In Slate, Matthew Yglesias counts up Federal Reserve Chairmen by religious ethnicity:
Christopher Mahoney, a former vice chairman of Moody's, has a piece arguing that Protestants will never understand monetary policy because their moralistic worldview makes them incapable of accepting that monetary stimulus offers a real life free lunch. He suggests that we leave this to the Catholics and Jews.
I can't say that the inflation-fighting record of Catholic countries like Argentina is all that hot (although that has mostly improved in recent decades).
The stereotype I have in my head is that the German and Swiss central bankers are all Protestants, but is that true? There are plenty of Catholics in Germany and Switzerland, but they generally get assumed to be Protestants when thinking about the Protestant Work Ethic.
Now it looks to me like in real life we've never had a Catholic Federal Reserve Chairman.
That's interesting.
But if we look at Jodi Beggs' data on annual inflation by Fed chairman, we can see that the Chosen People have not done very well at monetary matters in practice. Of the men on this list, five—Meyer [appointed by Hoover], Burns [appointed by Nixon], Miller [? - appointed by Carter], Greenspan [appointed by Reagan], and Bernanke [appointed by Bush]—have been Jewish.
Was G. William Miller, the widely criticized Fed Chairman under Carter in 1978-79, actually Jewish? His name comes up as Jewish a lot on anti-Semitic conspiracy theory websites, but he sure sets off my WASPdar. If he was Jewish, he'd rank up there with golf writer Herbert Warren Wind and maybe Southern belle songbird Dinah Shore in assimilatedness:
Consider his New York Times obituary.
George William Miller was born on March 9, 1925, in Sapulpa, Okla., but grew up in Borger, Tex., where his parents hoped in vain to cash in on the discovery of oil in the Texas Panhandle.
He graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., in 1945,
Maybe the picture I have in my head of the Coast Guard Academy being like the Naval Academy in its yachty WASPiness, only more so, is wrong, but I don't much evidence for that:
... After graduating at the top of his law school class at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Wall Street firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in 1952.
Cravath didn't have a Jewish partner until 1964.
But in 1956, he joined Textron, based in Providence, R.I., as an assistant secretary. Within four years he was president of the company ...
Textron was a conglomerate run by Royal Little, nephew of Arthur D. Little, the famous consultant. It had a lot of defense, aerospace and industrial divisions. It sounds pretty Protestant to me.
... Mr. Miller is survived by three sisters: Catherine Spiller and Myra Fowler, of Amarillo, Tex., and Mabel Wade, of Bedford, Va.; and two brothers, Othneil and Dee, both of Amarillo.
So, four of the six Millers make their homes in that center of Jewish culture and life, Amarillo. Othneil Orrick Miller and Dee Deane Miller, both graduates of SMU law school, remain licensed attorneys in Amarillo to this day. I don't know which name -- Othneil Orrick or Dee Deane -- sounds less Jewish. So, I'd strongly bet against G. William Miller being Jewish.
Yglesias getting this wrong isn't a major mistake; it just goes to show how it is hard to find authoritative information on the Internet about something as obviously interesting as the ethnicity of Federal Reserve Chairmen. Because the Fed chairmen for the last 27 years have been Jewish, and that streak is likely to reach 32 years straight by 2018 because all three candidates that Obama is publicly considering to replace Bernanke are Jewish, it's not a topic that you are supposed to know anything about. For example, the term "Jew counting" is used, according to Google, almost solely by liberals at Slate, the Washington Post, ThinkProgress, and so forth to furiously denounce anybody doing what liberals do all the time with categories like "white male."
Who-Whom.
Yglesias goes on:
Eccles [appointed by FDR] was Mormon. The rest were Protestant. And sorry to say it but Meyer, Burns, and Miller are the worst chairmen we've had. Meyer allowed years of deflation and depression. Burns and Miller both refused to curb inflation.
Greenspan and Bernanke are both mixed bags. ...
