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122 Comments
- halyard, on 11/06/2009, -18/+46That was cautious? How many trillion = not cautious?
- Alderon, on 11/06/2009, -33/+54This guy is so full of poop. Government spending is NOT the solution it is the problem!
- datsum5770, on 11/06/2009, -7/+25I agree! I don't know why anyone listens to this pawn!!!
- s4g4n, on 11/06/2009, -9/+26Why is George Clooney on the Thumnail?
- GeorgeClymer, on 11/06/2009, -0/+17I never had to register and I see it just fine. I don't know what the deal with it is.
- yaosio, on 11/06/2009, -17/+33Everything Krugman has said is wrong, go ahead and read his previous op/eds.
- curunir, on 11/06/2009, -4/+19Not just wrong - arrogantly wrong:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/mi ...
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/10/20/paul-krugman-e ...
http://wagsterspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/03/for-uber ...
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/rese ... - hblask, on 11/06/2009, -15/+29I wonder if Krugman ever gets tired of being wrong? Apparently not, he keeps writing, but what kind of insanity does it take to say "well, the thing we tried failed massively, maybe if we do ten times as much of it, it will work"?
Seriously? 100 years of failed experiments isn't enough? Do we need another 100 to convince you it will fail next time, too? - cmcagle, on 11/06/2009, -2/+15Did you fail out of 20th Century American History? When it comes to the economy, Hoover : FDR :: Bush : Obama. FDR's running mate accused Hoover of "leading the country down the path to socialism." Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the chief architects of the New Deal, said, “We didn’t admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”
Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which should be enough by itself to dispel this myth of Hoover as an advocate of laissez-faire. On top of this, Hoover pressured businesses into keeping wages artificially high. In addition, he signed the Revenue Act of 1932, which doubled the income tax. There are a host of other examples of Hoover's economic interventions just a google search away; but please, don't let little things like facts and history get in the way of your comforting myths. - novenator, on 11/06/2009, -2/+15I think the registration prompt is randomly generated actually. I eventually just registered and haven't cleared the cookie, knowing that I read things on this site enough that it was worth it.
- CySailor, on 11/06/2009, -3/+16Unemployment is what >10% now which is the highest it;s ever been in my lifetime. People should be mad at government. And by government I don't just mean Obama I mean all of them.
- kemp34, on 11/06/2009, -3/+14Not to mention, the "stimulus" results in both a major increase in government debt (hurting the national balance sheet) and leads to a further dilution of the medium of exchange and store of value. These are two processes that lead to a hollowing out of the middle class.
Further, the spending could only be considered to be economic if the return on investment ("ROI") is above the real cost of borrowing. Given the level of bureaucracy involved in getting federal government projects running, as well as the lack of market incentives and expertise to drive such spending, the reality is, the "stimulus" probably has an overall negative ROI, which means we are worse off overall AND we have a heavier debt burden for the future (which raises borrowing costs for everybody and puts huge pressure on all non-force entities). - davebg8r, on 11/06/2009, -7/+18How about this current article. He is suggesting that we should go further into debt to prop up the economy on borrowed money. That was a large part of the problem that lead to our current situation. People borrowed to create paper wealth that was backed by nothing.
This correction was a long time coming and will not be quickly or easily corrected. We have to build some real base to our economy instead of mainly being a service based economy. - Alheithinn, on 11/06/2009, -17/+27I agree with Krugman. He should have struck early and powerfully on the economic front. As Krugman puts it, "The president, then, having failed to exploit his early opportunities, is pinned down in his too-small beachhead."
- MacParrot, on 11/06/2009, -5/+14Instead of providing money for short-term stimulus programs, how about providing tax incentives for companies to build factories in the US instead of shipping jobs overseas? The cash for clunkers program was a good example. Short term gain and no long term benefit. And no I'm not saying Obama was the fault here. Past adminstrations have been searching for the quick fix and there isn't one.
