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Guest Post: Krugman Claims He Has Been Right About Everything
Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics
Krugman Claims He Has Been Right About Everything
I don’t think Krugman’s descriptive work on global trade patterns is bad. I don’t even think he has been completely wrong about the post-2008 economic depression. He certainly hasn’t been wronger than the people who are in charge in Europe, or the people running the Fed; he did, after all warn in 2005 that the Fed was “running out of bubbles” to reinflate, while Bernanke was still claiming in 2007 that subprime was contained.
I do think his defence of broken windows is facile, and I think the notion he has advanced that World War 2 ended the Great Depression is not just wrong but dangerous.
He’s a good polemicist; he defines himself through big, bold, wildly partisan claims. But if he’s going to claim that he’s been right about everything — as he just did — he might want to make sure he’s not directly contradicting statements he made just a week previous.
On June 18th Krugman posited:
I (and those of like mind) have been right about everything.
However on June 11th Krugman wrote:
People like me may not have been right about everything, but have accumulated a pretty darn good track record over the past 5 years.
So, um, which is it?
Nobody can be right about everything. Claiming that you have been is just silly hyperbole which will end up making you look bad especially when your record is, in reality, quite mixed. And if his goal is to convince policy-makers to ditch austerity (a goal that I share, at least for the time-being), he’s not going to do it by sticking his foot in his mouth.
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Krugman is right in the fact that as long as an endless line of credit is granted, the increase in debt can go on almost forever. In that respect debt doesn't matter. What matters is when the debt comes due, when the line of credit finally runs out.
If I run up $100k in credit over a few years, and use a credit card to pay the minimum on that card, another card to pay the minimum on that card, and so on, I could obtain a lot of stuff I couldn't afford and end up paying almost nothing for it. I could perhaps stretch the debt clock for a few decades before I could no longer keep up.
Krugman would say I am generating economic activity so more credit should be granted, even though it should be apparent I do not have the assetts to pay of even the smallest balance on my credit line. But, if I am extended more access to debt, I can continue my way of life. Over time inflation will reduce my debt burden to manageable levels as my income grows, enabling me to pay off the accumulated debt.
At least that is how Krugmanomics is supposed to work. I call it the definition of insanity, but what the hell do I know. I don't have a Nobel Prize.
Well robo.... I do believe that you have the <sarc> on but you could actually b rite
Krugman is a great economist but he is a gatekeeper. He serves the upper echelon of the plutocracy, the real masters, by dominating the other side of the debate. Just as plutocrats fund both parties, they make sure their people will lead in both sides of the debate.
I realised this the day Paulson presented the ultimatum to Congress. Until then, Krugman had been saying all the right things about nationalizing the banks, putting them on receivership and so on, to follow Sweden's example in dealing with the banking crisis. Then, that day, he came out with a post that not only instructed Congress and the American people to give in to Paulson's incredible Diktat (it read like a document following the loss of a war) but it had the exact same attitude. I couldn't believe it, it actually scared me, think of some of the most horrible realisations in your life, this was it for me. I could actually feel the evil oozing out of his language and what it represented. Words fail me to describe it in any better way. So that's what he is, a gatekeeper from the left side.
He can be very useful in several debates, charts and all, but when push comes to shove, he is just the plutocracy's good cop. These guys play a great game, they are truly brilliant in screwing us, and I don't know how we can defeat them. They truly cover all the bases.
Which is code for the normalisation of the absurd notion that; "It is actually right for taxpayers to pay for banksters".
... uh-huh ... you slipped that one in rather nicely.
In other news black is the new white.
At least in the swedish model, bank investors lost their equity before the bailout. Obamugabe considered the swedish model but went with the bush model--bail out the investors.
You don't have a clue. Read about the Swedish solution and you'll understand. You got it totally backwards.
I clicked the up arrow before I digested your assertion that he is a great economist. He is not an economist at all, he is a priest of keynesianism--which purports to be economics. Agreed, he is a court intellectual who provides cover for the looting of the middle class. To us he looks like a court jester.
Welcome to Operation Mockingbird.
Krugman's job depends on it.
He's perfeclty right about everything, just like Nostradamus... "There will be a great injustice someday"
Yeah, anyone can predict anything - you just have to make it vague enough and something will hit.
Being accurate and correct is a whole other story... just try telling Vegas that your chips on 9 are close enough to the winning number 11 on the roulette table and see what sort of response you get.
Ignore Krugman and follow Steve Keen. Krugman is drowning in ideology; Keen is trying to figure out how things really work.
Exactly.
We had a much smaller version in 1930. Progressives (they were called socialists at the time), not wanting to let a good crisis go to waste, enacted the great society which changed the US in fundamental ways. They are looking to the next crash to not just finish the job, but enact a world government with absolute power over the individual. The rise of the Occupy movement is not some spontaneous thing, but a long planed and deliberate attempt to build a structure capable of demanding the power elites desired change in the next crash, with the goal of a more totalitarian state able to mandate fairness with an iron fist.
