Greg Mankiw, Ignorant or Dishonest?

Why choose?

"The model also maintains the neoclassical conclusion that, given ability, people are paid the value of their marginal product. That is, people are paid what they contribute to society." -- Greg Mankiw

Alessandro, Tell Us What You Really Think

Alessandro Roncaglia's The Wealth of Ideas: A History of Economic Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2005) is a work of massive scholarship in the history of economic thought. Roncaglia's assessments are often quite harsh. Here are several examples, which could easily be expanded:

"This [the 'new view'] is an interpretation clearly grounded on the neo-classical theoretical approach, attribution of which to Ricardo implies a thoroughly distorted reading of his writings." (p. 184)

"It is to be stressed that, despite the references to the methodology of general economic equilibrium, quite often the models used to analyze the various cases of asymmetry or imperfect information fall in the category of partial equilibriums. Indeed, without simplifications it is practically impossible to extract meaningful results from the analysis. Use of extremely simplified models in order to deal with specific issues, with recourse to ad hoc assumptions, has indeed been the most common path for research in the past twenty years. Often it is maintained that this provides rigorous microfoundations for the treatment of concrete issues, originally dealt with in conceptual frameworks different from that of general economic equilibrium theory. The outcome, however, is quite different: the attempt to avoid absolute indefiniteness of results imposes opportunistic choices. The most often adopted paths are those of return to partial equilibrium analysis, or to the assumption of a one-commodity world: either analytical rigor or realism is sacrificed. The conclusion is that, despite the efforts expended on it, the research stream of general economic equilibrium did not overcome its basic limits (from the assumptions of convexity recalled above, to the difficulty of excluding multiple equilibriums or instability of equilibrium): it thus remained an abstract exercise, an end in itself, devoid of any utility for understanding the economic systems in which we live. Indeed, reference to the general economic equilibrium approach is often used deviously, on the one hand as a rhetorical trick to enhance the value of models with a low theoretical content, on the other as Caudine Forks for students of advanced economics courses." (p. 474)

"Success of this line of research [new Keynesian economics] is quite difficult to understand: in order to reproduce the notable results of Keynesian analysis within the neoclassical tradition, ad hoc assumptions are introduced, often rather implausible ones, on the sandy theoretical foundations of one-commodity and/or partial equilibrium models with their inverse relationship between real wages and unemployment." (p. 484)

"We thus have, on the one hand, 'lowbrow' economic analyses, which make indiscrimate use of analytical tools whose theoretical foundations have come in for destructive criticism (for instance, the inverse relation between wage rate and employment in macroeconomics) but which pretend to provide 'scientific' economic policy advice on such flimsy foundations. Frequently, policies tricked out in scientific guise actually derive from a priori opinions and may arouse reasonable perplexity on the grounds of plain common sense, while recourse to unnecessarily complex theoretical apparatus is essentially for rhetorical effect. On the other hand, we have 'highbrow' theories, sophisticated exercises within axiomatic schemes based on processes of abstraction that are never subjected to critical scrutiny. The element of pure intellectual challenge is dominant here, but there is a significant cost in terms of lost heuristic power and hence of a meaner market share for economic science in the political and cultural debate." (p. 508)

Obviously, my choice of these examples reflects my interests.

"Undergraduate Economics is a Joke"

I'm not sure what this site is. Maybe it is put up by one of David Colander's undergraduate students. But this appears to be a chapter from Colander, Holt, and Rosser (2004), consisting of an interview with Herbert Gintis. (I also provide, in references an Colander, Holt, and Rosser response to reactions to that book.)

Herb moved to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst as part of one of those McCarthyite purges they keep on performing in the Harvard economics department. This one was in the early 1970s. Gintis no longer considers himself an heterodox economist. You might consider him a representative of mainstream economics at UMass. This identification can be seen to have generated some prickly comments here and there. But Gintis has a point, given that his interests have evolved to include principal agent problems, asymmetric information, behavioral economics, experimental economics, and evolutionary game theory.

Anyway, here's what a defender of the mainstream has to say about how economics is taught:

"You can’t write all economists off as ideologues, because they’re not. They’re open to new ideas. However, there’s still this incredible tension in what we teach. I am so displeased at the way undergraduate and even graduate economics is taught. Undergraduate economics is a joke--macro is okay but micro is a joke, because they teach this stuff that you know is not true. They know the general equilibrium model is not true. The model has no good stability properties, it doesn’t predict anything interesting, but they teach it. The production theory that is taught is also a joke. They use this old Marshallian production with LRACs and MRACs to determine firm size. This doesn’t determine firm size, it determines plant size. Totally different things determine firm size. So why do we teach undergraduates this? Why do you teach income and substitution effects and Giffen goods, when there are so many interesting things to discuss? So I am so upset by what they teach. I am retiring from UMass this year (Sam is, too), so I won’t have to deal with this anomaly any more.

