The Conservative Party of Canada Jumps the Shark
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The Conservative Party of Canada Jumps the Shark
They have hired a woke socialist SJW as their "chief economic consultant"
An EJMR thread popped up this week titled Claudia is Chief Economic Consultant to the Conservative Party of Canada and I didn't bother to click on it because I thought it was a joke.
Then I saw this tweet:
Zooming in:
Hoooollly shit.
It is impossible to overstate just how cucked, toothless, and inept the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is…. this hiring decision exemplifies everything that is wrong with the party: they are not conservatives, and they are terrible at politics.
I understand that bipartisanship is important, and adults should work together across the aisle… but this is a bridge too far. Politics is supposed to be brutal and vicious for a reason: it is a zero-sum game, and the CPC are being walked all over. Letting Claudia Sahm dictate their economic policy is like letting a bloodthirsty shitlib fox into the henhouse, and will only result in slaughtered chickens, big government, a nanny state, and fascism.
This is the same “conservative” party that features pronoun roles in their Discord server, and whose self-described “red Tory” moderators banned me when I asked about them:
That is the state of the conservative movement in Canada in the year of our lord 2022: anti-free-speech pronoun respecters with economic policy being dictated by Claudia fucking Sahm.
Sahm has never had a small-c conservative economic thought or opinion in her life. She is a big-government, pro-socialism, SJW activist and has spent her career working at far-left thinktanks such as John Podesta’s Equitable Growth. At Equitable Growth she served as Podesta’s attack dog, viciously attacking and rallying mobs against anyone on Twitter who got in the way of the Blue Team’s preferred economic policy.
Claudia Sahm has been fired from her past two jobs for being a bipolar alcoholic. This is widely known lore in the economics profession; here are some highlights from a 15-page thread Clodia got fired!:
There are hundreds of these EJMR threads about her… because she is constantly trying to ban EJMR from the internet. More recently, she has formally entered into a truce with EJMR:
My take on this “truce” is, first and foremost, that it is embarrassing for an adult to get bogged down in a decade-long flame war with an anonymous forum. That isn’t something serious economists do. Touch grass.
My second thought is that I do not believe her. False contrition. She's a vile grinch who will not hesitate to launch vicious attacks vilifying people who dare disagree with her. She's everything that is wrong with US public discourse today. She has spent the past several years leading a very public campaign to shut down EJMR as a forum and get it banished from the internet. She hates free speech, and she is a fascist. More recently, she and her friends have made a Twitter account dedicated to shutting down EJMR:
I do not buy the truce, and I will not partake in it. She is an authoritarian fascist through and through. Never accept truces with fascists.
Even if I did buy the original truce, she has BROKEN THE TRUCE by deciding to wade into Canadian conservative politics, and has provoked my anger much like NATO provoked Russia. I am speaking on behalf of all conservative Canadians: we do not want you affiliated with us. We do not want your policy advice. Stay in your lane. Go back to working for John Podesta.
THIS IS AN EXPLICITLY POLITICAL HIRE — hiring Sahm is a direct affront to conservative Canadian values — it is the “red tory” wing of the party telling the “blue tory” wing of the party to go pound sand.
I can’t imagine any true conservative wants to be affiliated with Claudia Sahm. So why is she parading around and going on podcasts, marketing herself as CPC flagbearer? The CPC’s chief economist? Seriously? It’s embarrassing, and it needs to stop. She is poison to the CPC brand. She is a ticking time bomb and it is only a matter of time before she blows up in grandiose fashion and brings down the CPC brand when she does.
She will drag the party down into the mud with her and cause a ton of drama.
Again, I am not saying this to be mean — I would REALLY prefer just to ignore her. But she is coming onto my turf, Canadian conservative politics, and I will stand my ground. Standing my ground, in this case, involves painting the picture to the world that she is not a serious person; she is a running joke in the economics profession. Exposing this truth is dirty work, but it is necessary for these ugly truths to be aired. CPC members deserve to know who is in charge of their economic policy.
