Talk:Amity Shlaes

Amity Shlaes was fired from the Financial Times

Economist Brad DeLong pointed out that "Amity Shlaes was fired from the Financial Times for lying about the Bush administration's preparedness to deal with Hurricane Katrina." http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/jonathan-chait-on-new-deal-denialism.html

Since part of the article about Shlaes reads like a curriculum vitae, with prominent mention of her work at the Financial Times, her termination at the Financial Times for shoddy journalism should be noted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.162.63 (talk) 17:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Controversies Section

The controversies section should be expanded. Much of Amity Shlaes scholarly work has been repeatedly questioned for it's accuracy.

Her work has been questioned as: selectively reporting facts, ignoring inconvenient facts, and creating a revisionist mythology of verifiable history.

"Revisionists' blind view of New Deal." By Matthew Dallek http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6CF51F59-18FE-70B2-A858CD862CDC69EA

The key graph by historian Dallek's criticism of Shlaes writing is:

"Shlaes cited unemployment figures that excluded Americans who had New Deal-generated jobs, and she virtually ignored what Rauchway calls “the authoritative reference work Historical Statistics of the United States.” That reference book shows that during FDR’s first term, the real GDP grew by some 9 percent annually; and after the 1937-38 recession, the economy grew at an annual clip of 11 percent. By the fall of 1934, another New Deal historian, William E. Leuchtenburg, explains, “the ranks of the unemployed had been reduced by over 2 million and national income stood almost a quarter higher than in 1933."

Amity Shlaes historical scholarship and accounting methodology has been questioned by both credible historians as well as economics professors. There's a growing body of evidence that Amity Shlaes is a fiction writer pretending to write non-fiction to push a political agenda.

Below it's asked if George Will's encomium to Amity Shlaes should be included. The same George Will who has decided to question the science behind global climate change? George "doubts global science" Will is not in the same league as Paul "noble prize" Krugman. That creates a false equivalency that's a discredit to Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.111.162.63 (talk) 05:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The Forgotten Man

User 66.9.150.10 (talk · contribs) recently added the following regarding Ms Shlaes's newly released book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

Booklist, the librarian's periodical, says, "Shlaes' accent on personalities is an appealing avenue into her skeptical critique of the New Deal." A link to the book review is available here

Unfortunately, you need a subscription to Booklist's to read its reviews, and I'm not sure that linking to the Amazon page is the proper way to cite that review. Moreover, that reads too much like advertising to me.

BTW, I have seen a couple of very positive reviews of this book in my regular reading. Cheers, CWC 16:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Shlaes had an article about the book in The Wall Street Journal. There's a copy at http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.26390,filter.all/pub_detail.asp. Cheers, CWC 14:27, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

That article has now appeared at OpinionJournal.com, where links never expire. See http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010281. CWC 18:15, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've added the OpinionJournal.com appearance as an External Link. CWC 09:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

George Will reviewed the book in this column. CWC 17:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Krugman controversy

This edit substituted a Wikipedia editor's judgment about the controversy for that of what a secondary source thought notable about the controversy. Because of the WP:NOR rules, we prefer secondary sources to Wikipedia editors' interpretation of primary sources. Because of WP:WEIGHT it is also inappropriate to include lengthy ad hominem sections of Krugman's angry screed, unless we're also going to include equally lengthy encomiums from George Will and others. THF (talk) 08:39, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Unbalanced tag

Shlaes's book is widely praised (great reviews in the WSJ, NY Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, etc.), but somehow only the criticism from liberals concerned about the political ramifications of her work is in the article--and not even Shlaes's response rebutting the false claims of inaccuracy. THF (talk) 19:49, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

That section should indeed include some more positive reviews, and rather than referring to it as a "controversy" it should simply refer to reaction to the book.

Really though the thing to do here is get the recently created article on the book into tip-top shape and then do a quick summary-style bit here while linking to that article.

I'm not sure THF that you read the NYRB review that closely (it's not free online so maybe you only heard it referenced). While the reviewer, economist and encyclopedist Benjamin M. Friedman, starts out complimenting the prose and some of the narratives which he says make for "genuinely delightful reading," in the end it's rather devastating (albeit in a very polite fashion as is common with NYRB reviews). Friedman notes that "several problems prevent Shlaes's argument from being fully credible" (which is quite harsh), that her "account of the depression experience seems unbalanced," and that she fails to prove key arguments. He clearly did not think much of the book in terms of its scholarship (actually I'm not sure he said anything positive about it in that respect).

And this is hardly surprising, since from what I can gather (I have not and will not read the book), serious students of the Depression seem to find the book rather flawed. Unreconstructed supply-siders (which Shlaes apparently is) and folks who hate the New Deal before they even pick up the book obviously love it, but based on what I've read I can't imagine historians of the New Deal giving it status among the canonical scholarly works about that era. If, as seems likely (though I don't have the time or inclination to determine this definitively), the reviews from those-in-the-know are more negative than positive (and I'm guessing more reviews will be coming in now that the book is getting serious play), then our article on the book should reflect that. NPOV obviously does not mean 50/50 good/bad, we need to reflect what the most reliable sources are saying about the book and there is some serious criticism here.

