least he didn't fall back on Nixonian wage and price controls. He was, you might say, in a no-WIN situation. King also points us to an article by David Gore which quotes Alan Greenspan:

While I felt fairly close to his general point of view on economic policy problems, my initial impression was that he was not really capable of abstractly articulating a philosophy. Because of that, I sensed that he wasn't fully in control of the general framework of the policy decisions he was making on a day-by-day basis. But if you began to look at the concrete decision making process, what came through was a very sophisticated and consistent framework. Within perhaps a year, maybe even less, I was able to forecast how he would come out on individual issues with virtually zero error. I then began to conclude that this was not an accident. So, while he was not consciously or verbally in control of a general philosophy toward economic policy, he nonetheless had a fairly sophisticated view.

Greenspan found what I and others have also noticed. The more you study Ford, the more you realize that he had a better grasp of what was going on than anyone gave him credit for at the time.

President Gerald R. Ford Jr. has passed away at the age of 93. In the course of his life, he faced tough choices on a number of occasions. The one that immediately comes to mind would put him in the history books forever, and played a role in ending his political career. One that you may not know about was right after he graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in economics. He was offered a chance to play professional football (the Packers and the Lions both wanted him) but chose instead to take a job at Yale as an assistant football and boxing coach and the chance to attend law school there. (He did not begin taking classes at Yale until three years later.) While it is true that professional football in the '30s is a world away from today's NFL, it still was a matter of turning down something that many people would have jumped at in favor of a chance at something bigger.

Then in 1942, before he can even get his law career off the ground, he answers his country's call and volunteers for duty in the U.S. Navy. This came even as he had been staunchly opposed to American involvement in the war in the '30s at Yale. He served honorably, and upon his discharge he returned to Michigan where he quickly became involved in the local political scene.

President Ford never sought the highest office in the land. He was, as television reporters are discussing this evening, a "man of the House." It was his work in the House of Representatives that he made his name as "a moderate in domestic affairs, a conservative in fiscal affairs, and a dyed-in-the-wool internationalist in foreign affairs." (Notice the touch of irony in his referring to himself as a "dyed-in-the-wool" internationalist when he had been an isolationist at Yale.) His leadership in that role led to his selection by President Johnson to the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. Through the '60s and early '70s, he was a big name in the Republican party with the likes of Goldwater, Dirksen, Reagan, and Nixon. When Spiro Agnew resigned as vice-president, Nixon needed to nominate a replacement. Most of all, he needed someone who could pass muster with congress quickly. Ford rose to the top of the list of big names--most of whom would have faced more congressional opposition. Upon Nixon's resignation a few months later, Ford became the first president in U.S. history who had not been elected to either the office of president or vice-president.

It was at this moment that he had his greatest choice to make. He chose to pardon his predecessor. This was a risky move. Some would say that it cost him the election in 1976, and this is likely true. But thirty years on it is widely regarded as the right decision, and one which has caused his stature in the pantheon of presidents to increase with the passage of time. It has been that passage of time that has allowed the world to see now what he saw clearly then--that prolonging the Watergate scandal would not have been in the best interest of the country. In a very real sense, American politics has still not recovered from Watergate. How much worse would it be if investigations, trials, and appeals would have dragged on into the '80s. President Ford said it best when he pronounced, "It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."

This accidental president then set about the task of governing a nation whose faith in its leaders had been shattered, whose involvement in a foreign conflict was ending badly, and whose domestic economy was plagued with problems. As would later state when he accepted his party's nomination in 1976, "To me, the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency were not prizes to be won, but a duty to be done." This wasn't false modesty, but true humility--one of President Ford's defining characteristics.

