apologist

Well into the 20th century, writes Mr. Easterly, apologists for apartheid pointed out that “Black South Africans were on average materially better off than most other Africans were.”

It is spreading wider and faster than we thought, and it has even found an apologist in Kevin Roberts, president of the venerable Heritage Foundation.

Her conclusion was startling, her tone defiant: “Put me wherever you want: misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naïve novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward.”

But these bull-market apologists are laboring under a fundamental misunderstanding of bubbles: They don’t trace to weak earnings per se, but to how far ahead of those earnings the market rises.

Don’t you know what time it is, as your apologists like to say, Mr. President?