But the real heroes of American central banking are Protestants—Eugene Black [appointed by FDR] who knew when to inflate and Paul Volcker [appointed by Carter] who knew when to disinflate. William McChesney Martin [appointed by Truman] I would say ranks alongside Greenspan as a bit of a mixed bag.
Okay, but Miller was a dud, and he appears to have been a Prod.
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Did you see Yglesias's post this week about the awfulness of eating outside, and of being outdoors generally? It reminded me of that scene in I Am Charlotte Simmons where Wolfe riffs on what the ethnic Jewish dean and professor have in common - hating the outdoors except for beaches and golf courses.
He liked growing up in the special housing project in Greenwich Village owned by NYU for its professors and their families, and thinks everybody should want to grow up like that. It's perfectly natural loyalty.
Did you see Yglesias's post this week about the awfulness of eating outside, and of being outdoors generally?
He seems pretty clueless. One of his pet topics is promoting "density". As in urban density. He actually uses the word "density" when doing so, as if it's appealing. He doesn't seem to get that "density" has negative connotations for most people and doesn't sound very pleasant, and that if density is what you're selling, you don't actually want to use the word.
all three candidates that Obama is publicly considering to replace Bernanke are Jewish.
At least we won't have to worry about the dollar collapsing for a few more years.
How much of Jewish success is due to chutzpah, cheek, cara dura (as the Spanish would say), versus actual talent?
I mean, currently, we have three examples of the chosen who brazen it out (Filner, Wiener, Spitzer) rather than doing what either a Catholic or Protestant would -- retire gracefully from public life. Of course, the hope for redemption would remain -- think of the Profumo affair, the Four Feathers (both versions), Branded, or Lord Jim/
You're and Anglo-Saxon, you f -up, you have to earn your place back at the table. You can't brazen your way through it.
Speaking of Swiss Protestants, can anyone suggest a good scholarly book about historical Calvinism that is accessible to readers without theological training. If the author isn't from a Calvinist background, I'd like recommendations for a work by someone who at least passes the theological turing test. If the book delves into the practical implications of the doctrine of predestination, that would be even better.
With all the internet talk of progressivism as a sort of bastardized Calvinism, it seems impossible to fairly evaluate such claims without an accurate understanding of historical Calvinist praxis and theology. Please help a brotha out.
-The Judean People's Front
Theoretically, there should be some correlation between ones religious identity and ones views on monetary policy, but I do not know if I see one. Fiat currency was abolished as religious feeling was in full retreat, so possibly there has not been time for opinions to be calcified and passed on from generation to generation. That and monetary ideas are too esoteric to relate to core issues of identity.
Most Jews today line up behind Keynes, an English (married) homosexual of Protestant origins, while Judeophobes associate Keynesian ideas with Jewish banker plots and so embrace a retarded hard money philosophy that was promoted by Jewish economists whom nobody listened to.
As a Catholic I have heard theories from all sides about our contribution or lack thereof. Some credit medieval catholic monks with developing ideas about economic value that moderns neglected. Many traditional Catholics just think capitalism is a bit of a swindle anyway, root and branch: they are not just against Quantitative Easing, but usury god dammit. You want low interest rates? Ill give you low interest rates. Zero, or go to hell.
"all three candidates that Obama is publicly considering to replace Bernanke are Jewish.
At least we won't have to worry about the dollar collapsing for a few more years.
8/17/13, 1:06 AM"
So they still have a use for Amurika then?
Catholics are famously under-represented in high finance (it's always bee a war between Jews (Goldman Sachs) and WASPs (JP Morgan)). Knowing this fact turns the original post Yglesias linked to into one that essentially reads: our monetary policy should be run by Jews.
That may be correct, but for some reason, I find it discomforting.
It seems like the highest echelons of the US of A are subsumed with 'magical thinking' just like everyone else in fact.
The magical thinking goes like this - "Jews have an almost mystical affinity with money, some kind of occult fifth sense that makes money gravitate toward them, so who's better tha a Jew to run the money making machine of the USA, and to work the USA and display some of that old magical wizardry for the benefit of the gentiles, you know, like a talisman".