Look at it like a football team. Sure you can stock yourself with highly paid veterans that may or may not work out in the whatever system you're running as compared to where they came from, but mostly they end up not really contributing to the success of team. Build up instead from the draft with players that have the potential to become stars. Same kinda thing. Build your infrastructure from the bottom up instead of the top down. Show that locally made goods can be made here instead of imported. Those people now employed need houses, buy food, build families, and spend money. Money made here. - dkybruce, on 11/06/2009, -2/+11What does Krugman's article or my response have to do with health care?
You've wandered into the wrong blog.
Could you please read the material in question before you make your standard troll responses please. - curunir, on 11/06/2009, -3/+12Please educate yourself. What you learned in public school was indoctrination, they didn't teach you the real story of Hoover and his meddling in the economy.
Here's a place to start:
http://mises.org/rothbard/AGD/chapter8.asp - kemp34, on 11/06/2009, -6/+15Herbert Hoover was intense interventionist.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard184.ht ... - northwatuppa, on 11/06/2009, -3/+11I guess if you have to ask why it's worth registering with the NYTimes, then you probably shouldn't bother registering. :}
It's really no biggee and they are one of the most important and best known news papers in the world. - ajwinder, on 11/06/2009, -4/+12If you want to point to a governor with a 30% approval rating being knocked off, and a candidate with no coherent campaign strategy (Deeds) as proof of a republican resurgence, you're living in fantasy land. I'll go ahead and point out that the Dems picked up a house seat from a district that's gone republican for the last 120 years. Club for Growth is going to continue to shed off the moderate republicans until you're a full strong-right party...which, needless to say, is not America.
- jwinter228, on 11/06/2009, -5/+13You can't create jobs or create wealth/production, you can only create a positive economic environment that allows for a growing economy - which then allows for jobs. Just creating jobs for the sake of people working doesn't work and only hurts those it aims to help as well as everyone else in the long run. Everyone thinks everyone has a right to a job. That would be great if it were true, but it's a Utopian viewpoint that fails to understand the very basics of economics. This is the problem with Keynesian Economics - if you can borrow to actually produce or if you have a sound financial/economic system - it can work to an extent. However, we're borrowing to consume and our economic system is still heavily mis-allocated and propped up by politicians in collusion with big business. You can only redistribute, print, or borrow - and eventually that will catch up to you if you're not careful. All of the above have long term consequences and it still amazes me that Krugman thinks the United States is wearing an impenetrable vest to thwart off any economic consequences of creating a massive amount of fake wealth.
- NorthMass, on 11/06/2009, -20/+28No matter how much money the government pumps into the economy, Keynesians like Krugman will declare that more is necessary. They never realize that Keynesian economics doesn't work, it only produces short-term boosts in aggregate demand fueled by deficit spending, but that boost in aggregate demand does nothing to solve the core issues that are wrong in an economy. When the stimulus funds run out, aggregate demand sinks back down to where it was before the stimulus, and inflation occurs due to the expansion of the money supply. We haven't even seen the inflation that is bound to come from all these bank bailouts and stimulus plans from both parties yet, yet we have seen that unemployment is now at 10% even though Obama said it would not go above 8%, and Bush said his stimulus would solve the economic crisis.
And Krugman wants more of these "stimulus" plans?
If you want to learn about economists who predicted this depression we are entering years before it began in 2008: http://site.theaustrianswereright.com/ - nmessick, on 11/06/2009, -1/+9I'd hardly say that spending a trillion dollars is cautious!
- curunir, on 11/06/2009, -7/+15You've been totally misinformed about Hoover. He tried all kinds of government intervention to try to "fix" the economy. As ever when these things are tried, it only made matters worse.
"After the crash, Hoover met with major leaders of industry and cut a deal with them to either maintain or raise wages and institute job-sharing to keep workers employed, at least to some degree, Ohanian found. In response, General Motors, Ford, U.S. Steel, Dupont, International Harvester and many other large firms fell in line, even publicly underscoring their compliance with Hoover's program."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/uoc ... - kemp34, on 11/06/2009, -13/+21Paul Krugman was one of the main cheerleaders of blowing a housing bubble after the dotcom bust:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/010153.asp
The busting housing bubble has been probably the most significant factor in this entire economic bust.
