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Rusty Shackleford
Joined: 08 May 2008
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 Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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| jaykimf wrote: |
Hmm, who should I believe? A Noble prize winning economist or young Rusty Shackleford, a poster on Dave's ESL cafe? I'll have to think about that. No wait , Rusty went to a school that taught him critical thinking. Asserting that someone you disagree with is literally insane or an imbecile and dunce, now that is critical thinking at its finest. Your school did you well Rusty. In one fell swoop you've demolished the arguments of a noble prize winner. Congratulations Rusty, you win. |
Hmm, I suppose this is fair criticism.
It's just incredibly frustrating to watch the same interventionist policies, that haven't worked in nearly a century, being advocated in one of the most widely read newspapers in the world. Especially when it can be demonstrated that the majority of the problems we face in the world are caused or exacerbated by interventionist strategies. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.zerohedge.com/article/ridiculed-americans-everywhere-krugman-now-threatens-gives-unsolicited-advice-germany-pisses
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/06/23/krugman-criticism-bolsters-weber-in-germany
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Princeton University Prof. Krugman caused a stir in Germany this week with a stinging critique of Bundesbank President Axel Weber, who is considered a frontrunner to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet as head of the European Central Bank when Trichet�s term expires in October 2011.
�If you are looking for someone who is aiming for zero inflation while unemployment is rising to 13%, then Weber is definitely the right guy,� Krugman said in an interview published in German with the business daily Handelsblatt.
�Weber is concerned about inflation, when there is no inflation. I would rather see an ECB President who gives more weight to deflation risks and the risk of a protracted stagnation,� Krugman said, adding that he doesn�t know Weber personally. Before joining the Bundesbank Weber was an economics professor in Germany and fairly well known in U.S. academic circles.
Krugman also criticized Weber�s opposition to the ECB�s purchase of the government bonds of vulnerable countries like Greece and Portugal. The Bundesbank chief touched off controversy in Europe last month when he publicly declared his opposition to buying bonds, breaking a longstanding ECB taboo against airing disagreements in public.
Krugman seems only to have bolstered Weber�s clout among Germans, who wear their anti-inflation obsession as a badge of honor. Germans often say that whereas the Great Depression dominates U.S. economic thinking, Germany�s experience with hyperinflation in the 1920s is its defining economic period of the 20th century, and one that must be avoided at all costs, even if it means slower economic growth.
Dennis Snowden, who heads the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, defended Weber, telling Handelsblatt: �He has all it takes to be a fantastic president. He has great sense of responsibility, a strong knowledge base and he knows how important it is to keep inflation expectations stable.�
Krugman didn�t stop with Weber. He has taken on Germany�s plans to rein in its budget deficit, which is already considerably smaller than the U.S.�s as a share of GDP. �German austerity will worsen the crisis in the euro area, making it that much harder for Spain and other troubled economies to recover,� he wrote in his New York Times column.
German politicians, he wrote, �seem determined to prove their strength by imposing suffering � and politicians around the world are following their lead.�
Krugman also told Handelsblatt he wouldn�t rule out sanctions against Germany if it continued to rely on its export-driven model. �If the euro falls to parity with the dollar, the Europeans are going to be surprised by the demands that will come out of the U.S. Congress, and I would support that,� he said.
That fiscal and economic policy critique probably won�t gain any more traction in Germany than his monetary policy one. Germans see their government finances and trade competitiveness as an example to be followed by Greece, Portugal and other troubled countries in Europe. And they clearly don�t see the U.S. model as one worth chasing.
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Krugman insulted a prominent German and then proceeded to threaten Germany with trade sanctions. PK does not understand that it isn't just American economic might that has been completely discredited by this crisis but the American way of managing an economy. The guy who advocated for the housing bubble doesn't get to talk shit about one of the last successful nations in the west.
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Wolfgang Franz, who heads the German government�s economic advisory panel known as the Wise Men, tore into Krugman � and the US � in an op-ed in the German business daily Wednesday, titled �How about some facts, Mr. Krugman?�
�Where did the financial crisis begin? Which central bank conducted monetary policy that was too loose? Which country went down the wrong path of social policy by encouraging low income households to take on mortgage loans that they can never pay back? Who in the year 2000 weakened regulations limiting investment bank leverage ratios, let Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 and thereby tipped world financial markets into chaos?� he wrote. |
The time when American economists and policy wonks were able to prance about the world showering high suicide rates and oligopoly on unsuspecting populations has come to an end. |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| jaykimf wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
| It's just a message board. |
"Krugman is an Idiot"
"No , You're an idiot"
What's the point? Why bother? |
Why not discuss why he was wrong?