Only that Allen Greenspan - who certainly looked the part - in the end turned out to be a deadbeat.
Alas for 'magical thinking
It never even crossed my mind that Miller was Jewish. He seemed pretty white bread to me.
" to furiously denounce anybody doing what liberals do all the time with categories like "white male.""
This was a good observation. But I'd extend it by saying that they do it with EVERY category except the Scots-Irish. White men, women, blacks, black men, gays, etc.
When we count for the purpose of pride and achievement, or for who was a victim at various times in the past, the Scots-Irish categorize themselves as an explicitly distinct group. But when its headcounting for the purpose of establishing who is 'privileged' by liberal standards (based on wealth, jobs, etc), they mysteriously get lumped conveniently in with whites collectively. Which, after its said and done, becomes European white men in the public image, because now Scots-Irish are 'only a tiny fraction of the population'. They get all the benefits of their achievements, and yet all of the societal fingerpointing and shaming for their achievements gets placed onto European white men's shoulders. Truly an example of having your cake and eating it too.
familysearch.org is the go-to place for quick, genealogical google-foo.
Father: James Dick Miller (b. 1884, Crawford, AR)
Mother: Hazel Deane Orrick (b. 1895, AR)
Paternal Grandparents:
Richard James Miller
Lucy Alice Gooding
Maternal Grandparents:
Asa Marion Orrick
Catherine Elizabeth Glover
According to wikipedia, 'Asa' is Hebrew/Old Testament-derived but has been popular among protestants.
From what I've seen, by far the most obsessive "Jew counters" are Jews themselves. But as usual DWISNWID applies.
(Do What I Say Not What I Do)
If Obama had a TV show, it would be Welcome Black Carter.
"At least we won't have to worry about the dollar collapsing for a few more years."
No, it'll just be deflated away to where a cup of coffee costs $100. Which for most intents and purposes might as well be about the same thing.
Here are some the German central bankers up to 2004:
1948–1957: Karl Bernard, Vorsitzender des Zentralbankrats der Bank deutscher Länder (Protestant probably)
1948–1957: Wilhelm Vocke, Präsident des Direktoriums der Bank deutscher Länder, ab 1. August 1957 Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Protestant)
1958–1969: Karl Blessing, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Protestant)
1969–1977: Karl Klasen, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Protestant)
1977–1979: Otmar Emminger, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Catholic)
1980–1991: Karl Otto Pöhl, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Protestant, probably)
1991–1993: Helmut Schlesinger, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Catholic)
1993–1999: Hans Tietmeyer, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Catholic)
1999–2004: Ernst Welteke, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank (Protestant probably)
"their moralistic worldview makes them incapable of accepting that monetary stimulus offers a real life free lunch"
And they're right. Monetary stimulus aka deliberate inflation acts as a wealth transfer mechanism from the public to the institutions that create the new money i.e. the banks.
It does this because the inflation i.e. the decline in the value of the existing money only occurs *after* the new money is injected into the economy.
It has exactly the same effect as counterfeiting but it's legal - for the banks and only for the banks.
A non-crooked banking system designed for the benefit of the citizens could introduce new money into the economy if it was needed through public works and remove it if neccessary via taxation.
In this system the cost to the public of increasing the money supply in terms of the loss of value of the money they already hold would be compensated by the benefit of the public works.
So leaving aside the non-reaction to the ethno-sectarian angle of the Mahoney article which would have led to lots of pointing and spluttering if it hadn't been directed at White Protestants (i assume they meant only the white ones or that would be naughty) i think a better way of putting the original quote might be:
their moralistic worldview makes them far more likely to realize what a gigantic scam the central banking system and some of them won't be bribable.
He seems pretty clueless. One of his pet topics is promoting "density". As in urban density. He actually uses the word "density" when doing so, as if it's appealing. He doesn't seem to get that "density" has negative connotations for most people and doesn't sound very pleasant, and that if density is what you're selling, you don't actually want to use the word.
