est. 2007

Barbados Underground

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Barbados Economic Society Joins The Blogosphere

Barbados Underground (BU) is pleased to welcome one of Barbados’ newest blogs, Barbados Economic Society (BES). Of interest to the BU family is the lecture delivered by Governor of the Central Bank to BES yesterday titled ‘What’s Wrong With Economic” which has been updated to BES blog. Here is a snippet from the Governor Worrell’s…

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Dr.Winston Moore, President of the Barbados Economic Society – BES

Barbados Underground (BU) is pleased to welcome one of Barbados’ newest blogs, Barbados Economic Society (BES). Of interest to the BU family is the lecture delivered by Governor of the Central Bank to BES yesterday titled ‘What’s Wrong With Economic” which has been updated to BES blog.

Here is a snippet from the Governor Worrell’s hard hitting lecture direct at his own profession:

Over the past 4 decades I have become increasingly dismayed as I have observed the economics profession being taken over by a generation of economists who have lost sight of the limitations of what they can know, with the help of the tools and techniques available to us. We write as though anything that we can set down in a theoretically “correct” specification of an equation has to be true, even when the evidence to the contrary is right before our eyes, and obvious to everybody who is not an economist. When our empirical tests fail to yield expected results we do not take our theory back to the drawing board, but we fudge some explanation that we think might be plausible.

Read Full Lecture

23 responses to “Barbados Economic Society Joins The Blogosphere”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Dr Worrell and Professor Craigwell must ensure that papers they write or participate in writing provide clear and precise guidance to policy makers and business persons.

    It seems to me that most of the stuff written by economists is mental gymnastics. I myself have completed advanced courses in statistics and econometrics but have long given up on expecting useful analysis on our economy from the modern economists who now pride themselves with being able to perform complex mathematical operations rather than helping the mathematically initiated and even the uninitiated to better understand economic issues

  2. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Truthfully Anonymous,
    Do you really think that these economists understand the “economic issues”?
    ….or are they merely trying to impress those of us who KNOW that we don’t?

    IMHO, economists are exactly like meteorologist. They talk pretty before the fact and then explain where they went wrong the day after.

    What economic society what??!! that is just another make believe club….but the bushman will check it out and see if there is anything to be learned….

  3. zion1971 Avatar
    zion1971

    It is not called the dismal science for nothing. The past 20 years have seen a lot of second-rated mathematicians who have migrateed to field of economics to try their luck at “quantizing’ the human condition. They have failed miserably in this light along with their cousins in the field of finance. The notion at the time was that for economics to be seen as sexy and a true science is has to be” mathematicised” along the lines of theoretical physics and abstract mathematics. The chicago school of economics lead the way, and economic journals were littered with equations and math jargons that few people undestand. This was why the University of Chicago won
    the most “nobel prizes” in the field.

    Economics is the only subject that two people will support opposite theories and they both will win a nobel prize . The present financial crisis is a reminder of the difficulty in modelling and predicting human behaviour. With all the powerful econometric models, Gaussian / Bayesian statistics , stochastic calculus, etc Wall street was unable to evalute risk and value of all those worthless derivatives on their books.

  4. ac Avatar
    ac

    Istill go along with the saying “Liars can figure , and figures can lie”. Just ask Wall Street. Enron . an those in charge of the housing Market.

  5. David Avatar
    David

    The Governor in his speech did criticised his profession. It would do good if some who Lord over others by virtue of being an economist would take heed.

  6. zion1971 Avatar
    zion1971

    The most fundamental assumption that should be emphsized in any eoconmic theory or modelling is that human beings by themselves or in aggregate are inherently corrupt, greedy, selfish and always seek to maximise their self-interest. This becomes a truism more so in the field of politics which cannot be separeted from economics.

  7. Amused Avatar
    Amused

    @Anonymous // July 1, 2010 at 7:59 PM. I agree. “Most [economics reports] are [written] by great experts for the edifcation of other great experts and leave the rest of us as befuddled as before”. Anna Russell

    Let us hope these scholars will write in such a way as to make it understandable to mathematical morons like myself. It would be an excellent thing if they explain in simple (not simplistic) terms.