If this were physics or astronomy, when they get new ideas at the forefront, they immediately teach them, but in economics they teach the stuff that even thirty years ago, people didn’t believe. My view is that economists should not be so tolerant of teaching out-of-date ideas. Micro is a total disaster. So I think there’s still a tension, and that there will be one for a long time. I guess sometimes people treat Sam, me, and all these people who do behavioral work, like they treat the dentist, it hurts but you should go do it." -- Herbert Gintis

Happy thanksgiving.

References

• Colander, D., R. P. F. Holt, and J. B. Rosser, Jr. (2004). The Changing Face of Economics: Conversations with Cutting Edge Economists, University of Michigan Press.
• Colander, D., R. P. F. Holt, and J. B. Rosser, Jr. (2007). "Live and Dead Issues in the Methodology of Economics", (June)

Othering

Dani Rodrik writes:

"...the University of Massachusetts Amherst ... department of economics ... is well known as the hangout of left-wing critics of economics and economic policy..."

Notice Rodrik doesn't write that they are critics of "neoclassical economics" (or "orthodox economics" or " mainstream economics"). Don't they do economics of some sort at Massachusetts? Don't they make suggestions for economic policy? Can a mainstream economist even acknowledge the existence of heterodox economists?

I've seen comments like Rodrik's before. I am skeptical of the whole notion of "anti-economics". A serious scholar would acknowledge the existence of divisions in his field, not pretend some with a different approach are merely outsiders or critics.

(I do know that, like Notre Dame, UMass has a good lacrosse program.)

Myerson Not A Historian

Philip Mirowski has been quite critical of an essay by Roger Myerson:

"Some of the most bizarre and outlandish statements about the history of economics have recently been made about the role and accomplishments of the Nash equilibrium concept in game theory. Much of this cynosure is due to the fact that a broad regiment of economic theorists have recently sought to write von Neumann out of the history of game theory to the maximum extent possible, striving to supplant his legacy with the work of John Forbes Nash...
At the end of the twentieth century, this quest to doctor the record with regard to Nash and his equilibrium has attained the status of a public relations campaign with ... a commissioned survey in the Journal of Economic Literature (Myerson, 1999). Although this is not a treatise on the contemporary sociology of the economics profession, a small caveat needs to be inserted here about this unusual effusion of infotainment concerning what must seem, to even the most avid follower of economics, a topic of rather arid compass appealing to only the most limited circle of cognoscenti. Incongruity turns into downright incredulity when one learns ... that the commissioned JEL survey was never vetted by any historian familiar with the relevant events, and consequently the only 'history' to grace the text appears as a word in its title. The reader should approach these texts forewarned that John Nash and his equilibrium, through no effort of his own, have become the object of a vast ceremonial purification exercise." -- Philip Mirowski, Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science. Cambridge University Press, 2002: pp. 332-333

And again:

"...the account in Myerson, 1999 of how von Neumann 'failed' has absolutely no relationship to the historical record. The idea that Nash possessed acute insights into human psychology and institutions that von Neumann somehow missed would be ludicrous were it not persistently found in conjunction with the obvious motivation to rewrite von Neumann out of history." -- ibid, p. 347

For example, one would never know from Myerson that Morgenstern and von Neumann analyzed non constant sum games:

"In 1928 and again in his 1944 book with Morgenstern, von Neumann tried to justify this cardinal utility assumption by identifying all payoffs with monetary transfer payments, which led him to the restriction that payoff is transferable and all games are zero-sum...

In 1947 (in their book's second edition), von Neumann and Morgenstern published their third great contribution to game theory: the axiomatic derivation of expected-utility maximization from a substitution argument. This new justification for measurable utility should have prompted them to consider dropping their restrictive assumption that payoffs must be transferable and zero-sum in all games, but they did not." -- Roger B. Myerson (1999). "Nash Equilibrium and the History of Economic Theory", Journal of Economic Literature, V. 37, N. 3 (Sep.): 1067-1082

What Can A Poor Boy Do Except To Sing For A Rock N Roll Band?