Republicans aren't opposed, they just want to be the ones in power. Some people like Ron Paul would like to see a return to a society where people are free, but the Republicans have been effective in shutting down any silly talk of individual freedom, limited government, or sound money. We can't have those things in the new order.
Paul Krugman is insane. It is plain visible in his eyes. He is noticeably neurotic... somewhat manic with delusions of grandeur; his mind races, often with contradictory thoughts, which he can hardly prevent his mouth from uttering. Anyone who cannot see this, by a cursory examination of the man's mannerisms, is blind.
He's deluded with supressed liberal rage.
Those who advocate utopian schemes always can claim that things didn't work out because folks failed to fully implement utopia. Until infinite debt is incurred, he will always say the problem is not enough borrowing.
The famous Physicist Wolfgang Pauli is quoted as having once said "This isn't right - it isn't even wrong."
I think he was talking about Krugman at the time.
Douchebag say wha????
Cannot the rise of Hitler and others similar in Europe be attributed to the global economic depression that followed a huge credit bubble and banking collapse and then imposition of essentially a global trade embargo (and the preceding threat thereof) precipitated by Smoot-Hawley - which made most everyone goverment and citizen alike broke throughout the globe? After all, the same sorts of uber-nationalist, statist, collectivist policies were pretty well received in the USA at around the same time although without the state-sponsored mass murder. Crippling debt is worse than mobs in the street essentially committiing extortion; bankers can stop lending money to spendthrift governments that become controlled by squandering leftists. The mob can be controlled if the pliticians / security apparatus are willing to protect the property of others or the politicians are not using the mob for their own political ends.
Right now the worthless assets on Bank balance sheets are like a black hole. Dark, impossible to see, spinning from bank to bank, sucking in more debt, with seemingly no escape from the event horizon.
One day soon, the black hole is gonna swallow a neutron star, and it's gonna light up the whole cockroach-infested can of worms. What the neutron star is, no one quite yet knows. But when it happens, the singularity at the center is going to go "BANG" and a whole new shit-show universe is gonna be borne of it. And it will be so bright, it will be like looking at the sun. Bankers and politicians will be spewed out and chewed up and a whole new set of universal laws of physics will take their place.
there are so many fucked up things about our current imbalanced human 'civilization' that it's amazing a dirty bomb hasn't already gone off somewhere. what's fake is reality, and what is reality is shunned as paranoia. krugman is the epitome of what is so incredibly wrong and inherently vile about the western financial system. not even the arguably greatest economist in human history can be right 100% of the time. this low-life, self contradicting talking head makes my stomach turn every time i see his mug.
krugman is worse than a fool...he is a fool with followers
Krugman is a bright guy. But of course he is not nearly right about everything.
He has a way of giving his works ex post a spin. To the effect that they look like if they were right from the beginning even if they weren't.
And he just not mentions the things he was to obviously wrong. Since he has an incredible output, they are masked and hidden between the things he was right about, or claimed he was right about.
he is a fool who has devoted his life to a flawed philosophy...facts will not dissuade him
Gold about to fall off a cliff in Asia.
Should have printed more like Krugman said.
trusting in a treacherous man in time of trouble is like a bad tooth or a foot that slips
Who is the smug prick with the umbrella? He looks like a poser. Must work at the NYT for that little pimple, Pinch.
If he's been right all along, HE WOULD BE A FREAKING TRILLIONAIRE!!
This guy looks and acts like all those end of days priests who will tell you when the world will end when you give them all your money....
WTF? Does Krugman think he is Mary Tyler Moore with that stupid pose?
Jesus, get that potato out of the rain before he grows eyes and starts to reproduce.
Funny how many would rather listen to self-interested apocalyptic newsletter writers and various buffoons than someone with actual credentials.
Keep on deluding yourselves. Krugman has been mostly correct for many years... get used to it.
the only way anyone can pretend Kurgman is correct about anything is by selectively picking and choosing from his wildly inconsistent statments
his articles appear to be written for the purpose of being able to say he was right no matter how things actually turn out
If only there was a war everything would be great. If only the FED beggared the old and the poor for the benefit of the wealthy, everything would be great.
Krugman's position is basically: "It's good to kill, murder and rape people if it means that debt is growing".
He's a common or garden variety sociopath. I'm guessing you are too.
"Sociopath" indeed. Try making sense in your comments. The vitriol heaped on Krugman from many on this forum only serves to confirm that he MUST be correct in his analysis. The moronic Frat Boy Herd is alway wrong. The real sociopaths (I prefer the old-fashioned term 'psychopath') are such as the chain smoking atheist hypocrite philanderer Ayn Rand (real name 'Alisa Rosenbaum') who is a perennial forum favorite.
