Frank Kogan

Brad DeLong wrote a post yesterday entitled "Trying And Failing To Understand Niall Ferguson" in which he takes to task a couple of other people's glib assertions that Ferguson's actions can be explained as an attempt to bolster his fees on the speaking circuit. DeLong doubts this anyway, but especially doesn't see how quoting the CBO while chopping the quote off in midsentence can be expected to achieve this (I assume that DeLong is taking it as understood by most of his readers that the full quote can be easily checked and Ferguson's contention countered). Of course, my own hypothesis — that there's something going wrong with Ferguson — doesn't explain anything, since it doesn't say what's going wrong. "Going wrong" is a stand-in, could mean anything from "insomnia" to "flipping out." I don't pretend to know what is going on with Ferguson, except that stupidity and malice and greed just don't seem likely.