(Blog)

Mr. Mankiw was until recently George W Bush’s chief economic advisor. He also wrote the textbook for my applied macroeconomics class, Macroeconomics, 5th ed.

I cannot help but consider Makiw’s positions while reading it. The textbook is actually great, well-written for the most part, concise, and easy to understand. But I can’t help but think that Mr. Mankiw is preaching “do as I say, not as I do”. That, or he needs to read his own book.

This is the same person whose report praised the trend of “outsourcing” of American jobs to foreign countries.

In the few mentions of the President I found in the textbook, one implies his tax cut was sound Keynesian economic policy, and another blames the current economic downturn on 9/11, but the book is pretty free of Fox-News-Syndrome (e.g. too much political commentary). I look forward to reading one of the textbook’s last chapters, which is exclusively about government debt.