One of his early tasks was to fight inflation. In October 1974, only two months after taking office, Ford presented a 10 point plan to, as he put it, "Whip Inflation Now (WIN)." Looking back on the proposal, we see that he got some things right, but of course it wasn't until the Federal Reserve got serious about things that inflation really started to come under control. Ford wanted to remove acreage restrictions on farming, improve enforcement of antitrust laws, and improve energy conservation. He rejected price controls (a welcome departure from Nixon's policies) and even called for increased taxes (though he later called for tax cuts). All of these were steps in the right direction for a number of reasons (many of which not having to do with inflation) but it wasn't great strategy. Asking people to walk to work and waste less food was not going to cut it when M2 money stock was growing at double-digit rates. Economically speaking, it wasn't a shining moment.

The most unfortunate aspect of this episode was that it set Ford up for failure on the domestic economic front. The economy was beginning to suffer a productivity slowdown, the extent and severity of which was unknown to anyone at the time. Capital markets were still reeling from the collapse of Bretton Woods, and the table was being set for something that would come to be known years later as the S&L crisis. Creating an expectation in the public that inflation could be brought under control in a matter of months and that this would solve the country's problems was wishful thinking at best. That said, it is hard to find fault with his effort to increase tax revenue while getting federal spending under control. Likewise, he made strides towards deregulation that would be continued by his successors. And even as the public ridiculed "WIN", inflation did come down from double-digit levels, although this was due more to a stabilization of world oil prices rather than the specific "WIN" suggestions.

President Ford's term in office was short, and there was little time to effect large scale change. But he set a tone with his presidency. His term, short though it may have been, was the antithesis of the Nixon administration. President Ford was open to the press. He may have vetoed many bills, but he knew the art of compromise. He held to the principles that guided him through a quarter-century in the House of Representatives. His pardon of Nixon was not the only way in which he put the nation's interests ahead of his own.

The more you study President Ford, the more you get a picture of a man who had a long-run vision. This manifested itself early in his drive to get into Yale Law School. Such people tend to be more successful in congress than in the White House. He would have been an unlikely candidate anyway. Reagan would have been a more likely candidate in 1976 had Nixon remained in office. By conventional standards, he was not a successful president. But he walked into a very unconventional situation. Nixon had done much to damage the office as well as the political process--the damage lingers to this day. Ford stepped in as a moderate transition to what was to follow, and in so doing he played an invaluable part in putting the country back on track. History's opinion of him is likely to continue to rise in the coming years.

I should also point out that President Ford was another in a quickly disappearing set of leaders and intellectuals who could be strong in their beliefs and partisan loyalties without resorting to the kind of dirty politics that led to Nixon's downfall and continue to crop up today. It is particularly fitting to note this in a year that has also seen the passing of John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. All three of them embodied a sort of genteel aspect of American political discourse that, while not dead, is becoming harder to find. For President Ford's part, this attitude was developed through his years as a minority leader. As he explained upon receiving John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award,

I have always believed that most people are mostly good, most of the time. I have never mistaken moderation for weakness, nor civility for surrender. As far as I'm concerned, there are no enemies in politics--just temporary opponents who might vote with you on the next Roll Call.

I want to believe that it is still possible to live by this maxim. There would be no more fitting tribute to President Ford than to try to uphold it.

Ford Memorial Website
Ford Presidential Library
Ford Biography at the White House website

Relatively few of us live to age 94. Fewer are still professionally active at that age. Even among academics, who are noted for their ability to continue the intellectual enterprise under the title "emeritus", 94 years is an extraordinary age for a public intellectual.

Milton Friedman certainly was extraordinary in more than just this respect.

His scholarly accomplishments are being lauded widely today, and there is a lot to praise. But it was more than just the papers that he authored that made him so influential. It was that his ideas were infused into the very heart of the discipline. Ideas that he, his students, and his followers advanced have become the standard currency of the realm. Pick up a journal containing macroeconomic research today. You will be looking at his legacy. And what a legacy it is.

I never met the man, but I'm sure many of you would agree that after watching so many hours of his television interviews and specials over the years it was hard not to feel like you knew him. I so enjoyed and admired the way that he conducted himself in the public eye. In those interviews he had a twinkle in his eye that only comes from true passion for the ideas he advanced. He made no apologies for his position. He was staunch and steadfast but at the same time a consummate gentleman.