I fail to see how this individual is granted a Nobel Prize in economics when is consistently wrongheaded in his analysis and his overall prescriptions boil down to "the government should borrow, print and spend more money."
Keynesianism and monetary printing are the two major economic failures of our time, and fools like Krugman utterly fail to grasp this, probably because they have such an emotional tie to the ideas that have brought them such state-sponsored celebrity.
The next bubble to bust is that associated with the zealously-held belief that government borrowing, printing and insane spending is somehow a boost to the REAL economy (by real economy I mean free, peaceful, decent people as opposed to cronies of those in power who are able to disburse the loot). - ajwinder, on 11/06/2009, -0/+7And that's happened all over the country. Republicans are compounding their party into a very rigid platform, and thats an increasing tendency. Now they're going after Christ down in Florida. They forced Specter into the democratic party. I'm not saying this means that democrats are going to scoop all these seats, but what you will see is increasing losses in the republican party, whether those votes spring up a third party remains to be seen. But the fact that the republicans cannibalized their representative doesn't lessen the blow, it actually highlights the fact that the republicans are lost in the woods now. And instead of trying to find the light and actually become appealing to a wide swath of Americans, they're hunkering down and digging a ditch.
- stanleyford, on 11/06/2009, -3/+10"there is a sucker born every minute and there are people who make fortunes off of that fact." -- Your statement assumes that, for one person to profit, another must lose. The economy is not a zero-sum game. When a business provides a service or product that consumers want, then _both_ parties profit: the business makes money; and the consumer gets a service or product which they desire.
"Government exists because people as individuals are weak." -- This is the underlying assumption behind the thinking of most big government proponents. You should be aware that not everyone agrees with you. I personally don't believe that individuals are "weak" and need a big brother to protect them, nor do I believe that the fundamental relationship between consumers and businesses is antagonistic, where businessmen (and women) seek to screw over consumers and consumers try to resist being screwed over. - DextramPennae, on 11/06/2009, -3/+10Or how about cutting some of the massive regulation that companies face?
- LarkStew, on 11/06/2009, -1/+8What's that old saying, you can't dig your way out of a hole.
- cmcagle, on 11/06/2009, -0/+7"The economy is not a zero-sum game."
QFT. If the economy were a zero-sum game, we'd all still be living in caves. - Cputerace, on 11/06/2009, -27/+33How long before Obama wins a Nobel Prize for Economics for his book:
"How to spend your way out of debt"
/s - dkybruce, on 11/06/2009, -14/+20If you read the article, Krugman states that the solution should have been to nationalize the banks.
In other words Obama should have gone full Marxist on the banking industry (which I thought he was going to do).
The fact that Obama did not nationalize the banking industry when he entered office was a win for America, not a loss.
For Krugman to promote such an agenda only shows his advocacy of a Marxist agenda, i.e. the national takeover of the private banking system in America.
But Obama has frankly done the next best thing by begging the Federal Reserve to print trillions out of thin air, thus ***** canning the value of the Federal Reserve Note. - 2catnite, on 11/06/2009, -10/+15Totally agree it's the problem! New York post is a problem by not hitting this topics with hard facts!
- Yomoxu, on 11/06/2009, -2/+7See, I would have liked the pun, but then you had to kill it with the trolling.
- DarthVolta, on 11/06/2009, -6/+11Don't you mean Mao?
HAHAHA GET IT I CAME UP WITH A CLEVER COMMUNISM PUN. THAT MUST MEAN MY ARGUMENT IS REALLY STRONG BECAUSE I'M RESORTING TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TACTICS.
Check out these other clever puns I've come up with:
Obamunism
Maobama (get it?!)
0bama (it's like he's a zero, get it?!)
Nobama (like, just a no added to his name, because, no) - bigteebo, on 11/06/2009, -9/+14Dunno, but it makes for easy burials each time I see his articles.
- niradg, on 11/06/2009, -12/+17What's with all the uneducated neo-Hooverites on Digg? Did you people all fail out of high school?