  8. The People's Democratic Congress Avatar
    The People’s Democratic Congress

    In this post this morning, the PDC wishes to acknowledge a couple of related things – all related to an event that took place at the Annual General Meeting of the Barbados Economic Society at the Savannah Hotel.

    First of all, let us acknowledge the event – an address by the Governor of the Central Bank of Barbados.

    Second, we wish to let the Governor of the Central Bank know that this address that he delivered to the Barbados Economics Society (BES) on Tuesday, June 30th, 2010, and titled: What is wrong with Economics?, was extremely brilliant and superlative and will definitely go down in the history of the BES as one of the best and most critical ever presented by anyone to it.

    As judged from the written text of the address on the new BES’s blog – which we in the PDC hope to be a very active participant on – the Governor was extra-ordinarily personal, frank, precise, clinical, and telling and more so tremendously professorial philosophical intellectual global in his critique of the discipline of economics and its main practitioners – so-called economists – from the point of view of the giant waves of misrepresentations and unscientifisms that have engulfed the discipline from the time he chose economics as a career up to this point in time.

    Third, Dr. Worrell must be truly commended for delivering what – we assume – was such an awesome earth-shattering iconoclastic performance of the sort, class and type that we have never observed – other than by ourselves – sorry to say – in any public gathering discourse in an essentially elite-driven socially conservative westernised Barbados.

    So REVOLUTIONARY in its essential thrusts and themes has been this address that we think that it is compulsory reading (in its written form) for economics students at the Barbados Community College (BCC) and at the University of the West Indies, and for all of those persons in Barbados that have been having an interest in or that have been participating in the field of social science in Barbados and beyond.

    We wonder if the address was video recorded, and therefore if so, if it is not possible to have it broadcast on national television (CBC) or on the internet for wider public illumination consumption and education

    Check this very penetrative insight: “Over the past 4 decades I have become increasingly dismayed as I have observed the economics profession being taken over by a generation of economists who have lost sight of the limitations of what they can know, with the help of the tools and techniques available to us.

    We write as though anything that we can set down in a theoretically “correct” specification of an equation has to be true, even when the evidence to the contrary is right before our eyes, and obvious to everybody who is not an economist.

    When our empirical tests fail to yield expected results we do not take our theory back to the drawing board, but we fudge some explanation that we think might be plausible.

    These are not trivial matters. They lead economists to incorrect interpretations of economic motivations, transactions and processes, and, as a result, to policy recommendations that can be guaranteed to fail.”

    Exceptional!!!

    Why we give Dr. Worrell such fulsome praise on this occasion is substantially because of the fact that we in the PDC know it and have been saying it for a long time that the discipline of economics and practitioners of economics have long been helping to wreck great havoc and destruction on the Barbadian society and especially certain segments of the Barbadian society – the broad masses and middle classes.

    Thus, so-called economists in Barbados – through their strongly unflinchingly believing in and practicing many of those atrocious, diabolical and anti-progressive principles and methods contained within this very undesirable intellectual academic artform and its corollary, Western Finance, and through many of them being in positions of authority in various areas of government in Barbados sufficient to continually impose these diabolicals plus other wicked principles methods found in Western Finance in the form of policy measures on the wider populations in this country; or their being in positions to render advise to those in authority in the public and private sectors of this country, sufficient to secure their continued imposition on these populations, have been able to help secure great declines and stagnations in the material production and distibution, financial and social developmental spheres of the Barbadian .

    No wonder that Barbados’s real GDP has been performing totally satisfactorily in our view – it should be at least 8 – 10 per cent per annum on average at this stage rather than the little 3 – 4 per cent – and no wonder the country’s position on the UN Human Development Index is rally downwards.

    But, here is what we wrote ( minus a few editorial changes to it this morning) on January 12, 2010 on this BU blog under the thread titled USING ECONOMICS FOR POLITICAL ENDS CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE: “All and sundry on here must be told in no uncertain terms how ECONOMICS is the inverted political ideology, philosophy and psychology of the Caucasian man of Western Europe, and how it has been primarily wickedly used over the last 230 hundred years or so by this same man to greatly assist in the control and domination and exploitation of millions of his own peoples and other non-white peoples of this world, even while he has been continuing to use it to assist in accumulating huge amounts of wealth property and income across this world.