Whether you agreed with him or not, he forced you to think. As Bill Conerly wrote on his blog (Businomics) today, he did not tolerate sloppy economics. He didn't tolerate sloppy arguments of any kind. He made short work of many a question by an interviewer, sometimes in a way that made you feel for the person who just got put in their place. But there was no malice. He wanted to win people over not by browbeating them, but by convincing them with the strength of his argument. However his quickness could catch even a great interviewer off guard. He came up with the perfect answer right away whereas us ordinary folks would have taken some time to ponder the theory or plumb our memory for an example. It was as if he was one step ahead all the time.

But then he was extraordinary.

What gives me the greatest sorrow today is that there will never be another of those interviews for us to enjoy. No longer will we be able to hear his insight on the momentous economic events of our time. Even at age 94, he had so much more to give, as this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (dated Friday) illustrates. He was as sharp as ever, right up to the end.

Over the upcoming Thanksgiving break, I plan to re-read parts of Two Lucky People and Capitalism and Freedom. The latter was an inspiration for me as I began my study of economics (by no means was my experience unique). Though I do not fully endorse every single idea in the book, I find it to be so engaging and thought provoking that it inspires new ideas in me no matter how many times I read it. Reading the words of Friedman, like reading the other true giants of the discipline regardless of their position on the political spectrum, sharpens your mind and refines your arguments.

His and Rose's memoir, Two Lucky People is special to me because it came out in paperback right about the time that I proposed to the woman who would become my wife. I told her about Milton and Rose, what a beautiful marriage they had, and what an inspiration he was to me professionally. The more I read about Milton and Rose, the more they became an inspiration to me personally. My future wife agreed and gave me the book as a gift. We celebrate our sixth anniversary on Saturday. That's not even one-tenth as long as Milton and Rose spent together. My wife and I hope and pray that we can enjoy that kind of longevity as a couple. The word "extraordinary" falls short of fully describing it.

In the coming days and weeks, I will offer some additional thoughts on Friedman's contributions and what we can still learn from his ideas, even those that have met with less success than others. Tonight, however, my thoughts tonight are for his family.

NY Times Obituary
WSJ Obituary

UPDATE: Paul at Truck and Barter has an extensive listing of links, including a link to David Friedman's blog.

NY Times Obituary

Louis Rukeyser, the exquisitely tailored and pun-loving television host who helped millions of Americans believe that they could get rich in the stock market, or at least begin to understand it, died yesterday at his home in Greenwich, Conn. He was 73.

He died of multiple myeloma, said his brother Bud Rukeyser.

When "Wall Street Week" was broadcast for the first time on Nov. 20, 1970, probably nobody, not even the always self-assured Mr. Rukeyser, dreamed that the show would run for 32 years while attracting the biggest audience on public television and making its host a celebrity in the improbable field of light-hearted, free-market-oriented financial commentary. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was then languishing, and the population of American mutual funds numbered a scant 323.

And though the Dow continued to languish (not until 1982 did it push above 1,000, a mark it had first set in 1966), "Wall Street Week" prospered. "I invented the job of economic commentary on television," Mr. Rukeyser said in 1980. He was already well along in inventing the medium of investment broadcasting.

I started watching W$W in college and was a faithful viewer throughout my grad school days. When I think about the show, I can still hear the theme music in my head ("TWX in Twelve Bars"). Sure there are lots of other financial pundits with their own shows now. But Rukeyser did it first, and in a lot of ways did it best. It wasn't a fast paced spectacle with a ticker running on the bottom of the screen. It was thoughtful, deliberate, and perfect for a Friday night.

Shortly after being fired by PBS, Rukeyser appeared on "Larry King Live". When asked by a caller how he would like to be remembered, Rukeyser answered,

I would like to be remembered as a guy who always leveled with his audience, who tried to represent the customer and nobody else, and who gave it to people straight, no matter who it offended.

He was a liberal and not ashamed of the word.