- geejaye, on 11/06/2009, -3/+8"They should have earned the trust of moderate and independent voters". How did that work for the conservatives in New York's 23rd Congressional District?
- TexanRudeBoy, on 11/06/2009, -1/+6Well his Keynesian advice to have the Fed blow up the housing bubble sure worked for us didn't it?
http://mises.org/story/3539 - arkwald, on 11/06/2009, -7/+12I am curious, what is the solution. I mean for you to say that this isn't would imply that you know what is. So what is it? cut taxes? Eliminate medicare? I mean what does government have in its power to do aside from spending money that would compel a private business to hire more people?
The answer is ZERO. You can't deregulate your way into growth and not have massive corporate corruption as a result. Businesses are not there to hand money out. They are there to make money and will do so however they see fit. That is why people engaged in such awful lending practices over the last 20 years. The people calling the shots didn't care about 1 year down the road for their own company much less the health of the economy in 5 or 20 years. It's all about profit. That is all the corporate mindset demands. So should we be surprised the bottom fell out of the market? No because there is a sucker born every minute and there are people who make fortunes off of that fact. If government was as constrained as I believe you to be implying then we would have a financial collapse pretty close to yearly as bubbles would constantly form and fall apart. There would be that most hated wealth transfer but it wouldn't go from rich to poor it would go from someone offering an incredible growth investment to the idiots dumb enough to fall for it.
The reason why government exists isn't that evil socialists are trying to take your money and hate the fact you have freedoms. Government exists because people as individuals are weak. As soon as a bully comes your either going to be poorer, hurt or just outright dead. In this case if someone needs to gets the ball rolling again I would rather it be a government which in theory has some accountability rather then some thug like Madoff offering the investment lifetime of an opportunity where I can take my labor and give it to him so he can give his wife a condo in Palm Springs. - stanleyford, on 11/06/2009, -0/+5"Whenever you make any product there's a thermodynamic limit to the efficiency with which you can make that product. There's a thermodynamic limit to the efficiency with which you can provide a service." -- Of course there is a theoretical and practical limit to the efficiency of any process: the first law of thermodynamics guarantees that. Fortunately for us, this fact has literally _nothing_ to do with whether or not the economy is a zero-sum game. You have missed the point entirely.
Let me give you a simple example to demonstrate my point.
I am a gardener and produce vegetables. I want to eat fish with my dinner. My neighbor is a fisherman and wants to eat vegetables with his fish. We work out a barter whereby I trade part of my crop for part of my neighbor's catch. An economic transaction has occurred. I am better off, because I desired the fish I received more than the vegetables I parted with. Importantly, my neighbor is also better off, because he wanted the vegetables more than the fish. My gain is not my neighbor's loss: we have both profited from the exchange.
My example uses fish and vegetables, but you can substitute any goods or services you want and add any number of participants, and the result stays the same.
If I may make a guess (and I admit it's just a guess), it seems to me like you are making the mistaken assumption that the value of any good or service is measured by the amount of amount of labor or material that went into making it. Many people make this assumption, but it is not borne out by observation of the real world. The value of a good or service is determined by how much people desire it and how difficult it is to obtain it, in other words supply and demand.
"The idea of regulation is to smooth out the bumps." -- Sure, that's the _idea_. Whether or not the results match the intent is another conversation entirely. - rjey, on 11/06/2009, -3/+8Anyone with a working brain stem saw this financial crisis coming niradg, you best come up with better example of being 'right' than that.
- LittleDas, on 11/06/2009, -11/+16Digg me down for what I am about to say. I may even deserve it, since no one likes a whiner. What happened to you Digg? You used to be cool. Now every time I come into an article about politics or the economy, it's a constant drone of RABBLE RABBLE WALL STREET HAS MY MONEY GIVE ME MY JOB BACK. Why can't we have a discussion of economic policy which isn't full of vitriol and gut reactions. Of course it seems inherently suspicious to spend your way out of a recession. We all have the same gut reaction. Why can't we talk about things like the precedent for doing what Obama (and Bush) did? Or how there were a lot of economists around the time they were implementing the stimulus saying that it may not be enough? Valid counter points may be that we have reached a point where we Need to suffer through a recession and any delaying will simply make it worse.