"Now Nixon was realigning the party. 'States' rights' and 'law and order,' two thinly veiled appeals to racism, were mainstays of his campaign. States' rights, from the time of Calhoun, meant not letting the federal government interfere with the denial of black rights in southern states. 'Law and order' had become a big issue because it meant using Daley-type police tactics against not only antiwar demonstrators, but black rioters as well." -- Mark Kurlansky (2004). 1968: The Year That Rocked The World, Ballantine Books, p. 361

"Shirley Chisholm was elected the first black woman member of the House. Blacks gained seventy offices in the South, including the first black legislators in the twentieth century in Florida and North Carolina and three additional seats in Georgia. But Nixon won a clear majority of southern white votes. The strategy that undid Abe Fortas also elected Nixon, and it became the strategy of the Republican Party. The Republicans get the racist vote and the Democrats get the black vote, and it turns out in America there are more racist voters than black ones. No Democrat since John F. Kennedy has won a majority of white southern votes.

This is not to say that all white southern voters are racist, but it is clear what votes the Republicans pursue in the South. Every Republican candidate now talks of states' rights. In 1980 Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidental campaign in an obscure, backwater rural Mississippi town. The only thing this town was known for in the outside world was the 1964 murder of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. But the Republican candidate never mentioned the martyred SNCC workers. What did he talk about in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to launch his campaign? States' rights." -- ibid. p. 365

Shrillness In The Defense of Liberty: Two Reviews

Michael Tomasky and Peter Beinart review Paul Krugman's new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times, respectively. I am unsure if I want to buy this book. I've read Krugman's columns fairly often, and the difference in performance between the post-war "Golden Age" and the world after the fall in the Bretton Woods system is an old story to me.

Please Remember Victor Jara, In the Santiago Stadium

As the title suggests, history gives us plenty of stories of people, when put to the test, of being more heroic than anybody should be expected to be. But I am telling the story, I am sorry to say, of somebody willingly signing up to be a zero.

Apparently, in 1981, Hayek visited Chile. Given the context, I cannot read this interchange in an interview as an abstract discussion:

Lucia Santa-Cruz: "There is reference in your work to the apparent paradox of dictatorships that may be more liberal than a totalitarian democracy. But it is also true that dictatorships have other characteristics which contradict freedom, even if it is understood negatively as you do."

Hayek: "Evidently dictatorships pose grave dangers. But a dictatorship may limit itself (se puede autolimitar) and if self-limited it may be more liberal in its policies than a democratic assembly that knows of no limitations. I must admit that it is not very probable that this may happen, but even so, in a given moment, it may be the only hope. Not a sure hope because it may always depend on the good will of an individual and one can trust in very few individuals. But if it is the only opportunity in a given moment, it may be the best solution in spite of all. But only if the dictatorial government visibly leads to a limited democracy."
-- El Mercurio, (not my translation) Sunday, 19 April 1981

In the same interview, Hayek said:

Hayek: "Democracy has a task which I call 'hygienic', for it assures that political processes are conducted in a sanitary fashion. It is not an end in itself. It is a rule of procedure whose aim is to promote freedom. But in no way can it be seen in the same rank as freedom. Freedom requires democracy, but I would prefer temporarily to sacrifice, I repeat temporarily, democracy, before having to do without freedom, even if temporarily." -- ibid.

Furthermore, Hayek gave various presentations to various conferences. Apparently, in a chat with Jaime Guzman, Hayek said, "Pinochet is an honorable general."

IMF and World Bank Blogs

The economic counsellor and director of research department at the IMF has a blog. I've added his blog to my blogroll. Apparently, the World Bank has a number of blogs. I added the one for their Poverty and Growth Program to my blogroll. The IMF and the World Bank are the subject of one of the few political protests I've attended in the last decade.

Yeager Mistaken

Just when I planned on putting aside Austrian economics until receiving referee reports...

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has made Time, Uncertainty, and Disequilibrium: Exploration of Austrian Themes available. These 1979 proceedings were edited by Mario J. Rizzo. The conference at which these papers were presented was held at New York University on 7 January 1978.

For some reason, Austrian economists take Leland B. Yeager as having an authoritative response to the Cambridge Capital Controversy. So I reference his 1976 Economic Inquiry article in my recent refutation of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. These proceedings have an article by Yeager, "Capital Paradoxes and the Concept of Waiting", that I have not previously had access to. Also, Roger Garrison responds with a comment.

Yeager's supposed resolution to the CCC is, roughly, to take interest as the price of waiting, defined as "the tying-up of value over time". Since value is part of its definition, the amount of waiting embodied in a technique cannot be measured by the physical characteristics of a technique. The amount of waiting embodied in a technique can then be expected to vary with prices and interest rates. Thus, reswitching does not seem paradoxical to Yeager.

