There is no such thing as a Keynesian.

Some economists suggest that "we re-embrace Keynes" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html ). We call these people "Keynesians" for shorthand.

I greatly doubt "dozens of books", but I wouldn't be surprised if you've read a couple books and some articles that generally all agree with your preconceived ideas and your austrian leanings.

That is false. I read books from all sides, and the results of my reading greatly changed my views.

After all, you're clearly a person who think that he can point to the sky and understand economics, which is typical for armchair austrians... whereas actual economists and intelligent people generally prefer econometric data.

I have no problem with data. Because I respect data and math, I care a lot about when it is used properly and when it is not. In particular, regressions are almost always abused in econometrics, because there are far too many variables to control for, all the variables are imprecisely defined, and there is no easy to way to check the author's assumptions for a sensitivity analysis.

The federal reserve failed to be an effective arbiter of systemic risk. (something which was not even remotely in its mission statement.)

Dear God, if you call me ignorant you should at least read their mission statement before making a claim like that: http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/mission.htm Mission:

- "supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers"

- "maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets"

That's just nonsense. Most economists have nothing to do with the economy.

A great number of prominent economists work in official positions ( CEA, FED, the various agencies and bureaus). These economists play very major roles in regulating the economy.

Non-hedonically adjusted metrics have been studied at length and are generally be be more flawed than the hedonically adjusted metrics.

I never said straight up hedonically adjusted numbers are better. You have to use the right number for the job. For the purposes of monetary policy or investing, I would look mainly at national income statistics, asset prices, credit growth, and broad money supply growth. Maybe the Fed wasn't watching these, or maybe were and just ignored them. But all four measures were showing huge warnings as early as 2004, and had they been paid attention to, a lot of bad things could have been avoided.

That said, it's ludicrously arrogant and nonsensical to simply claim it's pure fabrications,

Calling it a "pure fabrication" is inaccurate, and a word I did not use. The CPI is the result of lots of honest hard working people, who long hours trying to boil down the economy into one number using the most accurate methodology they can. But the economists calculating the CPI do exist in a political world, and there is a selection effect for a methodology that has more generous assumptions.

But when you pile a ton of subjective assumptions together and then apply a bunch of math, the result is subjective. There are multiple semi-plausible ways to do hedonics and there is no right answer. How can you objectively measure how much percent better a 2004 Toyota is than a 1998 Toyota? The CPI does indeed have a consistent, thought out methodology. Unfortunately, it's actually in part measuring the Toyota new model roll out strategy. The Toyota model roll out strategy has nothing to do with monetary economics or investment strategy.

To you, economics is a religion, and as such there is no point in arguing with you... you point at the sky, not at the ground.

Well, I have changed my mind on many issues. I am very responsive to good arguments. In fact, I used to have exactly your position on CPI, with exactly the arguments you made. But I studied the issue further and was convinced otherwise.

I truly and honestly hope that at some point in time you'll pull your head out of your ass for long enough to realize the difference in the level of effort required to become a true expert in a field, and the level of effort required to simply become dangerous.

So what would you advocate I do if I wanted to become an expert? What defines an expert?