The Wall Street Journal brings news of the passing of one of the true giants of that nexus between academic economics and the policy world. Galbraith was 97 years old. The WSJ tells us of this quote:

"There is no hope for liberals if they seek only to imitate conservatives, and no function either," Mr. Galbraith wrote in a 1992 article in Modern Maturity, a publication of the American Association of Retired Persons.

"In the end, it is the liberals who save the conservatives," he wrote, insisting that capitalism couldn't survive without social programs such as public housing, unemployment benefits and welfare for the helpless poor.

Galbraith lived through the Great Depression, and clearly the experience influenced his view of the world. Although I don't agree with much of his policy stance, I have always admired the man, the scholar, the writer. I think we would all do well to remember that in the late 19th century and early 20th century capitalism was under fire even more than it is today. As we gradually lose those economists who lived and worked during the Depression, we lose more of the connection to that time. That thought saddens me immensely.

The NY Times writes:

Mr. Galbraith became an American citizen, and taught economics at Princeton in 1939. But after the fall of France in 1940, Mr. Galbraith joined the Roosevelt administration to help manage an economy being prepared for war. He rose to become the administrator of wage and price controls in the Office of Price Administration. Prices remained stable, but he grew controversial, drawing the constant fire of industry complaints. "I reached the point that all price fixers reach," he said, "My enemies outnumbered my friends."

...

He summarized the lessons of his days at the Office of Price Administration in "A Theory of Price Control," later calling it the best book he ever wrote. He said: "The only difficulty is that five people read it. Maybe 10. I made up my mind that I would never again place myself at the mercy of the technical economists who had the enormous power to ignore what I had written. I set out to involve a larger community."

...He continued to pour out magazine articles, book reviews, op-ed essays, letters to editors; he lectured everywhere, sometimes debating William F. Buckley Jr., his friend and Gstaad skiing partner....

I find the part about the OPA kind of amusing, but the line about William F. Buckley Jr. says it all. How I would have loved to sit in on a conversation between the two of them. Sadly, such a thing will never happen again.

Many economists of my generation probably have not even read Galbraith's works (or Keynes's or Friedman's or Hayek's). That is extremely unfortunate. Whether you agree with these authors or not, there are many things to learn from each of them. I have always felt that the experience of reading works like these is like intellectual weightlifting. You are stronger for having taken the time to grapple with the ideas.

Tonight, I cannot help but reflect on what it means to be liberal or conservative in the major policy debates of today and how our debates and the circumstances of our time will influence the intellectuals of the next generation. I hope that our time can produce a few liberals and conservatives with the passion and conviction of Galbraith, but I suspect that there will never be another quite like him.

UPDATE: Bloggers react (WSJ). Also, you really must read Brad DeLong's post. Cafe Hayek links to this nice piece by the Boston Globe. Mark Thoma reprints a lengthy commentary on Galbraith's work.

I don't think I will ever forget the sound of the Metrodome announcer (Bob Casey, who passed away almost a year ago) calling out his name, "Kiiiiirrrrbyyyyy Puckett!" If the Twins were in need of a hit, there were few things that sounded sweeter. Perhaps the only sweeter sound was radio announcer John Gordon saying, "Touch 'em all, Kirby Puckett!" after a home run.

My Dad became a Twins fan in the days of Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew. I never saw them play. But we shared Kirby.

Puckett was short, stocky, and played for a small market team. Looking at him in the outfield, you wouldn't suspect him of being able to make leaping catches at the wall the way he did. But inside that 5'8" package was one of the hardest working players around. He made it look easy. Talent and hard work made him a great player. But what made him beloved by Twins fans was that he played the game like he really enjoyed it. How could you not smile when you saw him grinning from ear-to-ear? When Kirby stepped to the plate, anything was possible. He made it exciting. He made it fun to be a fan.

History will remember his game ending home run in game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Minnesota will remember seeing #34 mature over the years into an integral part of a team that would win it all--twice. I will remember all of that and so much more. So much more because Kirby Puckett and the Twins were always on AM radio and cable TV in our house (and car) on those warm summer nights and cool autumn evenings. It was as if he provided the background music for the memories of my teenage and college years. Thanks, Kirby. Touch 'em all.