    These are the unvarnished undiluted facts!!!

    Also, what has to be logically deduced from the above definition is that ECONOMICS itself must be therefore seen as restricted to the ideational and the neotic levels.

    Thus, any unstudied unkempt attempts by many people in Barbados and elsewhere, esp. those so-called economists, to take ECONOMICS beyond those levels must NOT ONLY be seen as also dastard, disheartening and ill-advised, BUT as well must be seen as part of a deliberate intellectual academic agenda/ruse to ignore the reality that what this donkeyism – ECONOMICS – so seeks to describe or adumbrate, or does describe or adumbrate, is human social behaviour that is clearly political and social in nature and intent, and that what it so seeks to deal with essentially , or does deal with essentially, are circumstances and situations whereby human beings, material and finance are governed, and in some cases brutally so, by some kinds of human social behaviour that are political and social in nature and intent.

    Thus, a proclivity on the part of many so-called economists to overlook this very important fact will no doubt help lead themselves and countless others into a deep and dark well of confusion over what ECONOMICS is and what it ought to be.”

    Indeed, so convinced are we that economics and practitioners of economics have been helping to do such untold damage and degradation to this Barbadian society, that we at this moment reaffirm our intent that at anytime a PDC Government is formed in this country in the future there will be the total deeemphasizing of economics in the governmental provinces of this country

    Fourth, we wish to acknowledge him for his suggestion that economics is NOT a science (for us it has never been and will never be) and for espousing that there are clear limitations to the use of mathematics and mathematical modelling within economic analysis and research generally.

    Hence under the theme, “Discarding unscientific practices” in the lecture, he continued, “there are no laws in economics. A law in the physical sciences, as Beinhocker reminds us is a universal regularity with no known exceptions.

    There is nothing in economics which meets that standard.

    What we have are theories: explanations for why regularities exist and explanations of how they work. We need to desist from writing papers that “prove” theories; they always turn out to be mathematical exercises of no practical relevance, yielding no insight about how the economy really works. In our empirical work we must accept the reality that the limitations of model specification, measurement error, choice of proxy variable, etc are so formidable that we can never “prove” anything in economics by appealing to the numbers.”

    Having been reading economics and some history of economics for a very long time, we have had for a long while to be consistently expressing exasperation, horror and aversion to the great extent of flagrant political inversions that have been carried out on the discipline by some economic practitioners globally locally – for clearly misguided reasons – and which have seen the original classical economics turned into a politically neutered, politically intellectually ideologically sanitized number based discourse.

    It is these inversions that have therefore been partly informing our raging antipathy towards the swamping of the economics discipline with mathematics and statistics.

    Nevertheless, whereas we think that there is a need for some desirable level of mathematics and stastistics to be included in economics, we know and are convinced that it has been terribly over done.

    That is one of the reasons why in our post under the said thread USING ECONOMICS FOR POLITICAL ENDS CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE – which we referred to earlier in this post – we had this to say then (minus one or two editorial changes now): “By so seeking to and ignoring or minimizing the actual fundamental political basis of ECONOMICS, the chief exponents and proponents of ECONOMICS have been or are able to attempt to, or have been or are able to remove much of the the politics, the political, the political science and the political consciousness out of the original/earlier ECONOMICS over the years, or out of what should have been made to remain being called political economy over time too, and furthermore, too, have been or are able to attempt to or have been or are able to replace such things with many mathematical and statistical methods of describing, analysing and expressing ECONOMICS over time.

    Thus, too, with the greater mathematicalization and statiticalization of ECONOMICS, there has been at the same time the further depoliticalization and softening of average man and woman in so-called developing societies.”

    And, further to that, this: “Moreover, when seriously studied, ECONOMICS – CANNOT be seen as anything other than being the skinny intellectual academic discipline that it is – and anything more than partly the result of the bringing together, and, further more, the sanitization and depoliticalization of many horrible putrid aspects of many pre-existing or concurrent or subsequent Western social and political theories, principles and activisms, chief among them being – Racism, Social Darwinism, Traditional Conservatism, Feudalism, Imperialism, Social Elitism – no matter what brand of economics one deals with at given points in time – Classical Economics, Marxian economics, Macro-economics, Monetarism, etc.

