Here's ignorance all ablaze, high atop the front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal: "Reluctant Shoppers Hold Back Recovery". So there you have it. If only we would all make a beeline for the mall and shop-till-we-drop, just like the good old days, then we would have the kind of recovery that warms economists' hearts. And it is evidently the economists, more than anyone else, who are clamoring for a return to the halcyon days of binge shopping in America. In a survey conducted by the Journal last month, 60 percent of the dismal scientists who were polled felt that a substantial increase in consumer spending is needed for sustained growth. These guys must be smoking the same stuff that Alan Greenspan smoked when he celebrated the virtues of variable rate mortgages, assuring us around the same time that inflated home values constituted "wealth." The quotation marks around that word are ours, since we doubt the former Fed chairman was using it ironically. Nor, we surmise, was he being ironic when he spoke of a supposed boom in capital investment at a time when household savings growth was negative. I've repeated this point numerous times, since I still find it dumbfounding that a guy with his academic chops could have said stuff like that. What a tragedy for the world that he did not pursue his calling as a jazz musician. In 1943-44 he was a promising clarinetist studying at Juilliard -- playing with a young Stan Getz, no less! Alleged Roast Beef The Wall Street Journal's steadfast support for rampant consumerism nicely complements the economists' desire to see us spending mindlessly again. The Journal doesn't much care what we buy, as long as it puts cash in someone's till. They once did a lengthy article on profitability problems that for
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