Personality issues aside, and partisan/ideological leanings aside, she isn’t even competent. She hasn't published anything in a decade, and nobody takes her economic analysis seriously. She is widely known as nothing more than a raving twitter troll who spends every day ‘sperging out about DEI activism, modern monetary theory (MMT), and socialism. I am 100% positive she wants to shove central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) down our throats, too. Principled conservatives and libertarians across the country should reject her being affiliated with the party in any capacity. The reasonable thing to do here is to tell her to STFU and GTFO from Canadian conservative politics. She needs to be forcefully shown the door by the Party.
It doesn't make any sense.
The CPC hiring Sahm is analogous to the NDP hiring Friedrich von Hayek or Ludwig Mises as their chief economists… or to use a more contemporary and realistic example: this would be like the NDP hiring Bryan Caplan, Peter Boettke, or John Cochrane as their chief economist. Except Sahm is at least 20 IQ points dumber than Caplan, Boettke, or Cochrane. She is an idiotic left-wing propagandist, not an economist. Why is the Canadian conservative party aligning itself with such a swamp creature? Why is she their chief economist? Why!?
Sahm was the loudest voice in the entire economics profession on inflation…. and she was wrong the entire time. She spent several years browbeating the world on Twitter: there will be no inflation, there is no inflation, inflation is not a problem. If you so much as brought up the specter of inflation she would gaslight you and call you racist, sexist, etc... that is her whole schtick. She is the head “inflation is a nothingburger” cheerleader, and she literally started the #TeamTransitory hashtag and movement. WHY IS SHE THE CHIEF ECONOMIST FOR THE CANADIAN CONSERVATIVE PARTY?
Furthermore, she obsessively stalks Larry Summers.
I slept like shit last night. I have macro nightmares often. Larry exhausts my brain.
Anyone as clueless about reality as Larry should not be listened to.
A big reason I am so vocal about Larry is that his macro analysis is a heaping pile of shit.
"what is Larry Summers getting wrong" ... hoo boy, how much time do I have?
if Larry Summers and his fangirl Heather Boushey were not such horse's asses, I'd be working the Admin under Yellen. I turned down the interview. I would gouge my eyes out before I joined the Biden Admin.
hey, Larry, could you send me what you're smoking? it must be some really good shit
SUCK IT, LARRY!
[mockingly ] Larry’s smarter than I am. As I am told, repeatedly.
Larry has gone unchallenged for decades. It’s time for other people to lead. You could say Larry Summers suffers from a skills gap in the current environment.
look, people. why has Larry gone completely irrational and obnoxious during the past year?
I will take Larry down. Larry time to retire ...
why listen to Larry? oh yeah, so you can roll your eyes at him, tell him to stfu, and then do the opposite
I gave a talk where I was asked to bring my best Larry Summers and spin a story of high inflation. I tried my best -- better than he does -- but really it was weak.
I hope Larry and his crew enjoy this moment. it's transitory. hawks day in the darkness always are. daylight comes and they fade away.
Larry is just a pain in the ass.
I am fucking done with the constant battle with Larry Summer and his academic macro team.
Larry’s advice is the opposite of what we should do.
suck it, Larry. you lost. just barely but you did.
He’s a good way to know the opposite of how to think about the economy.
WE ALL KNOW HOW POOR HIS ANALYSIS IS. AND HOW DANGEROUS.
I want to be very clear Larry is not leading a "critical conversation" we need. HE'S THREATENING A ONCE IN GENERATIONS OPPORTUNITY TO DO GOOD, EQUITABLE ECON POLICY. I will offer EVERY SHRED of my academic cred (most is gone already, thanks snowflake dude). to make that case.