_____________________________
Yes, his dislike of the outdoors and love of "density" makes him the Woody Allen of pontificators except Woody is much of the time talented-- funny, introspective, insightful, able to recognize his own weaknesses and idiocies as much or more than anybody else's.
"At least we won't have to worry about the dollar collapsing for a few more years."
lol
so many ways that's funny but you're right the potential collapse of the dollar and the fact all three are Jewish may be related.
"With all the internet talk of progressivism as a sort of bastardized Calvinism"
Whatever truth there is in the idea, the people promoting don't understand Protestant distinctions.
Simply on its own the link between Switzerland and Calvinism for example should raise a red flag vis a vis Calvinism as the source of Progressivism e.g. women got the vote in 1971.
I think the idea of salvation through works survived the reformation in the anglo-catholic bits of Anglicanism. Combine that idea with the religious ferocity of the Puritans and then leave to secularize for a bit then i think you have the driving force for what i consider the good bits of Progressivism: clean water, hospitals, schools, anti-slavery, anti child labour etc.
It's gone a bit mad since then though, imo partly a result of cultural marxist influence and partly a result of cultural PTSD after WWI.
So my answer would be look more at what is called "High Anglicanism" which was basically the bit of Anglicanism which stayed mostly Catholic in form and belief but with primary loyalty switched from Rome to England.
I'm very curious now if Swiss bankers tend to be Protestants or Catholics or both.
Volcker is the only Fed chair with a backbone in history. He went against the grain and everybody else bar McChesney Martin serves as one of the big hero in David Stockman's new and provocative revistionist book of America's recent financial history.
"William McChesney Martin [appointed by Truman] I would say ranks alongside Greenspan as a bit of a mixed bag."
Greenspan is behind two huge bubbles(Tech and housing) not to mention he enabled Bush's disastors in the middle east by not forcing him to tax or borrow. Bernanke just kept the Greenspan policy going really.
I'm not sure there is any connection with religion and German speaking inflation hawks. The German hostility comes from hyperinflations in Germany and Austria after WWI. Also the commonly held connection that the hyperinflation led to Nazism and Hitler.
Murray Rothbard wrote his magnus opus on the history of economic thought. One of his themes was the deeply important tie in between religon and economic views. He berated modern intellectuals for letting their own bias against religion discount any analysis of religious influence on past thinkers. Adam Smith being the obvious Calvanist for example leading to his labor theory of value.
http://mises.org/document/5800/
"I can't say that the inflation-fighting record of Catholic countries like Argentina is all that hot (although that has mostly improved in recent decades)."
Hmmm...
Speaking for my tribe, we managed to avoid massive sustained inflations though-out of independence until we gave our monetary policy to Germans.
Yglesias thinks that 'disinflate' is the opposite of 'inflate'. Lol!
It's 'delflate' obviously.
Yglesias loves 'density'. I'm guessing he loves the situation in Egypt, population doubling every 30 years. More density than you can shake a stick at.
"[Yglesias is] the Woody Allen of pontificators."
OT, but I saw Blue Jasmine earlier this week and found it noteworthy that the Allen chose to make the Bernie Madoff character in the movie a wasp. Not just kinda waspy, but the über-wasp: an upper east sider, summer in the hamptons, polo playing, thoroughbred owning, buys jewelry at Southbys super wasp. I guess reality was too anti Semitic for Allen. As the credits started rolling I pointed this out, too loudly, to my date, and got many glares from older theater goers.
The movie was uneven but had good performances from Blanchett, Bobby Cavalle, and Andrew Dice Clay. There is sumptuous cinematography, especially of the Bay and some Manhatten property porn, but I was hoping for a more perceptive treatment of San Francisco elitism. Instead it was just about New Yorkers in San Francisco.
Hey Judean People's Front,
You should purchase "Historical Calvinism that is accessible to readers without theological training" published by Knopf I think.
