Reply #20: The latest econ papers out of Harvard/MIT say "free trade" is not a good idea [View All]

[papau]

I believe my former teacher at Tech, mainstream economist Paul Samuelson of Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970 fame, and who had a few good papers in International economics, such as the ones on the Balassa-Samuelson effect, and the ones on the Heckscher-Ohlin model (with the Stolper-Samuelson theorem), has written some very clear articles on why free trade is "bad" for the US, and has been speaking out about why he no longer believes in totally free trade. http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2004/09/20040927_b_main.asp

When a Nobel Prize-winning economist like Paul Samuelson is challenging conventional "win-win" assumptions about free trade, saying the low-wage, high-innovation economies of China and India, are causing Americans to be losing big, perhaps it is time to listen - and perhaps time to drop any faith one had in Clinton's Wall Street boy, Mr. Rubin

Granted Rubin has both an undergrad degree in economics and a stint at the London School of Economics before he found his calling as a lawyer and got a degree from Yale. But legal work plus fame as a fellow that took profitable arbitrage bets that lead to his becoming after 26 years the Co-Chairman of Goldman Sachs & Co. is just not the same as a Nobel in Economics.