Just ignore him. We should give a rat's ass what Larry and crew think. I know I am on the right side of history.
inflation hawks ruled the roost for decades. LARRY, I CAN OUT-ARGUE YOU. I AM AND I WILL
Larry, go back to grad school and kindergarten. better economics and manners will serve you well
I got Joan Robinson scholarship at Denison where I was a triple major in econ, political science, and German with 4.0. Larry doesn't stand a chance.
Larry is a dangerous man,
Larry truly is a walking policy disaster. man is a walking policy mistake
Larry is an obnoxious storyteller and abuses data. I’m a better storyteller and I love data and people!
I would loooooove to see 'raw-smartness' Larry take the first-year micro exam at Harvard. this was not his textbook. it was mine.
I would be happy to do stats work for Larry and fact-check his work. my hourly rate for him is steep, but he can afford it.
Larry is not alone in horrendous takes
Larry is not special. I could fill this entire post with similar doom and gloom. I won’t. Waste of my time.
you have no idea how hard it is for me to give a professional answer to questions like “What is Larry getting wrong right now?” as on Bloomberg yesterday. I do it because few others will. it’s career suicide. Whatevs.
how broken are elites that they still care about this man and his ego?
lowest of low was Biden calling Larry. srsly, childish, self-centered goofs like him must be ignored, NOT called by the President.
I get a lot of DMs about Larry and his incredibly bad takes on inflation. his abuse of economic reasoning breaks my heart. he should listen to [me] but won’t.
to be clear, I listen to Larry's interviews and read his opinion pieces (and years of research). I do agree with him sometimes. not lately, but he's worth a listen. my gifs and trolling are only to keep us from getting too serious. if you're not laughing, you're crying.
Larry is the master of silencing people who make good counterarguments. his crew are masters of never listening to anyone else.
Larry's a total fucking waste of my intellectual time and emotional energy.
let me be very clear, I do not give a flying fuck (technical macro term) about Larry.
Larry is a threat to humanity, has been since his time as Treasury Secretary. THAT WAS DECADES AGO. I have trashed my reputation among elite macro and faced repeated professional retaliation by going at Larry's *economics* in public. WORTH IT.
I am ignoring Larry and his crew forever. . LARRY ABSOLUTELY CANNOT INFLUENCE THE FED. thank god.
was writing a “Fuck Larry Summers” Substack post in my head this morning.
frankly, I am utterly unimpressed with his debate skills. his analysis is model-less (as he admitted in an interview) and he is uncurious (and sloppy) with data. oh and that tone. good lord.
go away, Larry, you have done enough damage
Larry Summers, please retire. I hear Cape Cod in the winter is great!
they gotta have something to communicate first. unless your Larry. then you just say shit.
.American people don't care if Larry's feelings were hurt.
I have learned a lot from the very smart, sensible economists worried about inflation. Larry is a waste of my time and energy. he's also a walking disaster for the world. so yeah, if I could cancel him I would. it is not possible. true broadly.
academic elite macroeconomists of Harvard/MIT/Chicago like Larry have wasted so much time advocating for disastrously bad policies.
I honestly do not get the appeal. Larry's a goofball and epic bad grasp of the real world.
can't ignore Larry but god forbid, you follow his advice.
Larry, there's this neat thing called reality. Would you like to join us?
Larry Summers more than any asshole idiot has fought the past year and half to silence my speaking truth to power -- he and his masters -- AND giving evidence-based policy advice. motherfucker got me blocked from doing fiscal press at a place. SNOWFLAKE who hates the truth.
Larry Summers is a hawk hack.
Larry Summers is a disease and a shithead economist. 100%.
Larry Summers is a symptom of a disease in economics. also disturbing are his elite crew who work hard to silence those who disagree on merits.
OMG 3 PERCENT INFLATION, save us from ourselves, Larry.
Larry Summers is one of the loudest and certainly the most colorful of the inflation hawks. it's a risk we should take seriously but given his earlier work, why is it Larry?
