Just re-read this in the Times thing on Reeves' cv. What a load of horseshit. The LSE Masters is notoriously hard and hard work. Has been since 1990 I'd say which is as far back as my memory goes. It is a huge step up from undergrad.
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Did the MSc Econ at the LSE in 90-91 and to say it was a gentle gradient up from an undergraduate is absolute horseshit. This is before the big grade inflation and Firsts were still vanishingly rare.
Interacting with Paul is like playing GTA so this is very normal. [I should emphasize that I am too old to have ever actually played GTA, so 'like playing GTA' is just a figure of speech].
Sorry, but the description is just bullshit and does not describe anything about the LSE MSc. There is no way you could rescue 'gentle pace' as a descriptor with your suggestion.
Yes, my suggestion is just saying that this guy is totally full of himself and thinks a course is worse when it he doesn’t come out clearly ahead of others. I knew a lot of people in mathematics like this.
Plenty of undergrads I knew in Warwick maths were actively more hostile to courses that were challenging _and_ broadly accessible as they enjoyed feeling like the smartest person in the room.
We should be grateful it is not Kwarteng and Truss. Good to have grown ups around. Are we waiting for an EU or would now be a good time to discuss the single market ? Or are we just too scared that it will lose an election ?
Oliver Ranson is a director of the East India Devonshire Sports and Public School Club - a club that denies membership to women - so one can only guess how outraged he is that a woman is chancellor. https://www.eastindiaclub.co.uk/
Did the LSE MSc (Econ.) In the early 80s with Profs Layard, Atkinson, Dasgupta, Buiter and Nickell. Around 50% of the student cohort did not make it. I'll never forget the sessions on dynamic optimisation with Buiter in macro. Those enrolled were mostly from Yale, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, etc.
I had exactly this thought (tho much less qualified than you to judge). Can't help feeling there is a whiff of misogyny about some of this fervent CV-archaeology.
I don’t recall any such snide examination of the qualifications of any Tory except Kwarteng which seems slightly justified in that he oversaw a disaster
I must have missed the occasions when previous male cabinet ministers (let alone Chancellors) had their qualifications challenged?
It’s shameful.
I also suspect it wouldn’t be happening as loudly, if Reeves had been a Conservative Chancellor though..
Step up from undergrad to postgrad was intense for me. No real analysis ofc but it was still tough. This was back in 17/18 at University of Nottingham.
This is the same Oliver Ranson I knew as an undergrad at LSE: a faintly comic figure who now perhaps wouldn’t want me to go back through the student newspaper archive to recall his antics as a prominent old fogey of that most subversive LSE protest group, the student union Tory society
Agreed, it’s complete nonsense. I remember HM Treasury Macroeconomics directorate had an implicit (sometimes explicit) view of the ranking of economics MSc courses. LSE was clearly at the top. (Birkbeck, where I did mine, was several places down).
Sorry, this is the best The Times can do? Picking up an airline revenue specialist to make disparaging remarks about the Chancellor? It says a lot, not much about Reeves though. https://substack.com/@revman
This guy in the times is talking absolute rubbish. The LSE Masters is regarded by most economists as one of the best in the world - to the point that it would often be used as a screening tool for professional economics roles.
I think he's trying to insinuate that the LSE is somehow left/statist/optimist about government growth policy, playing on an old trope from the late 60s when it was famous for student militancy. But the LSE economics courses, undergrad or MSc or taught PhD are not like that at all.
The snark about the 2:1 doesn't work either given she graduated in 2000 when galloping grade inflation was only just kicking off (7% awarded Firsts in early 90s, 9% by 2000, 16% by 2010 and 37% in 2020).
No, but there's a big constituency in business & finance that much university macroeconomics is academic formalisation of left-wing takes. Spending public money to obtain the growth...or not...is contentious. Macro is basically just a debate.
The dismissive "playbook" reference fits with that.
[My credentials for pointing out that Oliver Ranson is talking out of his arse is that I have taught MSc Econ myself, but at multiple other unis, and LSE courses were widely circulated and consumed. I also audited [sat informally] LSE MSc courses myself when I was a young thing at the BoE.]]