"Sociopath" indeed. Try making sense in your comments. The vitriol heaped on Krugman from many on this forum only serves to confirm that he MUST be correct in his analysis. The moronic Frat Boy Herd is alway wrong. The real sociopaths (I prefer the old-fashioned term 'psychopath') are such as the chain smoking atheist hypocrite philanderer Ayn Rand (real name 'Alisa Rosenbaum') who is a perennial forum favorite.
"Sociopath" indeed. Try making sense in your comments. The vitriol heaped on Krugman from many on this forum only serves to confirm that he MUST be correct in his analysis. The moronic Frat Boy Herd is alway wrong. The real sociopaths (I prefer the old-fashioned term 'psychopath') are such as the chain smoking atheist hypocrite philanderer Ayn Rand (real name 'Alisa Rosenbaum') who is a perennial forum favorite.
"Sociopath" indeed. Try making sense in your comments. The vitriol heaped on Krugman from many on this forum only serves to confirm that he MUST be correct in his analysis. The moronic Frat Boy Herd is alway wrong. The real sociopaths (I prefer the old-fashioned term 'psychopath') are such as the chain smoking atheist hypocrite philanderer Ayn Rand (real name 'Alisa Rosenbaum') who is a perennial forum favorite.
Christine LAgarde : Direct capital aid to Spanish banks may be necessary, by-passing Spanish government mechanism imposed by Merkel, to have sovereign risk associated with any use of EFSF/ESM in bank recapitalisation in Spain.
But things seem to be hotting up, as the German Supreme court has delayed official activation of ESM in Germany by at least two to three weeks relative to scheduled date of July 1. And as Spain burns, Lagarde says lets change the rules. As Citi's Buiter has said and Lagarde now repeats, decoupling sovereign risk with private banking risk may be perceived as a plus by the market in Euro land.
Lagarde vs Merkel on the rain in Spain falling mainly on bankrupt banking?
Awesome fight amongst women Oligarchs!
Une recapitalisation directe des banques espagnoles est sur la table
Krugman probably loves Lagarde's position to pi-squared!
I actually like the guy in many ways, but he completely falls apart as a voice of reason on certain topics when he really ignores data. Thus as a science type guy I loose a lot of respect for him and the fact that he is an economist and does so bothers me even more
a few quick examples. each time he says inflation is low he never discusses ho the data is manipulated to come up with the number. it doesn't seem to matter if hundreds of people are writing on his blog that that isn't their experience, he just keeps saying it is so. Well, when you seem to refuse to acknowledge reality it makes you loose face.
The fights with steve keen and refusing to recognize the role banks have in the transmission role of monetary policy. He could be a force of good if he teamed up with something like the institure for new economic thinking. he seems completely unwilling or unable to advance economic theory. He seems stuck in the past.
he refuses to recognize the feds cheap money policy for so long is killing savers and those on fixed incomes. for a liberal to forget what is essentially the poorest memebers of society this bothers me.
he seems to ignore the massive amount of data regarding income inequality and credit flows, hopw they are related.
he did a magazine piece on the criis and talked about fesh and salt water economic thinkers. he completely ignored the role of being over leveraged in causing the crisis. How can you ignore what is clearly the biggest cause of the crisis.
So, I honestly think he is either fixed in this silly academic model of sal and fresh water thinkers fighting it out. Or he is a huge tool of the elites and their policy goals and is a sell out.
he never addresses market structure.
if you notice the nytimes (although they have simon johnson who is good) they almost never address the folks who I think are at the front of economic thinking now. steve keen, andrew haldane (this guy should win a noble even if what he is saying isn't rocket science becayue he is at the top of the heap and speaking out against abuses in the system). Almost nobody in the system speaks out against it.
God forbid -- when I first saw that Krude-man photo below the headline, I thought for a minute he was slated to star in a remake of the 1964 French musical "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg."
I can't imagine who would have played the Catherine Deneuve role -- Katrina vanden Huevel ?! Ah, passing thoughts are often worse than nightmares , , ,
krugman is what the MEDIA is : the mirror the elite look into and are told they are the most wonderful on earth-remember the mirror media is the very soul of the elite-krugman will never turn on the masters never.
Yes it is dangerous (and stupid) to claim that war is good for the economy. It's also retarded to say that as a left wing progressive. But I guess these people contradict themselves more than not.
Krugman will always claim he was right about everything, even if he knows he isn't. That's the definition of insanity. He should probably be locked up in a lunatic asylum to protect society from him.
Even when Krugman is right, he is right for the wrong reasons since the economic theory he subscribes to is garbage. His "solutions" to our problems are never correct as they always involve attempts to fix a massive debt problem with massive amounts of new debt which is exactly what his garbage 19th century economic theories lead him to suggest.
$1,000,000 for thingamajigs for everyone! That will stimulate the economy.
I will take mine in gold please