    ECONOMICS has thus became the inverted political ideology, philosophy and psychology of the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Robert Malthus, John Staurt Mill, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard, Milton Friedman, etc. primarily because when seen in the ideological political reflex, ECONOMICS is the very falsely overblown distorted image or representation of the really wider political things, politics and political science within the wider society.”

    So, it is indeed great to see that Dr. Worrell has once and for all publicly decried that very sordid practice of “slavish reverence to maths” that is so conspicuously seen within the discipline, and which have helped produced turnoff effects, alienating effects in many ordinary people in Barbados and beyond, and wonderful too to observe that he had sought instead to impress on his audience the need to view economics as a very practical social human centered truth/reality based discipline less the many mathematical and statistical irrelevancies.

    Our only qualms with his address is that he did not identify specifically the huge legal political social structures, processes and values that have supported economics and practitioners of economics and those economics practitioners, and those who are in receipt of their economic and financial advice in government or private authorities’ – their diabolical contribution – aside from the contribution of the latter which was referred to earlier in this post – to the substantial decline and havoc that has so far been brought about to the Barbadian society – and thus too that he could not have identified alternative approaches to these.

    In this regard we mean the political laws and agreements and value-systems that have been instituting, constituting and enforcing these wretched demonic TAXATION, INTEREST RATES, REPAYABLE INSTITUTIONAL LOANS REGIMES, etc to the wholesale discredit of the developmental process of this country and esp. the masses and middle classes, and we mean also alternatives to their abolition.

    Anyhow, finally we wish to acknowledge this morning too Dr. Worrell’s consistency in emphasizing the critical need for timely, accurate and reliable information and data to be properly fed into the governmental private sector decisonal making processes of the country so that decision-making and policy-making processes can be better enhanced in this country.

    This consistency of emphasis by him does show that Government’s chief economic advisor has an understanding and acceptance – shared by us and many more in Barbados – that information and data and their proper uses – in the context of a governmental social material productive system in a wider global system – are as important and crucial as those of blood, the blood system and the proper functioning of the blood system in the physiological psychological make up of the human being in this world.

    Great performance, DR. Worrell.

    PDC

  9. David Avatar
    David

    The Governor’s address is sure to rock the boat among many of the ‘status quo’ economists in Barbados, but will any of them have the guts to publicly challenge him?

    Arthur and Mascoll who have presented themselves as the countries leading lights in the profession want to defend their profession? What about Bajan academia* on the Hill?

  10. bajeabroad Avatar
    bajeabroad

    You know we in Barbados got this thing bout pontificating on lots of big words and figures a la the talking head doctors, lawyers and economist who actually CREATE NOTHING…..that’s the difference between developed and developing countries. In developed countries people actually produce goods and services AND THEN require the work/services of lawyers, doctors and economist to help provide framework, keep the workforce healthy. In Barbados we have the equation a$$ backwards as usual

    Prop up the egos of these talking heads and look down on the people who actually produce goods i.e. manufacturing and agriculture. And then we want to know why people think we are a Banana republic

  11. bajeabroad Avatar
    bajeabroad

    It was actually laughable the students at Harrison College were dissuaded from pursuing classes such as metal work, principles of business, technical drawing in favour of english literature, biology, french, spanish etc. Instead of focusing our best brains on practical areas we steer them toward the “classics” hence the perpetuation of talking heads

  12. The People's Democratic Congress Avatar
    The People’s Democratic Congress

    It is wonderful that the Barbados Economics Society (BES) has helped to bring about this blog so that, among other things, it can readily provide a forum for discussion among members of the BES itself, among its members and non-member commenters, and among non-member commenters themselves on a range of social, political, material and financial topics and issues – historical and current – that have taken place or that are taking place in Barbados and beyond, and that have affected or that are affecting – in whatever ways – many people, and other entities in this country and elsewhere.

    The BES must be congratulated for being the first semi or fully representative group of professionals – that we know of – from Barbados to have found it appropriate to set up such an internet blog to provide for on line discussion with many people on many issues falling within its own jurisdiction and other relevant jurisdictions.

    So, well done, BES!!

