oh boy. Here's an incredibly personal and first-person view of these three great macro intellectuals, by our not-exactly-friend Nathan Tankus (big MMT guy; very smart, often wrong, and always worth listening to):

This year has been a difficult year for one of the corners of my world. It’s hard to even exactly describe what this corner is. The best way I can find to describe Lord Robert Skidelsky, Anwar Shaikh and Perry Mehrling is through a contradiction: they were all influential and marginalized macroeconomic thinkers.

He walks through his personal interactions with these three economists, all of whom aren't Nobel- or household name-recogniztion level... but among us who know, we know.

nothing will communicate the sadness and emptiness of a small corner of the world that doesn’t talk about each of them together. I also have some stories and some personal connections that I want to get into print; so please indulge my nostalgia dear reader. I’m also remembering how gracious this corner of the world has been towards me from such a young age; taking me seriously when I had no right to be taken seriously and engaging me as an intellectual equal despite my lack of credentials.

Same. I had Anwar Shaikh attend a heterodox econ conference I co-organized back in the day. Walking him back to his hotel room afterwards, me a young, mostly Austrian-oriented undergraduate student, he asked about my interests and the overlap of his Capitalism thesis with Austrian thoughts, particularly disequilibrium analysis and monetary regimes.

Of the three people this article is about, Lord Robert Skidelsky was the one I was closest to. Really, it's hard to explain our friendship. I first met Robert at the “First International MMT Conference” in late September 2017 in- where else?- Kansas City, Missouri

Yes, that's the sort of place Skidelsky was hanging out at in 2017 (after going to confs like the one I had organized, talking about necessary reforms of the econ curriculum). (Also tells you where Nathan hangs out, intellectually)

...also going to lower Manhattan I caught a ride in his taxi from Laguardia. We got stuck in horrible traffic; we didn’t care. We were loving talking. I can’t really describe why talking to someone 52 years, 7 months and 1 day older than me was so easy and natural. Obviously we had shared interests; he was the world’s preeminent Keynes biographer and Keynes has always been deeply important to my intellectual journey-. But it wasn’t simply the intellectual interests we shared. It was easy talking to Robert about anything. I talked about life with Robert. The closeness we felt was immediate and lasted.

. At the end of the night he gifted me his then-most recent book (he has another coming out!). Appropriately enough, that book is on AI (!!!) and is entitled "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. Tragically, he inscribed the book with the message “To Nathan, Lets not Leave it Another Five Years. Robert”.

Despite its disastrously ugly cover (who tha fuck makes these covers?!), I had missed this title and have it on the list...

SHAIKH

Anwar was someone I knew, but was not close to. My connection with Anwar was different; an important intellectual challenge on an intellectual journey

In his shopping around for college (hashtag extremely precocious econ nerd),

I ended up talking to Howard for over two hours. He was surprised that I had already read Keynes’ General Theory. I talked about Monopoly Capital, which I had just finished reading. I think I had heard of Anwar Shaikh’s work before, but it was this extended conversation with Howard which truly captured my interest.

"Abandoning perfect competition as an analytical benchmark has been a central element of my thinking for at least a decade now."

At 19, Nathan was on a panel at an econ conference, asking Shaikh questions.

My journey with, and struggle with, Shaikh’s work continued from that point to this very day. I ended up not being convinced by some of the arguments about competition Shaikh and others put out, but I shared with them the rejection of the false neoclassical dichotomy of “perfect” and “imperfect” competition. I have started writing more and more about market governance over the last decade.
There’s so much more to Shaikh’s work and history. His personal relationship with Joan Robinson, his contribution to debates about “production functions”. His late work on “econophysics” and his work on international economics. His work developing “Classical-Keynesian” Stock-Flow Consistent models.

AMAZING MAGIC

PERRY MEHRLING

This one the stackers have at least heard of #1428602, #1595092

Perry is yet another giant who was always generous and gracious with me. I first met him at the Institute for New Economic Thinking offices in 2013.

For those of you who read the financial press today, who listen to Odd Lots, pay attention to financial market developments or simply have read material about the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009; it will be hard to understand what the before times were like. Understanding the institutional details of financial market governance in a way that connects up to a macroeconomic picture had been purged from economics by the mid-1970s at the latest.

"Over the course of that year Perry went from a mostly ignored professor toiling in obscurity to in-conversation with some of the most important institutions on the planet."

There's apparently a cool YT course by Mehrling. I shall give it a serious study:

. Where Perry’s work helped me the most is in thinking through the “governance” aspect of financial markets- particularly the role of financial dealers. The idea that balance sheets expand to keep financial market relations stable- to buy and sell- and spreads between the price at which actors offer to buy and offer to sell (known as “bid-ask spreads”) can reflect a “shortage” of balance sheet space needed to stabilize markets is very powerful.

I can see Zoltan in all of this!

The last time I saw Perry was when we were on a panel together at the second “Money as a Democratic Medium” conference at Harvard law school. It was great to see him and it never occurred to me that it would be the last time. I will forever feel that I’ve left something unfinished with Perry.
I keep having whiplash between how reflecting on these three giants highlights how fortunate I’ve been and the sadness their deaths bring me. How generous people have been with me; how extraordinary my opportunities and life has already been.