"Larry sounded so convincing." yes, that's the problem. he sounds convincing now too, that's why y'all give him a pass. it's not healthy.Larry is destroying the world.
my criticism of Larry and his crew, especially this year, is fully grounded in the economics. in terms of policy, during the entire crisis, I have worked extremely hard, despite a lot of professional retaliation, to deliver the best advice I can. that's me.
"because the CPI said so" is an argument Larry should try. at least it's data
Larry is the dangerous man and the Fed's NOT done its job EVER.
Economists get paid well even when disastrously wrong, forever. ask, Larry Summers.
Larry and his crew are sadly just part of being a macroeconomist in policy.
Economists to do good in the world. Larry is something of a — I don’t know — I see him as a roadblock to achieving that goal,”
“anyone as clueless about reality as Larry should not be listened to. full stop.”
I wish the people who had really big platforms in macro and more professional stature that I don't would say something. Larry would listen to them.
yes, let's give Larry endless amounts of space to peddle his theories -- not models, as he admits elsewhere -- about higher inflation.
it's also important to retire what's not working anymore. did, you hear that, Larry? retirement is a thing.
I have NO IDEA what Larry Summers defines as success, other than bolstering his ego. It’s not personal, I wish Larry well in his life. My problem with Larry & his elite hangers-on is their destructive economic policy advice.”
yes, I’m pissed off. elite white men elevating Larry —- again and again, decade after decade — is why economic policy is so fucked up.
Are you starting to understand?
The Conservative party of Canada has hired Larry Summers’ incompetent, neurotic stalker to be in charge of their economic policy. Sweet. Great hire. Really well done, guys.
How does Politico refer to this parasocial trolling? They gush in this headline that Sahm is “sparring with Larry Summers,” as if she were some avant-garde iconoclast engaged in a scholarly debate:
I actually googled this Politico reporter to see who would write such a thing, and it was some 30-year-old chick with a journalism degree. Of course. God forbid they have someone who understands economics covering the Federal Reserve beat, lest they fail to regurgitate whatever Claudia tells them to. Much like how CS wrote her own Wikipedia page, in this case, she has deemed Larry to be “sparring partners,” so the vapid millennial reporter dutifully reports it, and so the world turns.
Imagine for one minute if I personally were to spend my time yelling these exact same quotes at a senior scholar in the economics profession. Would you pat me on the back and tell me I was doing a good job, as her #EconTwitter “friends” are doing? Or would you tell me to sit down like a petulant child that I am?
She’s a clown. The conservative party of Canada has hired a partisan clown to be their chief economic consultant. Congrats, Canada is clownworld central.
Plagiarism
Claudia’s involvement with the CPC seems to have begun in 2021 when they used the “Sahm Rule” in their platform:
There are two problems with the Sahm Rule:
It is trivial and unimpressive, and I have literally no idea why this is a novel insight that needs its own name. It is a rule that states “when unemployment goes up, we might be in a recession.” Okay?
It is stolen
That’s right folks: she didn’t even invent her signature achievement that she never shuts the fuck up about. She stole it from a white male economist, Bill Dudley, because of course she did. All jokes and trolling aside, there are serious issues with academic honesty here.
Some might say: who cares? This rule evidently means a lot to her. So maybe just throw the poor woman a bone out of utter pity? But again: she is entering the arena of Canadian conservative politics. So I will do everything necessary to discredit her and tell her to GTFO and leave us alone.
Conservative Canadians do not want to be affiliated with you.
This plagiarism of the Sahm rule was first revealed in this email from Bill Dudley to Claudia Sahm. The highlighted paragraph is proof that he invented the rule 20 years ago.
