Plover Alert

Meanwhile, the plovers flap about desperately:

Funny how, far from defending Krugman, they just prove my point about the need for civility in public discourse, not to mention honesty and humility. Memo to Josh Barro:

1. If you are defending someone against a charge of incivility, the word "asinine" is not one to use. Nor does it really help your cause to cite tweets like this:

Oh holy shit Niall Ferguson said something EVEN DUMBER THAN WHAT HE USUALLY SAYS

And:

If I talked like Niall Ferguson I wouldn't be throwing "effete" around so liberally.

(What's that supposed to mean exactly? Because it looks a lot like an ad hominem attack. Would Barro like me more if I talked like, say, Joe Pesci?)

2. You cite a tired old piece by Joseph Wiesenthal as evidence that I have "a tendency to make ridiculous claims about inflation and interest rates". I was wrong about long-term rates, and long ago admitted that. But Barro has made an elementary blunder in his reasoning. I am not the one who goes around claiming to be right about everything; Krugman is. Just saying “But Ferguson also got things wrong” is to miss the point. In any case, the claim that I was repeatedly wrong (in plover-speak, “derped”) about inflation is fiction. If Barro can find more than one piece since the crisis saying that it was either understated or rising, I will be very interested to read it.