Paul Krugman

There’s a saying in Spanish: Por la boca muere el pez. “The fish dies by the mouth”. Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman has a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times which goes an awful long way to showing that he is a complete and utter imbecile—or the worst sort of cheap huckster imaginable.

If monetary debasement can truly create economic recovery, why did our Founding Fathers establish, in the US Coinage Act of 1792, that any persons discovered to be deliberately debasing US money "shall be guilty of felony and shall be punished by death"?

In his op-ed dated June 30, Paul Krugman declares Iceland as a "post-crisis miracle". That is totally screaming for a rebuff considering even Greece vowed not to be the next Iceland.

 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN: U.S SHOULD USE `EVERYTHING WE CAN' TO BOOST GDP, JOBS
 BN  11:58 *NOBEL LAUREATE KRUGMAN COMMENTS IN BLOOMBERG TV INTERVIEW
 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS FED SHOULD HAVE 3%-4% INFLATION TARGET LONG TERM
 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS U.S. GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO `GO OUT AND HIRE PEOPLE'
 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS SECOND MAJOR STIMULUS PLAN PROBABY WON'T HAPPEN
 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS U.S. ECONOMY MAY BE FACING A `VERY LONG SIEGE'
 BN  11:58 *PRINCETON'S KRUGMAN: `MARKETS HAVE BEEN FAIRLY CALM SO FAR'
 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN SAYS FEDERAL RESERVE SHOULD DO MORE QUANTITATIVE EASING
 BN  11:58 *KRUGMAN: `WE NEED TO GET MORE STIMULUS INTO THE REAL ECONOMY'

In an interview with Bloomberg TV's Erik Shatzker, Niall Ferguson picks up where Reinhart and Rogoff leave off. The historian discusses the bond vigilantes, "Bond vigilantes are a bit like the people short selling investment banks a couple of years ago. You start with Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, you don't get to Goldman Sachs until quite late in the game. In a way the sovereign debtors of the western world are pretty much in that position today. And we are working down the list, starting with Greece, moving on to Spain and Portugal, the UK dodged the bullet by implementing some preemptive measures. Sooner or later the bond vigilantes will get to the US, I don't think it will be this year, but in the absence of any political will to address this problem, this is simply an inevitability." As to why it is inevitable, Ferguson observes the case of the UK which was the only one to manage to grow its way out of massive debt load: "Britain after 1815 had two big advantages, it had the only the industrial revolution at that point that was going on in the word and had the world's biggest empire. I don't see anyone in that happy position today." The outlook: "Is it going to be inflation or is it going to be default. Right now there is no sign of inflation. We have monetary contraction at an alarming rate, and zero inflation in terms of core CPI, so the option of inflating this debt away doesn't seem to be there right now. What you are left with is therefore default. And I think it is a fair bet that US will default at least on the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare at some point in the foreseeable future. What the Greeks discovered you are fine until you are not fine with the bond market and if you have a non-credible fiscal strategy of borrowing a $1 tillion a year for the rest of time, never ever again running a balanced budget, at some point the markets are going to get spooked, and I think that point is nearer than Paul Krugman believes. Nothing would spook the markets more than for Paul Krugman's advice to be accepted by the Obama administration. That might well be the trigger."

Yes, I'm talking about a cameo by the Nobel Prize winner, famed economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman and Sean P. Diddty in an upcoming summer comedy with enough sex and drugs to kill a small commune--"Get Him To The Greek."

I ran this bit on The Daily Capitalist last year, same time, and got nothing but grief. What do you think?

The Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia is about as direct as one can be in the following Bloomberg interview: "We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman -- I
mean I think that [his] advice [to push China to revalue the Renminbi] is completely wrong.” Well, somebody had to finally say it. So instead of pointing the scapegoating finger somewhere else, which seems to be the norm these days (cue G-Pap and his quadrillionth repetition that Greece is perfectly solvent and that unless somebody bails him out (ignore the lack of logic for a second), he will start playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun), Roach looks in the mirror: "America does not have a China problem. America has a savings problem. America has the biggest savings shortfall of any leading country in modern history, When you don't have savings you have to run current account deficits to import surplus savings from abroad and run massive trade deficits to attract the capital... Isn't it the height of hypocrisy that America can articulate a particular position in its currency but the Chinese are not allowed to do that." Also some not so kind words about Senator Schumer: "He always has a view no matter where the Renminbi is, that it is 27.5% undervalued."

By now everyone has undoubtedly been reading reams of primary and secondary opinions based on Krugman's discussion that it is time to play hardball with China on the FX "manipulation" issue. Retaliatory implications aside (and we are confident China will be full of these) it was ironic that one commentator on CNBC today pointed out that since the CNY is pegged to the USD, shouldn't America be looking at itself first when it comes to currency manipulation, before blaming others. In essence, China is merely taking advantage of the exploding US balance sheet, and adding on top of it its own fiat printing largesse, yet offset by its positive trading surplus. Certainly, Bernanke should have thought of that before it set off on the greatest experiment of failed Keynesianism ever. But now that China has served its purpose and was the economic rebound leader for the past year, it may no longer be as needed. No matter the logic though. The people have spoken and they want CNY blood (or the inverse as the case may be -what is that: lymph?). And not just the people. We have just received a copy of a letter signed by 130 Congressmen, and sent to Tim Geithner and Gary Locke, urging the Treasury to immediately address the "growing problems associated with China's continued currency manipulation" and in essence serving as a springboard to the latent protectionism brewing between China and the US, but never really escalating into all out trade war.