She then complained on this podcast that Dudley had the gall to politely let her know that he came up with the idea 20 years ago. She says:
And I actually got an email from Bill Dudley like a week or two ago. And the subject line of the email was, for what it's worth, here's my three-tenths rule I put it in a Goldman Sachs newsletter in 2000, 2001 and he did a little screenshot of the Goldman thing, highlighted the sentence, he'd written and then there was a table. A table, not a chart of like how it worked in recession. I didn't reply to him. I don't plan to, this is an opportunity to the world to reply to him. And it really encapsulated a lot of things that I had trouble with at the Fed and are part of why I feel pretty good about having left the Fed.
One, I mean, I really don't appreciate this. Like you're doing a good job. I'm going to undercut your work, but whatever, that's an ego thing. And not saying that he has an ego, but I mean, I've seen this pattern before, so whatever. And okay, I know I have no false positives, right? So, and I know his three-tenths does but it's a good rule. Like in print, there's a lot of shared principles, so fine. The piece I had the most problem with was telling me it was in a Goldman Sachs newsletter and private sector macro people, they're important, they're great, it is important.
She then wrote a thread clarifying:
So her answer is basically: Yes, Bill Dudley created the rule. I copied it without citing him. Then Hamilton named it Sahm rule. Then I owned it because Christy Romer told me so.
I will allow that she wasn‘t aware of Dudley‘s rule when she came up with it. But after then being notified that he came up with it first, her reaction was to spit venom and go on the offensive and play the woman victimhood card. She's arguing that "who cares that I didn't discover it, name it after me anyway. This is important for women!" Barf.
Isn't it funny that she makes so much noise about this one measly intellectual contribution to macroeconomics, and now that it turns out to be as unoriginal as it was uninteresting, she doubles down and stomps her feet and proclaims herself a pathbreaking genius?
Pierre Poilievre if you are reading this: please, please, please do not let this psycho be in charge of your economic policy.
The CPC as Controlled Opposition and Pierre Poilievre as a False Prophet
To my American readers, can you even name these two dough-faced losers?
No, of course, you can’t. These are the last two leaders of the Canadian Conservative Party. Their names don’t matter. Toothless men in charge of a toothless party, set up to theatrically lose so that Trudeau may rule. Many in today’s conservative movement are now putting their faith in Pierre Poilivre, another dough-faced soyboy career politician.
Spoiler alert: Pierre Poilivre ain’t gonna do shit. He is going to lose to Justin Trudeau and ensure another decade of rule by the Liberal regime. Sure, he “fires up the base,” but take a look at the base: old and white. That is simply not the future of Canada. That is the past. He is destined to lead an ever-shrinking percentage of conservatives into irrelevance.
I don’t have any advice for him. He is screwed. His party is dying.
If he drifts to the left he can maybe salvage some support from normies, but then what is the point of calling yourself a conservative? If he drifts to the right, as he seems to be doing, he will consolidate power among his base but be rejected by Canadian voters more generally.
I just don’t see any scenario in which Poilievre wins or grows the party. Sorry, but Canadians don’t want some libertarian nerd who relies on “facts” or “logic.” They want a guy with nice hair and sharp cheekbones who says nice things, supports open borders and definitely isn’t related to Fidel Castro.
I guess my point here is that the Canadian Conservative Party is doing their final swirls around the toilet bowl before getting flushed. Sad to watch. Claudia is the little bonus turd drizzled on top of the primary turd, thus accelerating the speed of the flushing. Or perhaps a better analogy is that she is a peanut embedded in the turd, foreign and undigestible, yet insists on sticking around nonetheless.
Sahm and the CPC deserve each other.
The Conservative Party of Canada Jumps the Shark
Sounds like your "Conservative Party" has been infiltrated by Communists, and is basically now masquerading as controlled opposition. Probably time to start a new party....
...and I thought the GOP was bad. Christ.
"Imagine for one minute if I personally were to spend my time yelling these exact same quotes at a senior scholar in the economics profession. Would you pat me on the back and tell me I was doing a good job, as her #EconTwitter “friends” are doing? Or would you tell me to sit down like a petulant child that I am?"
Women's tears.