In my discussion of alternative models of the crisis, I didn’t get around to discussing two fringe sects that buzz around the edge of the debate.

One sect is the Austrians. Now, whenever I discuss what Austrians believe, I get told that I just don’t get it. (Eegor. That’s Eyegore! Eyegor! That’s Eegor! What hump?) Whatever. I do know that I keep being told that Peter Schiff has been right about everything; so, how’s that hyperinflation thing going?

More interesting, in a way, are the economics professors who are totally convinced that people like Brad DeLong and yours truly are ignorant, unwashed types who don’t know anything about modern macroeconomics.

For the record, I tend to think things through in terms of New Keynesian models, as in my old Japan paper, but often translate the results into IS-LM for simplicity. If that’s a crude, primitive approach, somebody should tell Mike Woodford.

What’s striking about the you’re-so-ignorant critics, however, is their tendency to get all confused about very basic things – to insist that the savings-investment identity somehow implies that government spending can’t increase demand, that the Euler condition is somehow a causal relationship implying that low interest rates cause deflation, that Ricardian equivalence means that even a temporary rise in government spending will be fully offset by reduced consumption.

What’s going on here? I believe that what we’re looking at is people who know their math, but don’t know what it means: they can grind through the equations of their models, but don’t have any feel for what the equations really imply. Confronted with informal discussion that’s grounded in models but not explicitly stated in terms of math, they’re totally baffled. And so they lash out.

Sad, really.