Dan in DC
the US does not need the federal reserve at all. it didn't have it before, and it could function fine without it again.
i like the implication that dumb, clueless protestant europeans are hopeless with money. here we go again. stupid white guys aren't good at anything, so we should let the other groups take control.
how did they even create the united states in the first place i wonder. or canada. or australia. how does germany control europe economically? how was paul volcker, the last good chairman of the federal reserve and a german lutheran, any good at his job?
stupid dumb white guys creating nations from scratch and running them for HUNDREDS of years with fully functional economic systems, minimally intrusive banks, low levels of debt, and gold standard currency, before the other groups showed up to show those stupid dumb white guys how to actually run a modern economic banking system with 'better', crushing levels of debt, massive inflation that devalues their currencies 95%, and total bankster plutocracy. oh yeah that's so, so much better than what the US had for the first 150 years.
If anyone other than a Jew had pointed out that every Fed Chairman for about the last thirty years was jewish, and that the post appears to be in the process of becoming a jewish sinecure, it would be deemed anti-semitic. But if Yglesias points it out, I guess that's okay.
I mean, currently, we have three examples of the chosen who brazen it out (Filner, Wiener, Spitzer) rather than doing what either a Catholic or Protestant would -- retire gracefully from public life.
Who knew Bill Clinton, David Vitter and John Edwards were Jewish?
Yglesias getting this wrong isn't a major mistake; it just goes to show how it is hard to find authoritative information on the Internet about something as obviously interesting as the ethnicity of Federal Reserve Chairmen.
No, it shows that there's a cottage industry of Jew-haters on the internet who falsely claim people they don't like (or that they think other people don't like) are Jewish.
You see this all the time on Wikipedia where someone like Walter Duranty will have "jewish" (often lower-case) added to their page until somebody starts asking what the basis for that is.
@The Judean People's Front - we've been discussing calvinism a bit on my blog -- you may or may not be interested in the approach -- see here and here.
Catholics are famously under-represented in high finance (it's always bee a war between Jews (Goldman Sachs) and WASPs (JP Morgan)).
JP Morgan was a Rothschild agent.
Hey Dan in DC,
Do you work for the government? I only ask on account of your dismissive, content free response to a friendly request for information.
HBD chick,
Thanks, I'll check out the links.
-The Judean People's Front
In my next life (betting on a Hindu come), I intend to marry a Jewish accountant.
My question is, how much is Bernacke worth these days? Have the Fed chairmen gotten wealthier on the job like so many Democrat politicians do?
Miller served as a Coast Guard officer in Asia and on the U.S. West Coast. During his time with the Coast Guard, he met and then married Ariadna Rogojarsky, a Russian emigre.
Emigre sounds like she was the child of White Russian nobility. Perhaps that gave him some anti communist street cred. It is also possible the person who wrote the article didn't use the word emigre correctly confusing it with defector.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89migr%C3%A9
"No, it shows that there's a cottage industry of Jew-haters on the internet who falsely claim people they don't like (or that they think other people don't like) are Jewish."
That would easily be solved by the media applying their obsession with disparate impact and "privilige" evenly.
it just goes to show how it is hard to find authoritative information on the Internet about something as obviously interesting as the ethnicity of Federal Reserve Chairmen.
It's not just hard on the Internet, it is hard, period. Vast numbers of Americans can legitimately claim (or be claimed by) several different ethnicities.
I know its total no no by now, but so is HBD stuff to 95% of Americans. I am surprised that nobody brought it out here. The problem is census. How many people know these days that first election with 100% census took place in New Zeeland in 1890s? In the heydays of British Empire the census was something like 2%. And the discourse in parliament and media and on election circuits and quality of governmet looked accordingly. So If you eliminate say 25% of most stupid electorate (that don´t really care anyway) by some simple and plausible means (taxes come to mind) the politicians would stay put but their bla bla and agenda would change considerably.
The basic job of central banks is the management of usury, a system denounced by philosophers, theologians and moralists for thousands of years that leads to the enrichment of the rich and the impoverishment of the poor and the periodic economic crashes that plague economies based on usury.
Yeah, in medieval Europe they went as far as forbiding it by Pope decree and handed the juciest business on the planet to jews on a silver plate.