Rusty showed why he thought Krugman was an idiot, then called him one. Jay never gave Rusty any reason to assume he wasn't right.
That is the point. Discussion. |
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asylum seeker
Joined: 22 Jul 2007
Location: On your computer screen.
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| Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Senior wrote: |
| jaykimf wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
| It's just a message board. |
"Krugman is an Idiot"
"No , You're an idiot"
What's the point? Why bother? |
Why not discuss why he was wrong?
Rusty showed why he thought Krugman was an idiot, then called him one. Jay never gave Rusty any reason to assume he wasn't right.
That is the point. Discussion. |
I thought you and Rusty were the same person.  |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:23 pm Post subject: |
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| asylum seeker wrote: |
| Senior wrote: |
| jaykimf wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
| It's just a message board. |
"Krugman is an Idiot"
"No , You're an idiot"
What's the point? Why bother? |
Why not discuss why he was wrong?
Rusty showed why he thought Krugman was an idiot, then called him one. Jay never gave Rusty any reason to assume he wasn't right.
That is the point. Discussion. |
I thought you and Rusty were the same person. |
That's an outrageous claim!
Though I do hear he is an outrageously handsome and charismatic individual. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 7:21 am Post subject: |
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PK's had to go and change his comment policy:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/paul_krugman_gives_up_1.html
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For example, when Krugman a month ago drew one of his famous "trend lines" based on a single point, a blogger named rjh immediately responded, "These trend lines you are drawing all over the place. Pardon my French, they are complete garbage." And nearly half of Krugman's commenters joined to point out that Krugman was arguing junk. Krugman was forced to make two defensive replies; both were immediately refuted.
Responding to Krugman's praise for the high taxes in Europe and his repeated denial that tax cuts might stimulate an economy enough to make up for revenues lost, a European posting under his initials jg pointed out that the low Reagan-Clinton tax rates made "being an entrepreneur interesting again. All those internet startups like eBay, Amazon or Netscape would probably never have been created if it weren't possible for the inventors to get rich." This anti-progressive notion that the "evil rich" might actually create growth if they were not taxed -- on his "personal" blog, no less -- must have made Paul spit up his morning coffee.
But things got worse for the professor. Matching Krugman's repeated claim that the "stimulus" was too small, Sean produced peer-reviewed economic science from Alesina, who examined 92 attempts at stimulus since 1970 in OECD countries and found that tax cuts, but not spending, stimulated. Krugman stammered a reply, but the damage was done; his acolytes had learned that economic science existed that contradicted Krugman's claim (central to Obama's "stimulus" legislation) that government's spending your money helps an economy.
Matching Krugman's claim that government can "create wealth by printing money," several posters cited the latest economic science showing that the "multipliers" that Keynesians use are wrong. They further noted that Krugman had used these wrong multipliers seventeen months ago to predict incorrectly that Obama's stimulus package would keep unemployment below 9%.
And so Krugman's blog presented the most unforgivable conclusion: Krugman had actually been wrong. As he had been when he advocated low interest rates and the creation of a housing price inflation in 2001, one of the causes of current economic difficulties.
Things then got still worse. When Krugman repeated his claim that Bush's tax cuts had "caused" the deficit and damaged the economy, commenters first taught Krugman how to count. They then cited two papers by the Romers showing that tax cuts help economies. Christina Romer is, of course, the chief economic advisor to President Obama.
When Krugman repeated one of his "debt is good" posts, posters linked to the economic science from Reinhardt and Rogoff showing that high debt is inimical to economic recovery.
Occasionally, Krugman attempted a reply. For example, he dissembled that Reinhardt and Rogoff had "highlighted" a single postwar American experience, which he dismissed as "spurious." The commenters did not let him get away with it. Within 24 hours, Sean had pointed out that Reinhardt and Rogoff had found similar effects of debt in six countries on three continents over four decades, including Canada, Japan, Greece, and Belgium. Krugman then struggled to find something "spurious" about each of these. Sean's rebuttal showed that Krugman was refusing to meet any burden of proof. Still worse, Samuel showed that Krugman's reasoning, if applied generally, would forever insulate Krugman's ideology from any refutation of any kind. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 6:51 am Post subject: |
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| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
It's just incredibly frustrating to watch the same interventionist policies, that haven't worked in nearly a century, being advocated in one of the most widely read newspapers in the world. Especially when it can be demonstrated that the majority of the problems we face in the world are caused or exacerbated by interventionist strategies. |
Demonstrated by whom exactly?
| mises wrote: |
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/krugman-dementia-alert-former-enron-consultant-says-jim-rogers-has-been-absolutely-wrong-abo
Rogers saw the .com crash, the housing bubble, and the long term commodity bull. Rogers is obviously not correct all the time. Krugman, in his defense, advocated for a housing bubble so I guess that's in his favour. |
Nice to see you're reading some fair, even-handed treatment of the issue such as the link you posted. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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Isn't everyone against what they disagree with? |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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| jaykimf wrote: |
Isn't everyone against what they disagree with? |
Yes, but not to the degree Krugman is. He's so curmudgeonly.