Kirby Puckett's Hall of Fame Page

King (SCSU Scholars) has a eulogy here.

CNN story here.

CNN Obituary:

Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1972 by President Nixon and was elevated to chief justice in 1986 by President Reagan, replacing Warren Burger.

In that role, he led the closed-door conferences where justices discuss and vote on cases; assigned who wrote the majority rulings; managed the docket; controlled open court arguments; and supervised the 300 or so court employees, including clerks, secretaries, police and support staff.

Rehnquist, who belonged to a loose, 5-4 conservative majority, was the second-oldest man to preside over the nation's highest court.

Early in his tenure, he often was the lone dissenter, despite the presence of two other Republican appointees. He served on the bench under seven presidents.

David Yalof, a constitutional law professor at the University of Connecticut, credited Rehnquist with moving the court in a consistent, conservative direction.

"He was able over time to gather colleagues together cordially, manage tension, build a majority and turn them over to his point of view," Yalof said.

Rehnquist followed the legal philosophy of judicial restraint, which interprets the U.S. Constitution narrowly.

He believed the only rights protected by the Constitution are those specifically named, and that justices should consider the framers' original intent when making rulings.

Whether you agreed with him or not, it is hard to deny that he shaped the court in recent years. Many books will be written about him, and he will take his place with that handful of justices who have done as much to define the role of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Renquist now quietly passes into the pages of history, as the battle for the court itself returns to the front page above the fold.

From CNN:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" TV series and motion pictures who responded to the apocryphal command "Beam me up, Scotty," died early Wednesday. He was 85.

Doohan died at 5:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side, Los Angeles agent and longtime friend Steve Stevens said. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease, he said.

The Canadian-born Doohan fought in World War II and was wounded during the D-Day invasion, according to the StarTrek.com Web site.

The episode where he makes a guest appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation would have to be one of my favorites.

Here's to ya, lad.

I'll bet that in the room I'm sitting in there are at least 30 devices that contain at least one integrated circuit chip (most of these devices are hooked up to a computer--counting them as one the count is probably still at 15 or more). Throughout the house, the number of items is surely in the hundreds (kids toys, you know).

Jack S. Kilby invented the microchip that makes all of those devices so small. It really is amazing. The NY Times obituary tells some of the story.

Since 1952, only one person has provided the voice for Tony the Tiger--Thurl Ravenscroft. Ravenscroft also sung "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Put that together with numerous Disney characters and you've got a voice that will continue to sing on in DVD collections and in the memories of anyone who grew up on these classics in the last 50 years.

Hear him say his most famous phrase one more time on this NPR clip.

The name may not be familiar to you, but the voice should be. You probably know him best for being the voice over of the long running series of "Smuckers" commercials. (With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.) He did have a number of other roles, including a stint on Lou Grant and more recently The West Wing. Adams was 86 years old. Here is a clip from NPR where you can hear his distinctive voice one more time.

He lived his life boldly and without fear. We should all be so blessed.

One of America's foremost architects is dead at the age of 98. He designed the Crystal Cathedral and so many other buildings too numerous to mention. What most people will not know is that he designed the Civic Center in Peoria, IL. His amazing use of glass is evident in many of his buildings throughout the world.

Found via Marginal Revolution

I am too young to remember the best of Carson's career, but I've seen many of the highlights on various specials over the years. Love the animal bits. One of my favorite bits of all time was the Copper Clapper Caper with Jack Webb.

Concerning the coverage on the cable channels tonight: I find it sad that the younger hosts on all of the channels (not singling anyone out in particular) have no skill at interviewing the truly great icons of showbusiness (Merv Griffin, Rich Little, Mickey Rooney, etc.) Today's anchors are most at home interviewing politicians with no personality or entertainers promoting their movie. I know what their problem is: they don't listen to the person they are interviewing. They've never had to listen before.

Ironic, since that's one of the things that set Carson apart from the talk show crowd.