There was another entry in Yellen's whispering(?) campaign today, implying that Summers is more anti-punchbowl therefore all big money VIPs must now pressure the boy's-club Prez to appoint the woman. It also implies that an S.F. Democrat player w/o any nat'l profile, about whom nobody can remember anything specific (except being female) is the only alternative to the Summers juggernaut--ah, narrative
Anyway your comment about Textron takes me back: it is the first building you see in the city when coming from the east side. Before "Mad Men" and its rip-offs repopularized the style it gave you that pre-Vietnam vibe of somber soulless business concerns. The name sounds like a villainous but obscure company in some Paddy Chayefsky movie
post this week about the awfulness of eating outside, and of being outdoors generally
one reason he's indifferent to paving over the countryside and building 50 stories skyscapers everwhere.
Many jews see any love of nature as suspiciously 'ayran' there is something in their DNA where they just don't get it..
Speaking as a Calvinist, I assert that money printing is a form of stealing. There is a free lunch involved...for the thieves. But because their willful and unrepentant sin alienates them from God, thieves end up paying a very heavy penalty.
The only way government spending is not theft is when a duly elected representative body, after full and open debate, appropriates tax money for beneficial public use through formal legislation.
Putting future generations into debt is, of course, another form of theft. It is this country's great misfortune to be governed by a pack of thieves. Yglesias is a reprobate who celebrates thieves and thievery.
The few ineffectual checks that remain against unlimited money printing and debt are due to the waning historical influence of America's Calvinist founders.
A quote from the Calvinist Andrew Jackson about the Bank of the United States is also in order here: "You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out."
Today's bankers practice thievery on a much larger scale than in Jackson's time, and America practically worships these vipers and thieves.
All of this only confirms to me the traditional Calvinist belief that the vast majority of people are going to hell.
Why no calls for a black Fed chairman?
The Republicans should use the lack of Fed diversity against the Administration and call for a black Fed chairman in order to paint the Dems as racist. Walter Williams or Glenn Loury, perhaps?
Judean People's Front, you could contact one of the Religion faculty at Calvin College. A few of them have Master's from Calvin Theological Seminary.
"Jeff W. said...
Speaking as a Calvinist, I assert that money printing is a form of stealing."
and I'm sure Calvinist spanner Andrew Jackson held the same opinion which is why he caused the panic of 1837. Americans should thank Jebus you people don't run the banks anymore.
"All of this only confirms to me the traditional Calvinist belief that the vast majority of people are going to hell."
Relax, God doesn't exist and neither does Hell.
P.S.
Is it just me or are the prove you're not a robot pictures getting harder to decipher?
The first black member of the Fed board of directors was 47 years ago: Andrew Brimmer.
I'd heard that Miller generally got unfair criticism for his time at the Fed; kind of like being the navigator on a ship whose captain is determined to run the ship into the rocks.
--No, it shows that there's a cottage industry of Jew-haters on the internet who falsely claim people they don't like (or that they think other people don't like) are Jewish.
1)"That would easily be solved by the media applying their obsession with disparate impact and "privilige" evenly."
Those big meanies made me lie!!
2)Really? You think that Yglesias is a "Jew hater" for falsely claiming that Miller was Jewish?
No, I think he's an idiot, who was fooled by the fact that "[Miller's] name comes up as Jewish a lot on anti-Semitic conspiracy theory websites" as Sailer himself admitted.
The next Chairman should be Amish! They are very thrifty and, as businessmen, can give Jews a run for their money!
Hehe, actually, the Bundesbank was set up in the good old days by an extremely Catholic-heavy government under the Catholic Adenauer - who intended to steer Germany back to a more Christian worldview after the Christianhating Hitler.
Incidentally, economically, Adenauer was an Austrian (Libertarian, Americans would say today, Liberal, we say in Germany) and did NOT believe in quantitative easing or the 'free' lunch it supposedly buys. Hence why the Bundesbank was put in a position to tell politicians: Go eff yourself, we ain't got no money for you, you pathetic thief.
Deeply regretting those days are gone...
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