If anything, coming from PPE and doing well in an MSc like LSE's is more impressive. An MSc like that (having done the UCL one) is a huge step even for someone who has done straight econ at undergrad (I certainly felt it!)
There's also no 'LSE playbook' from which you can say Reeves' speech was reading. The MSc has for ages been very no nonsense hardcore macro, micro, metrics. There's nothing political-economic about it.
You could say it was/is 'political' in that it accepted wholesale mainstream econ methods, which the heterodox critics have pointed out has had consequences. But no more than that.
A much better line of attack is 'it's not all that clear that having worked as an economist when young is a necessary or sufficient condition to be a good Chancellor, which Reeves' many references to her cv seek to imply'.
I think it is an advantage, but in the wrong hands it can be a curse [too literal reading of what you were taught/worked within, too confident]. And it's an advantage that can be compensated for by able people adept enough to seek the right advice.
From his bio: “Oliver is an airline macroeconomist, helping the industry develop revenue by applying new technology such as Internet of Things, Blockchain, Metaverse and AI”.
Sounds predominantly micro rather than macro to me?
Without naming names, there was an academic who used to post on Twitter a lot saying that central banks should target the stock market because his model said so. Even very clever people who know a lot of economics can be prisoners of it.
I would say the problem is moving from top universities typically from an economically privileged upbringing then seeking to apply your economic models on the country without real life experience. That's when they get shown up. Reality is different to econometric models, and people react differently
Yes Minister put it well. eg:
HACKER: Don’t patronise me Humphrey, I believe in education too. I’m a graduate of the London School of Economics, may I remind you.
SIR HUMPHREY: Well, I’m glad to learn that even the LSE is not totally opposed to education.
I studied at LSE in the mid-late 1990s...and the notion that there is an 'LSE playbook' is straight out of the 1990s LSE playbook, especially during Giddens' time as director.
All this fuss about Rachel Reeves’ CV is a diversion. Most important economic question is whether Budget strategy of boosting public spending in a very unfocussed way (£80bn from next year) funded by taxes on business and higher borrowing is correct. I fear not, and growth/investment will suffer.
the most important economic (and political) question which has remained since 2008 (or before) and the ensuing eurozone crisis is what the countries of Europe can do to boost their domestic economies. So far there have been no answers, but if we cannot grow then nothing else matters.
Public investment and some kind of real industrial policy seems required and that will require increases in public spending. Madness to think the UK has any hope of not getting Farage as PM if we keep going as we have been.
Not clear the case has been made for short-term public spending rises on the scale Reeves is planning. Spending up by nearly 3pc of GDP. Apart from NHS, where is it going? If spending rise was smaller and slower, tax rises would not be needed or could be planned more carefully.
Looks like she engaged in credentialism to sell herself. But credentials in economics & finance aren't what they are in some fields, so she ended up embellishing her actual practical experience dealing with economics.
Sunak did a similar thing with his hedge fund role.
It's what politicians do.
Totally. Seems strange that he thought exams were tough over a short term. That was my o levels, A levels, degree all undertaken over @2 weeks each time.
The step up us big finding that now with students they need another level from undergrad and don't always know it when move one to the next.
No woman can be sufficiently qualified for these types. Unless she's blonde and right wing, in which case she needs zero qualifications. C.f. Oakeshott, Dorries, Truss, Pearson....
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"They'll tell you." *
* Also see:
Vegans
Harvard
Oxbridge
Crossfit
https://www.eastindiaclub.co.uk/
It’s shameful.
I also suspect it wouldn’t be happening as loudly, if Reeves had been a Conservative Chancellor though..
Maybe that's what the MOAB™️* wants?
*Malevolent Old Aussie Billionaire (other B words are available AND applicable)
#TheUKsMediaIsTHEProblem
#Leveson2
End of story
The dismissive "playbook" reference fits with that.
Sounds predominantly micro rather than macro to me?
HACKER: Don’t patronise me Humphrey, I believe in education too. I’m a graduate of the London School of Economics, may I remind you.
SIR HUMPHREY: Well, I’m glad to learn that even the LSE is not totally opposed to education.
Sunak did a similar thing with his hedge fund role.
It's what politicians do.
The step up us big finding that now with students they need another level from undergrad and don't always know it when move one to the next.
First, second and third year of an undergraduate degree.