[Torie]

But last week, as the accounting bill was in final debate, no less a supply-sider than Jude Wanniski sent a warning to House leaders that forcing firms to report stock options as a business expense, where the investors would see it, would have chilling effect on the entrepreneurs who built the boom of the dot.coms.

Yep, hide the ball. We don't want honest numbers reflecting the real economics to get in the way of dotcomers or other high tech types raising capital. Of course the jig is up anyway.

[Pelham]

Jude Wanniski is mentioned by name in Martin Anderson's memoir of the Reagan Administration, Revolution. Martin Anderson is an economist, and was an important architect of Reagan's economic program.

Anderson complained that the Reagan economic program was misrepresented to the public by several journalists who promoted themselves as experts on the subject- Wanniski and George Gilder, in particular. Anderson wrote that Wanniski is not a trained economist, but instead a reporter- and that Wanniski wasn't even doing the job of accurately reporting Reagan's economic program.

I doubt that there is any reason to put much stock in Wanniski's pronouncements. He's still the self-promoting reporter he was in the '80s, passing himself off as an economist.