Yeager acknowledges that he has not resolved the puzzle of "perverse" switches. Presumably, a lower interest rate is associated with the adoption of a technique embodying relatively more waiting. Yet around a perverse switch point, a lower interest rate is associated with the adoption of technique that produces less consumption per worker. How can this be? If laborers work with more waiting - a factor of production - shouldn't they get more output?

Anyways, this incorrect claim shows that Yeager had not fully absorbed the lessons of the CCC:

"The demand for waiting, as for labor and land-use, derives from the factor's capacity to contribute to output - ultimately, output of consumer goods and services - and from consumers' demand for that output. The relative strengths of consumer demands for goods embodying relatively large amounts of particular factors affect producer demands for those factors and so affect their prices. A decline in consumer demand for a highly waiting-intensive good tends to lower the rate of interest." - Leland Yeager

The last statement is without foundation.

Which Side Are You On, Bob?

"My impression is that the best and brightest in the profession proceed as if economics is the physics of society. There is a single universally valid model of the world. It only needs to be applied. You could drop a modern economist from a time machine - a helicopter, maybe, like the one that drops the money - at any time, in any place, along with his or her personal computer; he or she could set up in business without even bothering to ask what time and which place. In a little while, the up-to-date economist will have maximized a familiar-looking present-value integral, made a few familiar log-linear approximations, and run the obligatory familiar regression. The familiar coefficients will be poorly determined, but about one-twentieth of them will be significant at the 5 percent level, and the other nineteen do not have to be published. With a little judicious selection here and there, it will turn out that the data are just barely consistent with your thesis advisor's hypothesis that money is neutral (or nonneutral, take your choice) everywhere and always, modulo an information asymmetry, any old information asymmetry, don't worry, you'll think of one." -- Robert M. Solow (1985). "Economic History and Economics", American Economic Review, V. 75, N. 2 (May): 328-331

Paul Davidson, Overoptimistic

"The best way to evaluate any economic theory is to consider the theorist as a magician. Theorists rarely make logical errors in moving from axioms to conclusions, any more than professional prestidigitators drop the deck of cards while performing a card trick. Today's economic theorists are proficient at creating the illusion of pulling policy conclusion rabbits out of their black hat mathematical model of the economy. The more surprising the policy rabbits pulled from the hat, the greater the audience enjoyment of the economist's performance, and the greater the applause and rewards." -- Paul Davidson (2007). John Maynard Keynes, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 26.

This book should be added to your reading list if you are interested in Keynes' General Theory and are not informed of Davidson's views on Keynes. I wish Davidson had chosen a title that distinguishes his book from Hyman Minsky's of the same name.

Some Capital-Theoretic Fallacies of Austrian Economics

I have rewritten my demonstration of some errors in Austrian business cycle theory. In addition to making this article available on the Social Science Research Network, I have submitted it to some journal.

Invisible Hands Ere Adam Dug

I don't know that these usages have anything to do with Adam Smith. I don't even vouch for the translation from the seventeenth century french:

"How are you to get at a person who talks in this way, father? On what quarter will you assail me, since neither my words nor my writing afford the slighest handle to your accusations, and the obscurity in which my person is enveloped forms my protection against your threatenings? You feel yourselves smitten by an invisible hand - a hand, however, which makes your delinquencies visible to all the earth; and in vain do you endeavor to attack me in the person of those with whom you suppose me to be associated." -- Blaise Pascal, Provincal Letters, Letter XVII

"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day;
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood;
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
Thou marvell'st at my words: but hold thee still;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
So, prithee, go with me." -- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 2

Liberal Anti-Marxism Annoying

Apparently young American liberals still feel obligated to take ignorant cold war stands. Here's Ezra Klein, in a post positioning himself as more reasonable than either extreme:

"Any Marxist will tell you that 'real' Marxism was never tried. That said, just about every time something called Marxism was tried, it traveled down much the same course, and failed in much the same way. "

Perhaps, I'm not the one to comment, since I neither consider myself to be a Marxist nor do I disagree with Klein's take on American conservatives.

It is simply untrue that "every time something called 'Marxism' was tried", it failed. Eduard Bernstein was called a Marxist "revisionist" - this was not a compliment by the communists. Bernstein's argument was important in the development of the Second International's line. And this version of Marxism is still being implemented in western Europe.

I also wonder what it means to "try" Marxism. The last of Marx's theses on Feuerbach is, famously:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is, to change it."