    But, the development of this blog has truly come at a time when many people and groups of people in Barbados – including our party – the People’s Democratic Congress (PDC) – have long been bemoaning and often times severely criticizing many so-called economists today in Barbados for their lack of contributions to public debate on a number of especially crucial political economic issues and happenings in this country, and moreso as these relate to several of government’s economic and financial policy programs – which is an issue however that the Governor probably could not have touched on in his address Wednesday to the Barbados Economics Society at the Savannah Hotel.

    Too, almost invariably when this issue is raised by many social commentators, the point is made too that gone are those days when some so-called economists from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, like the late Wendell McClean, Dr. Frank Alleyne, used to submit views ever so often in the media on so many national economic financial problems and issues affecting the ordinary man and woman in Barbados.

    Whereas today other than those that are partisanly affliated like Mr. Owen Arthur and Mr. Clyde Mascoll, there are some others like Dr. Winston Moore, Professor Andrew Downes, who either are often found in the media or in the course of delivering many public lectures typically dealing with many economic/financial matters, or are seen in various ways featuring at public events for the primary purpose of marketing themselves and their research advisory skills, for esp. some money concerns to see, who nevertheless at the end of the day ARE NEVER EVER observed still representing the interests of those people who in Barbados are greatly in need of representation at this stage – therefore, the poor, the down throdden, the weak, the vulnerable in this society, against especially the blatant greediness and big wicked schemes of some local and foreign elite corporates in Barbados and the savageness and recklessness of government economic financial approaches in the country.

    Whereas, such persons would wish to appear to desire cultivation of an image of the permanent clean cut, politically correct yet though politically intellectually aloof non- partisan independent political professional guru cum consultant – they at the same time are appearing to be unconscionably neglecting some of their fundamental PRINCIPAL duties – as SOCIAL
    ENGINEERS/INTERACTIONISTS – to the Barbadian public – a public without whom their careers would not have been possible

    While we dont expect this BES blog to assist in altering this overly discreet image of these particular individual professionals themselves, we expect that the BES – as a semi-representative group of professionals – would make use of this blog to say or present what ever it can to not only make sure that most non-member commenters, even most visitors to it, do not think that this is the image for 80 % of all economists in Barbados, but to also make sure that these same commenters and visitors understand clearly that it will be doing so much of what many individual so-called economists have been failing to do – which is to carry out some very fundamental moral social duties, i.e to socially intellectually interact ( not dialogue ) with the Barbadian public generally and in ways that the public becomes the wiser through this interaction – and to say when where and how it intends to represent or come to the defence of the weaker people in this Barbadian society when it is necessary or when it is reasonably expected to do by many people in the country or when justifiably called upon by many countrymen and women to do so.

    So, there you go.

    PDC

  13. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ bajeabroad

    Skippa, you must be a carpenter!
    How you keep hitting the nail on the center of the head just so….?

    You just described Barbados perfectly in two brief posts.
    It is a little country with people who talk a lot, puff themselves up a lot, and do little…..!

    …and we have institutionalized this trait.

    ~Management just talk and never actually solve any problems. Their idea of ‘solving’ a problem is to hire a good lawyer (i.e. one who can talk a lot while nothing gets done)
    ~Workers do even less (their idea of being a good worker is to be in a strong union and be practically immune from being fired)
    ~Politicians have perfected the art of talking and doing nothing – to the point where that profession is largely synonymous with being a lawyer.
    ~ Joe Citizen thinks that by calling the Call-in show or complaining on line, they have made their contribution.

    We have reached the stage where (with the exception of about ten individuals all total – including my main man ‘Lowdown’ of course), to get anything actually DONE bout here we have to ‘bring in people’.

    ….check it!
    Who are the movers and shakers in tourism?
    Who do we call about the sugar industry?
    Who owns and controls the electric and telephone utilities?
    Who does the police commissioner wants to bring to keep us in line?

    Hell, we even have to bring in Guyanese to plant and grow food for us to eat….
    ..cause or youth are too ‘educated’ and too occupied on the block reflecting on their great knowledge in arts and language from the top schools.

