13 of the 16 Nobel economists have a history of signing Stiglitz's loopy pro-Biden letters

 By Monica Showalter

Using their Nobel prize chops as credibility, some 16 economists signed a ridiculous letter put out by radical left-wing economist Joe Stiglitz, claiming that President Trump would wreck the economy if he gets re-elected and usher in runaway inflation. The economists, ummm, seem to have been living in an academic bubble, not noticing Joe Biden's record on the matter. I wrote about that here.

They portrayed themselves as just objective economists practicing their science, and making their pronuncimentos.

But their aim, of course, was to influence the election. They were following the 51 intelligence analysts model, imitating the tactics of the spymasters who signed a letter in 2020 claiming the Hunter Biden laptop had all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

So sign they did, not mentioning that one of them was married to Biden's Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, who called inflation "transitory,' and most of the rest were Democrat campaign donors.

According to Fox News:

The letter’s Nobel Prize-winning signatories show political donations to President Biden's 2020 and 2024 campaigns. The signatories also donated tens of thousands of dollars to other Democrat candidates and signed previous letters supporting Biden's agenda, including attacking "selfish and reckless" Trump, a Fox News Digital review found.

How many of these guys have been around the block before? It looks like 13 of the 16.

Here's the 2021 letter, and its list of Nobel signatories:

Signed by 17 recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences:

• George A. Akerlof, Professor, Georgetown University
• Sir Angus Deaton, Professor, Princeton University
• Peter Diamond, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Robert Engle, Professor Emeritus and Co-Director of the Volatility and Risk Institute, New York University
• Oliver Hart, Professor, Harvard University
• Daniel Kahneman, Professor, Princeton University
• Eric S. Maskin, Professor, Harvard University
• Daniel McFadden, Professor, University of California, Berkley
• Paul Milgrom, Professor, Stanford University
• Roger Myerson, Professor, University of Chicago
• Edmund S. Phelps, Professor and Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society, Columbia University
• Paul Romer, Professor, New York University
• William Sharpe, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
• Robert Shiller, Professor, Yale University
• Christopher Sims, Professor, Princeton University
• Robert Solow, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Joseph Stiglitz, Professor, Columbia University

Axios has the list of the 16 2024 Nobel signatories who later claimed Trump would bring inflation:

[Stiglitz] was joined by George A. Akerlof (2001), Sir Angus Deaton (2015), Claudia Goldin (2023), Sir Oliver Hart (2016), Eric S. Maskin (2007), Daniel L. McFadden (2000), Paul R. Milgrom (2020), Roger B. Myerson (2007), Edmund S. Phelps (2006), Paul M. Romer (2018), Alvin E. Roth (2012), William F. Sharpe (1990), Robert J. Shiller (2013), Christopher A. Sims (2011), and Robert B. Wilson (2020).

And most of it is the exact same people.

Akerlof (Janet Yellen's husband), Deaton, Hart, Maskin, McFadden, Milgrom, Myerson, Phelps, Romer, Sharpe, Shiller, and Sims have done this before with Stiglitz, signing both letters.

Kahneman and Solow, both of whom signed the 2021 letter, are deceased, so they couldn't sign again.

Goldin got her prize in 2023 so she wasn't qualified to sign the first one in 2021, but jumped in for 2024.

Only Engle, for unknown reasons, did not sign the second one.

The rest signed on again, with Roth and Wilson joining the crowd to make 16 with Stiglitz.

Fox noted that many of these characters were not small-time donors:

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Columbia University professor who reportedly spearheaded the letter, previously signed a letter supporting Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and donated $1,250 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020.

Between 2004 and 2020, Stiglitz donated over $90,000 to Democrat candidates, FEC records show.

Georgetown University Professor George A. Akerlof, who is married to Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund and maxed out as a donor in 2020, giving the campaign $5,600.

Akerlof, who donated nearly $90,000 to Democrats between the 1990s and 2022, also signed a letter supporting Build Back Better, and signed a letter in 2020 calling Trump’s re-election effort "selfish and reckless."

So what we have here is economics made to bow down to partisan politics. That's not a pretty picture. The amazing thing is that it both sells out economics to politics as well as makes very bad economic predictions. Build-Back-Better was an absolute disaster and its money printing in the end brought Biden's flaming inflation. If they couldn't predict that, what makes anyone think they can predict Trump's program creating inflation? They don't exactly have a good track record on forecasting outcomes. Not a good thing to see in Nobel economics laureates. They ought to be embarrassed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/bzzt_turns_out_13_of_the_16_nobel_economists_also_signed_stiglitz_s_2021_letter_urging_passage_of_biden_s_build_back_better.html