The world still needs transforming. One finds few formulae in Marx, however, for what to do after the revolution*. Marx's longest work is more about analysis of existing society than unfounded designs of some far-distant future society. In the afterword to the second German edition, Marx notes that in Capital he is not "writing recipes (Comtist ones?) for the cookshops of the future." Perhaps some of Marx's analysis is still worth retaining.

Here's one part of Marx's analysis to consider:

"The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarized as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure." -- Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

I do not see how the horrors of Stalinism or the 1989 collapse of "actually existing socialism" can invalidate the above general conclusion. In fact, that collapse would rather seem to illustrate Marx's conclusion.

* Caveat: Marx is probably most explicit on the design of post-revolutionary society in The Civil War in France and in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. It is in the latter, that Marx's makes his distinction between post-revolutionary socialism, in which laborers receive their proceeds in proportion to their contribution, and "the higher phase of communist society", in which

"society [can] inscribe on its banners: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!'".

Lenin draws on this distinction in his State and Revolution and in his attacks on the "renegade" Kautsky.

Vocabulary Word: Mumpsimus

Joan Robinson had lots to say about the Cambridge Capital Controversy. I find this remark to be amusing:

"I was delighted to find in a dictionary the word mumpsimus, which means stubborn persistence in an error that has been exposed" -- Joan Robinson

Laissez-Faire "Never Based On Solid Empirical And Theoretical Foundations"

"Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets. Indeed, the case against these policies is even stronger... They were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always." -- Joseph Stiglitz, "Bleakonomics", New York Times, 30 September 2007

I've quoted Saari and Samuelson each saying the same.

Tyler Cowen: Slave To The Rhythm Of Power

Tyler Cowen purports to analyze why the pay of CEOs has increased so much.

"It is useless to ask what is the source of natural inequality, because that question is answered by the simple definition of the word. Again, it is still more useless to inquire whether there is any essential connection between the two inequalities; for this would be only asking, in other words, whether those who command are necessarily better than those who obey, and if strength of body or of mind, wisdom or virtue are always found in particular individuals, in proportion to their power or wealth: a question fit perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the hearing of their masters, but highly unbecoming to reasonable and free men in search of the truth." -- Jean Jacques Rousseau, A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind (Trans. by G. D. H. Cole)

Of course, CEOs cannot receive their pay except through services provided to them by a society existing beforehand:

"The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were, perhaps, very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted. All must have had the same duties to perform, and the same work to do, and there could have been no such difference of employment as could alone give occasion to any great difference of talents.

As it is this disposition which forms that difference of talents, so remarkable among men of different professions, so it is this same disposition which renders that difference useful. Many tribes of animals acknowledged to be all of the same species, derive from nature a much more remarkable distinction of genious, than what, antecedent to custom and education, appears to take place among men. By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhound from a spaniel, or this last from a shepherd's dog." -- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

General Equilibrium: Same As It Ever Was

Some mainstream economists (e.g., Bliss and Hahn) responded to the Cambridge Capital Controversy by taking their stand on the Arrow-Debreu very short run model of intertemporal General Equilibrium. They claimed that this model is logically consistent, and it is unaffected by Sraffa effects. I think the latter proposition, at least, is debatable.

Be that as it may, perhaps the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu results show that the Arrow-Debreu model has no empirical implications. That is, the theory imposes no restrictions on the directions of aggregate movements in prices and quantities in response to changes in the data. Kenneth Arrow, Alan Kirman, D. Saari, and S. Abu Turab Rizvi are some who have advanced this claim.

Some have challenged my understanding on this claim, pointing out some work done by Donald Brown and others. S. Abu Turab Rizvi has recently reviewed this recent work ("The Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu Results after Thirty Years", History of Political Economy, V. 38 (Annual Supplement): 228-245). He concludes that:

"...Brown and Matzkin do provide a restriction that can conceivably be refuted... Despite this ..., if the only data ... are at the aggregate level, general equilibrium theory does not generate refutable restrictions... [T]he Brown-Matzkin results require individual-level ... vectors.

Matters are even clearer on qualitative features ... such as local uniqueness, stability, and comparative statics. The equilibrium manifold approach ... does not allow us to refute statements on these features... [W]e cannot test to see if an economy is poorly behaved... [T]he intuition that general equilibrium theory is devoid of meaningfully general results remain true..."

I continue to remain puzzled about what mainstream economists take the content of price theory to be.

Facts Are Getting The Best Of Them

Paul's done this sort of amusing thing before:

"Now as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: 'Well, how did we get here?' They may tell themselves: 'This is not my beautiful Right.' They may ask theselves" 'My God, what have we done?'" -- Paul Krugman (2007). "Same Old Party", New York Times (8 Oct): A19