‘Tis the Season to be Jolly so it is time to share this 39-year old economics parody composed, and one imagines performed, by Harvard Professor, Reagan economics adviser, and long-time president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Martin Feldstein (1939-2019).
I have inserted first or last names between square brackets for the benefit of any non-economist or young economist (Boomer says, “You’re Welcome”) that has somehow landed on this page.
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‘Twas a Night in the Sixties
by Martin Feldstein
Cambridge, Massachusetts
December 1980
‘Twas a night in the sixties
And all through the land
Unemployment was falling
Inflation at hand.
The stock market was rising,
Without any care,
In hopes a Dow thousand
Soon would be there.
The Keynesians were snuggled
Secure in their Chairs,
While visions of multipliers
Allayed all their cares.
Paul [Samuelson] with his textbook
And Art [Okun] with his gap
Had settled their brains
For a long postwar nap.
When out in the land
There arose such a clatter,
A voice that was crying
That money could matter.
Away from their desks
They flew in a flash
To see who was claiming
Such power for cash.
They looked at their models
With equations precise,
That gave semblance of proof
To conclusions so nice.
When what to their wondering
Eyes should appear
But a miniature sleigh
With eight tiny reindeer
With a little old driver
Who was having such fun
They knew in a moment
It must be Milton [Friedman]
More numerous than eagles
His supporters they came
And he whistled and shouted
And called them by name.
First John [sic, Jean-Baptiste] Say and then [David] Hume
Then [Alfred] Marshall and [John Stuart] Mill,
Now [Karl] Brunner and [Alan] Meltzer
And Anna [Schwartz] and Phil [Cagan].
From the U. of Chicago
To Minneapolis-St. Paul
Then dash away! Dash away!
Dash away all!
As economic theories with which economists play
When they meet with an obstacle
Assume it away,
So off to the journals,
Their papers they flew,
With monetarist theorems,
Rational expectations too.
And even in Cambridge
Was heard the new truth,
The theorems and lemmas
Of each little proof.
The Keynesian thinkers
Were spinning around
When onto the scene,
Milton came with a bound.
He was dressed all in gold
From his head to his foot
And his ideas were polished
And ready to put.
“Velocity’s stable,
M1 and M2,
Which shows what the Fed
Shouldn’t be trying to do.”
“That curve by Phillips
It really is straight
And the cost of funds
Is the real interest rate.”
He wrote many a word,
And with evidence too.
At the NBER
His volumes they grew.
His ideas how simple.
He puts them so well.
It would be no wonder
When he got his Nobel.
A wink of his eye
And a nod of his head
Soon gave Keynesians to know
They had something to dread.
Then turning his talents
To the writing of prose
TV and best seller
He did with wife Rose.
Then he sprang to his sleigh
To his team gave a whistle
And away they all flew
Like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim
As he drove out of sight,
“Keep freedom for all,
and keep money tight.”
Source: Ancient, analogue copy found in Irwin Collier’s personal papers.
Image Source: Faculty portrait of Martin Feldstein in 1997 in The Harvard Gazette, June 13, 2019.