I hope Nicholas keeps writing here at Troppo now that he’s rightly famous and important. Then again, I don’t necessarily envy someone who must respond with grace and patience if their advice, like that of Ross Garnaut, is relegated to “input” status when it’s politically inconvenient though rationally compelling. Then again, what could be better training than blogging for taking such reactions in stride?
well that’s got to be a good thing.
I wonder where we can get on our hobby-horses regarding bad regulation? Ca I start??
Ken,
Nicholas would simply have to gruen and bear it!
Nick is certainly clever of clogs. And he has a cunningly camouflaged sense of humour. But correct me if I’m wrong. Back in the 1980s as a young fiscal up-and-comer, did he, or did he not, wear a long woolen scarf and fedora to govt policy meetings?
Moi?
Dr Who? Dr Nick.
I guess if he left he would Nick off?
Now there’s an untapped retail opportunity: economist swap cards.
If you were a proper blogger, Ken, the title would read “I can haz autograph?”
Yes indeed Tony T.
You could have statisticians’ vital statistics printed on the back.
tony would use T statistics!!!
Groan.
Don’t encourage him. You know Homer can do much worse than that.
…oh that’s right, John Malkovitch doing his impersonation of Lurch.
Congratulations to Nicholas. Surprising as it may seem, I cannae claim to understand many of his more esoteric economic theory posts, (try as I might). I have have heard him a coupla times on RN and found him to be both easy on the ear and refreshingly . . . well refreshing. Someone who not only knows what he is talking about but clearly also understands it. Indeed one of the few ‘experts’ one hears who of himself has nothing to prove and who manages to couch things in an accessible style of language that neither alienates nor bores senseless a lay audience.
Well that’s very nice all of you. I would propose marriage to Caroline, but I am already married – and so in all probability is she.
But this whole thread reminds me of an experiment I performed with my daughter Anna when she was about three. Whilst driving along in the car I said to Eva (my wife) in the front (with Anna in the back) “You know what I love about Anna.” Then I listed lots of lovely things. Then I said “Mama, what do you love about Anna.” So Eva followed suit and went on about what a great kid Anna was.
After we’d finished, the car fell silent for a while. And then Anna said . . . “Go on!”
Please feel free to go on.
Nick, face it – you give economists a good name. I’m not entirely clear whether economists in general actually deserve it, but there it is.
Sure. Congratulations, well deserved, and everything.
But what exactly are we congratulating you for, apart from being famous and important when previously you were merely legendary? More specifically, what does Lindsay Tanner mean by ‘work with me on this’. Please explain, some time.
The photo gives me a very feeling, by the way. Putting it together with my experience of you at 50, suddenly I know exactly what you were like at 25.
Actually, that should read: ‘a very eerie feeling’. (I would’t want that sentence to become a game of Blankety Blanks.)
I guess we could say this appointment happened in the Nick of time
It is always gratifying to read a few days later and far more succinctly expressed, what oneself was trying to clumsily put.
Leunig writes in today’s Age.
Nicholas, (darling) as it so happens I am but a mere yet happy divorcee (and plan on staying that way). We could perhaps be friends?
Nick could marry and then he could merely state that was big of me