Friday, July 31, 2009
The recent Internet row between two of the government’s top financial analysts was a classic geeks vs. nerds contest, writes consultant, writer and analyst RJ Eskow. The showdown on the blogosphere began when Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, accused Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Elmendorf of going too far in his critical assessment of how much money savings a new Medicare advisory panel would generate (“a paltry $2 billion”) over the next ten years.
Orszag, himself a former CBO director, blogged that short-term savings was never the point of the panel, and that Elmendorf had played into a stereotype that the CBO often overestimates cost and underestimates savings. When thinking of stereotypes, Eskow couldn’t help but chuckle at the exchange “between two analytical types whose names sound like characters in a Tolkien novel.”
As Eskow sees it, the squabble pitted Orszag, the geek, against Elmendorf the nerd, with the understanding that the difference between the two terms is “a ‘nerd’ is conservative, number-fixated, and highly rational,” whereas “a ‘geek,’ while equally bookish and intellectual, is more given to flights of intellectual fancy and wild imagination.” In other words, “a nerd can count. But a geek can dream,” says Eskow.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Elmendorf vs. Orszag: A "Teachable Moment"... for Geeks and Nerds (by RJ Eskow, Huffington Post)
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