And there's a substantive error in his article. He suggests that raising the social security age will negatively impact those who work with their backs and not at desks. But, if funded, they could get picked up by disability social security much earlier. |
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Fat_Elvis
Joined: 17 Aug 2006
Location: In the ghetto
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| Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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'Curmudgeonly' is a fairly value-laden term. Yes, the piece states its position clearly and there is language of opinion, but it's an op-ed piece and that's the style, isn't it?.
I think, curmudgeonly or not, his point in the article still stands, and that is that for a commission charged with reducing the deficit to be recommending tax cuts for the rich is both fiscally irresponsible and ideologically motivated.
And, Kuros, are you suggesting that working class Americans need to keep working until they are physically incapacitated and need to apply for a disability pension? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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I wrote in 2009:
| mises wrote: |
Krugman doesn't respect debt, which is how he could write 1500 words about the Austrian hangover theory, a theory that centers on debt, without using the word debt even once. These economists will take our civilization off a cliff. They enable the worst impulses of government. |
Krugman published a paper in November. Here's the first paragraph:
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| �If there is a single word that appears most frequently in discussions of the economic problems now afflicting both the United States and Europe, that word is surely �debt�" (Eggertsson and Krugman 2010, p. 1) |
Later:
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| Given both the prominence of debt in popular discussion of our current economic difficulties and the long tradition of invoking debt as a key factor in major economic contractions, one might have expected debt to be at the heart of most mainstream macroeconomic models�especially the analysis of monetary and fiscal policy. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, however, it is quite common to abstract altogether from this feature of the economy. Even economists trying to analyze the problems of monetary and fiscal policy at the zero lower bound�and yes, that includes the authors�have often adopted representative-agent models in which everyone is alike, and in which the shock that pushes the economy into a situation in which even a zero interest rate isn�t low enough takes the form of a shift in everyone�s preferences. |
He still doesn't understand the impact of debt on the economy. Debt increases demand:
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/03/04/%E2%80%9Clike-a-dog-walking-on-its-hind-legs%E2%80%9D-krugman%E2%80%99s-minsky-model/
Steven Keen (Krugman in italics 1 and Minsky in italics 2):
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However, from this mea culpa, it�s all downhill, because Krugman makes no fundamental shift from a neoclassical approach; all he does is modify his base �New Keynesian� model to incorporate debt as he perceives it. On this front, he falls into the neoclassical trap of being incapable of conceiving that aggregate debt can have a macroeconomic impact:
Ignoring the foreign component, or looking at the world as a whole, the overall level of debt makes no difference to aggregate net worth � one person�s liability is another person�s asset. (p. 3)
This one sentence establishes that Krugman has failed to comprehend Minsky, who realized�as did Schumpeter and Marx before him�that growing debt in boosts aggregate demand. Minsky put it this way:
If income is to grow, the financial markets� must generate an aggregate demand that, aside from brief intervals, is ever rising. For real aggregate demand to be increasing� it is necessary that current spending plans, summed over all sectors, be greater than current received income � It follows that over a period during which economic growth takes place, at least some sectors finance a part of their spending by emitting debt or selling assets. (Minsky 1982, p. 6) |
...
Small victories. |
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smee18
Joined: 24 Mar 2009
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:53 am Post subject: |
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"Markets aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But they are far more perfect than any human being, or group of humans for that matter, that has ever existed."
This would have to be one of the dumbest sentences I have ever read. "Not perfect, but more perfect" ... WTF???
IMHO, this sort of deification of "the market" is as destructive of human autonomy as any religious fundamentalism. Aren't you just saying that people should let the market do its thing and not worry about anything, like leaving it to God ... its "more perfect" than us?
Read Steve Keens book "Debunking economics," particularly his debunking of Austrian economics in chapter 14. Put simply, Austrian economics = mindless essentialism, for the most part. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:28 am Post subject: |
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| The Austrians are excellent critics of the prevailing neo-liberal/classical/Keynesian regime. This does not mean that they have the solutions. |
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