    Barbados is typified by Jack Bowman on BU. A parasite who trolls the blog looking to show that he can find green verbs and misplaced adjectives. He has no useful ideas or contribution of his own, but seeks to feed his ego of self importance by latching on to top bloggers (like Bush Tea, Bonny P and negroman- LOL) and talking down to everyone else on trivia……
    …..but then again, CH showed him up for what he REALLY is – a cowardly weasel who has not the guts or balls to actually face up to a challenge (even a known minor challenge like CH /LOL)

    As long as the rest of the world continues to require a tropical plaything, and to benefit from exploiting us, we probably will continue to ‘survive’.
    Bush Tea however believes that the true measure of a man is to be able to stand on his own two feet and to ‘walk the talk.’… and we certainly cannot claim to meet that measure…

  14. ac Avatar
    ac

    @Buh Tea

    You just open a can of worms with “Top Blogger Category does David knows about
    it LOL
    You are very funny !

    Question : Can you please go on You Tube and down load Barbados jewel of the caribbean by the merrymen. Down load it to the “interesting Times on the Horizon”
    thread

  15. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ ac

    I know that is sounds contradictory, but despite the reality of Barbados as explained by bajeabroad and BT above, bout here is still the ‘gem’ of the Caribbean.
    …only goes to show how bad things are in the Caribbean.
    …it also speaks to our measure of ‘gems’….

    In the ‘gem’ context, we tend to be talking about being conservative, safe, steady, non-threatening, non-controversial, and generally benign….
    This is a workable disposition to have if you are prepared to be a tourist dependent country whose fate lies in the hands of those attracted to you.

    …it is like being a pretty woman. You do not have to be smart, hard working, innovative or productive to be considered a ‘gem’ – as long as there are rich men out there who have designs on your beauty. Woe is the day when you are no longer pretty…… or when the rich men lose their wealth…. or when prettier girls come along…..

    The problem with being pretty and ‘not very smart’ is that you will get tend to get yourself ‘screwed’ over and over again….(usually call ‘cost over runs’…)
    …after a while you can be in a much worse state than others who were required to work for their own (even if meager) upkeep all along.

  16. ac Avatar
    ac

    @ Bush Tea

    Good for Barbados. It is better than being called “ugly” In these hard economic times the more help the island gets the better. Except for them do nothing politicians sitting idly. Wait a ” minute are you picking on my prettiness! and why you joined pretty and not smart ! How about “Ugly and Dumb .” just understand never mentioned the two together. and how about handsome men ?How do you describe their intelligence.

  17. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I notice that Dr Worrell referred to Sir Arthur Lewis as one of the economists he read.

    I would bet that most of our leading economists have never read two of Lewis’s articles on development economics. We all got caught up with financial stuff and now Cave Hill is not interested in dealing with development issues- we are into stocks and bonds etc. We are more interested with the “oil” in the economic engine than with the engine itself.

    We want to make money by just fiddling around with money (Stanford and Madoff) rather than producing real goods and services.

    We are teaching persons on how to manipulate the system for personnel gain rather than thinking like Adams and Barrow on how best to develop the country for the benefit of the masses

  18. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I should have also added the CLICO people to those who were merely “playing” around with money and making money rather than investing to create real wealth.

  19. David Avatar
    David

    Interesting to note the British government will be cutting* its budget by 40%!

    What argument has the economists used now to visit such austerity on a people? Maybe it is for their own good but what of the implications for tourism Mr. Minister Sealy?

  20. David Avatar
    David

    It appears the current economic recession has exposed a deficiency in the economics discipline by not being able to cope with the irrationality of the consumer. According to economist Tony Johnson who is past president of the BES behavioural economics is the missing piece!

  21. Layman Avatar
    Layman

    I am just wondering what advice the Govenor of the Central Bank of Barbados is giving to the Government of Barbados. Should not his focus be The Economy of Barbados and his prescriptions to help save the sick economy. If I had the brains and that job I would forget my fellow economists and trying to score one academically on them . Its time to stop the ‘OLE STICK LICKING’ and clowning around at the parties. A picture says a billion words or better yet billions of dollars.

  22. Andy Downes Avatar
    Andy Downes

    I wonder who can join the B’dos Economic Society
    Notify of the eligibility for membership.

  23. David Avatar
    David

    @Andy Downes

    Suspect one has to be an economist.

The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.

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