Never Let The Facts Stand In the Way of A Good Theory...

Austerity fail lols from Colbert last night:)

Stephen Colbert recognized that the now-debunked Reinhart-Rogoff paper that claimed countries with a high debt-to-GDP unerringly and inevitably leads to calamity was based on both an Excel spreadsheet error and removing countries from the dataset that didn't fit into their preconceived conclusions.

And just look at the Poindexter who caught the mistakes — Thomas Herndon, who reviewed their data and immediately spotted a basic spreadsheet error and that they had "excluded data from Canada, New Zealand, and Australia — all countries that experienced solid growth during periods of high debt and would thus undercut their thesis".

Oh please. If ignoring New Zealand, Australia, and Canada were a crime, everyone in America would be on death row.

(audience laughter)

Now sure, Herndon's corrected spreadsheet show that countries with debt over 90% did not see their economies shrink -0.1%.

Instead they grew by 2.2%.

But c'mon. 2.2% up, 0.1% down; you say potato, I say eliminate food stamps.

And for Pete's sake, how were Ren and Stimpy supposed to know that their paper — which has brought austerity to millions around the world — was flawed? It wasn't peer-reviewed.

No one needs to fact-check them. It's not like they said they were watching Scooby Doo when they were 4. {reference to previous comedy bit where a reporter had fact-checked politician Chris Christie who, when speaking to a 4 year old, said his favorite show when he was 4 was also Scooby-Doo. Reporter looked up that Scooby didn't air on TV until Christie was the ripe old age of... 6. Yeah. They 'fact-checked' a Saturday morning cartoon from the early 70s...}

COLBERT: Now after publication in 2010, one economist complained that they refused to share their data.

Well, of course they didn't share their data. If they can't use Excel, I doubt they could send an e-mail attachment. (audience laughter)

But folks, Siegfried and Roy are standing by their results, saying:


CARMEN REINHART & KENNETH ROGOFF (4/16/2013): The weight of the evidence to date — including this latest comment [by Herndon] seems entirely consistent with our original interpretation of the data.

COLBERT: Right! Entirely consistent with their interpretation... because no matter how much the results change, the hypothesis must remain the same. That's science!

Well folks, now that I know academic papers don't have to be all mathy to make a global impact, I got some of my own completely unsupported findings I would like to drop.

For instance:

Hydrofracking Makes Your Ass Look Better in Jeans
Crude Oil: Nature's Egret Moisturizer
And Holster V. Bra: How Gun Control Causes Manboobs

And, unlike Banger and Mash, my studies are peer-reviewed... in that I showed them to some seagulls on a pier.

And I can say with absolute certainty, that I did not make a single error in my Excel spreadsheet, because for these studies, I used Angry Birds: Star Wars.

Bottom line, Bartels & James' study is still valid, no matter what some punk UMass Amherst econ grad student named Thomas Herndon says. And when we return, I'll be joined by punk-ass Amherst econ grad student Thomas Herndon. We'll be right back...

Although still not as good as the Daily Show bit earlier this week with the interview with the gun nut who claimed that gun control never works. When pointed out that it did work in Australia, gun nut said that if you were talking about another planet where there weren't humans. But if you were on this planet and with actual humans...

WTF?! Seriously? Did Gun Nut just say Australia is another planet and not inhabited by humans> Teh whut?

The capper of that one was when cornered on the gun nuts' logic!fail he resorted to saying that because we have more guns of course there is more opportunity for accidents (because... FREEDOMZ!).

Daily Show (re: more accidental deaths b/c more guns): Right
Gun Nut: Right!
Daily Show: Right. ...That's my point.

Look of dawning realization that this didn't work out the way gun nut had planned...