04 June 2017

Paul Romer out at World Bank. I think they fired the wrong person.

Via Roslyn Petelin's article (please read), I found the Bloomberg article describing Romer's ouster at World Bank. From the sound of it, Romer didn't like the self-referential, obscure bankspeak bloviation that was being generated by the World Bank economists, and asked that they write more clearly and directly. And, yeah, stop publishing stupid irrelevant journals.

A bunch of insular, bureaucratic careerists happy to keep-on, keepin'-on with no view to effectiveness or relevance, versus someone who asks them to make it clear what the value of their work is by clearer prose and more focused presentations.

Uh oh. I think we know where that is going to go, a priori.

And it did!

I think they fired the wrong person.

PS: Serendipity to me to Petelin's article as the first thing I read after "coining" the Orwellian knock-off bureauspeak and was treated to bankspeak internal bureauspeak gibberish of World Bank economists. It's a symptom of the detachment of academics from public readership and engagement.

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