Can we raise the bar digg? Just a little? - Cputerace, on 11/06/2009, -5/+10Government cannot create jobs. They can steal money from people and create WORK. Work != Jobs.
- arkwald, on 11/06/2009, -1/+6Ah so close... oh so close... I have to give this to you... See what you propose is really how things should be. Building a solid infrastructure really does create the best long term stability. That is why we could rebuild the world after WWI and WWII. We had our ducks lined up in a row were able to exploit that for 30 years after the fact. Not only did we build our own things but we were able to do so for everyone else. In fact modern Europe, Japan and even China would not have existed if it were not for us and our ability to create things. However in that time something happened.
A big component was that in rebuilding the rest of the world our relative power declined. Right after WWII if we wanted to we could have made western Europe a 51st state if we wanted to. The only people left with the balls to put up a fight were the Russians but with out our industrial help and our nukes Stalin would have bled the Soviet Union white in the process. In any case since our relative industrial power declined so did our economic power. However this is still a good scenerio for us as this allows us to be in a fairly steady state economy where we have low (anything more then the population growth rate is unsustainable) but constant economic growth. However what happened was that many people were not satisfied with this and insisted that higher growth rates could be attained if we just broadened our markets more. So globalization took off and our economy was not forced to deal with the build up of the whole world. The problem here is that our relative wealth isn't anywhere near where it was after WWII. The US economy can't build the rest of the world without going bankrupt in the process. So here we are. We can't get the whole world to where we are. There is not enough material in the world to allow almost 7 billion people to live a western lifestyle. So as a consequence we are being dragged down to their level since we have in effect equalized our markets to each other. In this new global market labor is dirt cheap but commodity costs are much higher. The end result is that even if you wanted to you can't make a strong economy from the ground up anymore. There is too much labor competing for too few resources to make it sustainable. You build but then there is not enough feedback to justify the maintainence of those jobs. - PeppermintPig, on 11/06/2009, -1/+5"Bring some real solutions to the table instead of some piece of ***** web page that looks like it was designed in the 1990's."
The value of ideas does not depend on their age.
"Yea, that's why every economy on the planet uses the gold standard. /s "
It doesn't matter what specific currency you use, but that you have the freedom to choose. Competition in currency improves its ability to retain value.
Government central planning != Economy. It's a financial system.
Guys like Krugman don't know how to explain economics without advocating for a system to govern people's resources, which is morally bankrupt. - DarthVolta, on 11/06/2009, -3/+7I wasn't really trying to troll.. I was trying to mock.
- PeppermintPig, on 11/06/2009, -0/+4The economy is people making decisions based on their value judgments, which is why it's a severely damaging thing to override their preferences. If you're facing an economic hardship, creating money from nothing (which is a liability, not an asset) in order to create wealth will magnify the destruction.
- PopcornDave, on 11/06/2009, -1/+5Didn't the White House already order the Matthew Lesko series? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko
- arkwald, on 11/06/2009, -3/+7See, gridlock is only beneficial when the fundamentals are otherwise sound. However with health care costs and declining paychecks the norm that is not sound at all. So the worse case scenario for 99.9% of Americans at this point would be if republicans do get into power and continue to be obstinent to any form of health care reform or stimulus. That will allow the continued raping of the middle class by corporate interests until the middle class is a withered husk of what it used to be. If nothing happens on those fronts then that 50 million Americans without health care is going to go up to 250 million since only people making more then 100k/yr will be able to afford anything other than a band-aid. That is 85% of all American citizens 1 medical emergency away from destitution. You can't build a strong economy in a country where most people can't afford to get sick. Education becomes a crap shoot because even if you survive long enough to graduate then all that time and money spent could be pissed away in a heart beat at any time. In short the US ends up looking a lot less like an industrialized country and far more like a African nation.
However I guess because we pay lip service to freedom and some people can afford Lamborginis then we are still #1.. yay us... -
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