But, again, of course you are right that it should not include only negative reviews. I'm not interested in working on this anytime soon, but I fully support you or anyone else adding in more glowing accounts over at The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression and then adjusting the appropriate section of this article accordingly. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:32, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Removed line "She is distincly [sic] neoconservative, with a profound sense of self promotion. She is the only Bloomberg reporter mentioned on the wikipedia entry for Bloomberg LP."

I removed line beginning "She is distincly [sic] neoconservative....." Firstly, Ms. Shlaes' support for free markets is conspicuously un-Neoconservative. Neoconservatism means something (or at least it used to) other than merely “ultra right-wing.” Secondly, the statement that Ms. Shlaes has a “profound sense of self promotion” is merely ad hominem. If there is evidence that she is a grand self-promoter please cite it. Thirdly, the implication that Ms. Shlaes is somehow involved in her mention in the Bloomberg entry is simply unfair. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ninoscalia1986 (talk • contribs) 22:05:11, August 19, 2007 (UTC).

Neoconservative or neoliberal or Laissez-faire? Since she is mostly an economics writer and not a political writer, laissez-faire is more correct. Neoconservative implies loss of personal freedom in additon to loss of economic freedom. See Nolan chart. 71.131.3.27 (talk) 06:36, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Year of Birth

The article doesn't have her year of birth. Intelius gives her age as 46, so I put in that she was born ca. 1961.Jmkleeberg 19:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Needing a Cite for this?

"Ms Shlaes is a controversial figure, sometimes accused of subverting facts in order to to promote neo-conservative views."

Well, says who? Nothing cited, and rather out of step. Should it be removed from the article? PJayC 21:59, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Katrina

The paragraph about the two Katrina articles should go. First, because it's not a fair characterization of the main point of the first column, which was that 9/11 made Bush more willing to put Federal resources into Katrina. Second, and more important, because to single out these columns gives them too much weight in the article. It's not as if Ms. Shlaes is primarily known for writing about Katrina. --66.28.243.126 (talk) 04:09, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It's fair to say that the Katrina articles should not have taken so much space, but given the place made to other articles she wrote, as well as the possibly controversial role they have had her career, a mention of them would make sense. I'm adding them in a shorter way, please feel free to improve. Farialima (talk) 01:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It's WP:OR unless there are reliable secondary sources about the columns. Editors don't get to pick and choose which columns are notable. THF (talk) 03:18, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I've added a source for the claim she was fired.JQ (talk) 10:51, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil Gramm paragraph

This paragraph:

In July 2008, Shlaes wrote a column defending Senator Phil Gramm's comment that Americans were "whiners" with respect to the economy. Shlaes endorsed Gramms's argument that the United States was not in a true recession, saying that at the time, the US GDP had not shrunk during two consecutive quarters, which is commonly thought to be the technical definition of a recession, an argument which has since been undermined by the National Bureau of Economic Research decision to declare that a US recession began in December of 2007. Since she penned those words the unemployment rate as calculated by the National Bureau of Labor Statistics has risen from 5.6% to 8.1% as of February 2009. Moreover the US Bureau of Economic Analysis now says that the US GDP contracted at a 0.5% annualized pace in the third quarter and a 6.2% annualized pace in the fourth quarter.

is original research and synthesis. If someone explicitly criticized Shlaes for not accurately anticipating the course of the economy over the next nine months, there might be some relevance to the article, and one can cite that secondary source, but she simply wrote an op-ed that made an accurate observation about the state of the economy in June. THF (talk) 14:15, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The criticism of Shlaes made above has been put forward in a number of venues. I've given a cite. And, it's worth remembering, she made an important claim about the state of the economy that was subsequently shown to be wrong at the time she made it (at least according to the authoritative US body on the question). If you want that fact to be excluded from the article, you should have a better reason than you've offered so far.JQ (talk) 10:54, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

You've given blog cites in violation of WP:BLP and WP:SPS. Stop it, and stop edit-warring to violate Wikipedia policy on a BLP. THF (talk) 13:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

A note on reliable sources

WP:BLP states "Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, and blogs as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material (see below). "Self-published blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed (e.g., "Jane Smith has suggested...")." Although there are some grey areas here, it seems pretty clear that a blog published by a magazine (such as Atlantic or The Economist) is a source similar to an opinion column in the same magazine. Similarly, if a political organization criticises the subject of a BLP, the notability of the criticism doesn't depend on the format. If the facts are clear (as in the Gramm and Katrina cases) and the only question is whether anyone notable has mentioned them, that should be decisive.JQ (talk) 11:12, 11 March 2009 (UTC)