Talking Points Memo has the story.
...the two other men with Ryan were Cliff Asness and John Cochrane.Asness is the hedge-fund manager (who pays a lower rate of taxes than you do), Cochrane is the University of Chicago School of Economics professor.
In case you're unfamiliar with the University of Chicago School of Economics, here's a quick roundup of criticisms from wikipedia:
The Chicago school, which advocates for unfettered free markets and little government intervention ... came under attack in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The school has been blamed for growing income inequality in the United States....Nobel laureate Paul Krugman of Princeton University says that recent comments from Chicago school economists are "the product of a Dark Age of macroeconomics in which hard-won knowledge has been forgotten." Critics have also charged that the school's belief in human rationality contributed to bubbles such as the recent financial crisis, and that the school's trust in markets to self-regulate has offered no aid to the economy in the wake of the crisis.Asness was once described as "filthy, stinking rich," by New York Magazine. Here's a charming detail about Asness:
...he once served as a guest host on CNBC's Squawk Box and defended the $450 million in bonuses AIG executives received...It's worth remembering that AIG received a government bailout of $173 billion after crashing the economy by making reckless bets -- and that the executives who made those bets were the ones who got the bonuses.
We're puzzled that Ryan's campaign website only shows him talking to ordinary-looking people in ordinary settings. There are no photos of him eating a pricey meal at a swanky Capitol Hill bistro with a Dark Age economist and filthy, stinking rich hedge fund manager. Oh wait, maybe that's because it would piss off his constituents.
