May 4, 2019
"So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened."
Wrote Paul Krugman, as soon as he saw that Trump won the 2016 election, quoted in "Experts predicted economic Armageddon under Trump — where are they now?" by Charles Gasparino in the NY Post.
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145 comments:
"Experts predicted economic Armageddon under Trump — where are they now?"
Waiting to collect their next Pulitzer.
More like left-wing HOPE than an actual prediction.
Remember Paul Ehrlich's predictions?
You or I might think he'd be humbled by how the real world diverged from his predictions, but he's still out there arguing that he was essentially correct.
What did Krugman have to lose? If he was wrong (as he was) the MSM will simply ignore it and continue to use him as an expert, and if he was right he comes off looking like a genius.
What price have Gore, Mann and the rest of the climate change con men paid for their failed predictions?
Washington Post today: Is this economy too good to be true? https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/is-this-the-too-good-to-be-true-economy/2019/05/03/9f05aff0-6dbc-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html?utm_term=.25dfd502947a
Low unemployment and high GDP growth are a sufficient grounds for impeachment, in the opinion of many.
Just because, as a professional, you got everything upside down and ass-backwards, doesn't mean you should display any humility. Just the opposite, in fact.
What kind of an elite intellectual would you be if could't twist absolutely everything you say and do, no matter how wildly erroneous or reprehensible, into another reason to think well of yourself?
feelin' groovy--mood for a day
... on a Midtown wall across the street from the NYT offices, a 2-storey high billboard gives the Times a nasty pinch...
...looming above Central Park, the "Schiff Building", the pencil-thin high-rise tapers tenuously as it disappears into the fog like Jack's beanstalk...
...the precocious blooming of well-cultivated UES rooftop gardens...
...the blossoming, burgeoning Trump economy...
It's Morning-- yea, Springtime, in America!
(and for "les sacs de douche" who would snark "Yeah, Springtime! Springtime for Hitler!!" ... let this be your winter of discontent)
What penalty is imposed on these people who were massively wrong? Doesn’t Krugman still have his job at the NYT?
Same deal with global warming. Do we get our money back when they are proven wrong in 2100? In the meantime, sky high electric prices and no Nat gas stoves.
The destruction of the faux elite, the fake chattering media class is the best thing that Donald Trump could have accomplished.
Krugman is a political hack, he is as stupid as he looks.
For decades and probably generations we have given, "experts" far too much sway over our societal decision making. I would say it corresponded with our cultural push to make sure 'everyone' went to college, but I suspect it preceded that. And our push for that was merely just a sign that we had already boughten into that fake sense of expertise. It is probably because we desire certainty, and anointing experts gave us that sense of certainty, even if it is was fake, even if it was ultimately harmful.
To quote Insty again, "Worst ruling class ever."
Krugman is a political hack, he is as stupid as he looks.
But his credentials...my God! They're impeccable! Surely that is what matters most.
"Where are they [liberal economists] now?"
Still getting a paycheck.
Krugman is a political hack, he is as stupid as he looks.
True enough, but let's not forget, he's an expert on the economy. Are you an expert? Well okay then.
Apocalyptic doom, right around the corner, is the eternal cry of the clerisy. Give us your attention, your children, your wealth and we will perhaps save you sinners. Sadly, human evolution since hunter-gatherers seems to open source our software to their terrorizing memes.
But this boom could be a result of 'irrational exuberance'.
Krugman seethes and occasionally raves, to where you can feel the spittle flecks, and often gets things wrong when he tries to prognosticate. But he's definitely not stupid.
Global recession!?!?! I'm moving to Spain!
Its unfortunate so many people insist on tying expertise to outcomes. Its not fair to the experts.
If we always did that, we wouldn't have nearly as many experts as we have now and America needs her experts, especially in these troubled times.
Maybe Krugman typo'd, and meant to say Venezuelan recession.
"Experts predicted economic Armageddon under Trump — where are they now?"
I'm not sure where they are but I know what they're doing: working as hard as they can to make it happen.
But he's definitely not stupid.
My understanding is that stuff he says no longer agrees with his text book. I have not read it and I do not read what he writes in the NY Times, so my info is all second hand. I did take an economics class in college, as an elective, and it made me a Republican. I don't know if economics classes today would have the same effect as I imagine most are Marxist.
Autocorrect is amusing as it changed "Marxist" to "artist."
Former Treasury Sec, former Harvard Prez, formerly respectable economist Larry Summers, in 2017:
"Details of President Trump’s first budget have now been released. Much can and will be said about the dire social consequences of what is in it and the ludicrously optimistic economic assumptions it embodies. My observation is that there appears to be a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course.
Apparently, the budget forecasts that U.S. economic growth will rise to 3.0 percent because of the administration’s policies — largely its tax cuts and perhaps also its regulatory policies. Fair enough if you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics."
Its unfortunate so many people insist on tying expertise to outcomes. Its not fair to the experts.
LOL!
That's because our "experts" are credentialed and vetted by other "experts", but their expertise is never tested.
What did they do with false prophets in the OT?
Trump is destroying the environment, the middle class, and is a uniquely bad president. Trump will wreck the economy if given another 4 years to do so. Tax largess for himself and his rich cronies will be his revolting legacy.
Chris Hayes says it’s because all of the businesses were sandbagging under Obama because they didn’t want him to get credit for a good economy. Not shitting you.
I only want to know if Krugman sold all of his stock on the day after the election. I bet he didn't.
What part at 3.6 percent unemployment is bad for the middle class?
What part about rising wages is bad for the middle class?
I guess maybe it’s the fact that when workers become so scarce, service goes downhill, but that’s not really a middle class concern, is it? Or is it bad when the guy at McDonalds, who under Obama was unemployable, screwed up your order?
What a stupid fool . Trump took their tools to pump and dump the investments that we call stocks and forbade them to dump it. The cycle has always been a careful plan for the wealth holders to scoff up 10-20 years of new wealth for 10cents on the dollar and then re-pump it up. Everybody with a mind has understood that for 100 years.
Now we are watching the FED be replaced. It has been the tool international bankers used to periodically destroy our economic wel being. And Trump has neutered it.
Regarding Krugman: He has a full time job as professor at NYU. It's my understanding that his wife writes the NYT columns (usually). That explains why the columns sometimes are at odds with Krugman's professional academic writings, such as his textbook.
If we are going full bore into debt, I prefer the Trump version over Obama’s.
I sometimes confuse Paul Krugman with Tom Friedman. I guess those white, privilieged, perpetually wrong NYT columnists all look alike.
Maybe Krugman should call his alma mater and demand a refund.
All the school lernin in the world can't turn an ass into an wise man, nor overcome derangement.
How could Krugman convince anyone to study economics?
Trump studied economics at the school of hard knocks where they set up politicians, government regulations, supply chain issues, competitors and real people to challenge your ideas. Krugman's study mostly involved getting the spelling and punctuation correct with subtle use of the correction ribbon, and always doing what you are told by the "experts".
Just because, as a professional, you got everything upside down and ass-backwards, doesn't mean you should display any humility. Just the opposite, in fact.
They are not elite because they are right.
They are right because they are elite.
I only want to know if Krugman sold all of his stock on the day after the election. I bet he didn't.
Heh, exactly. Krugman the Op-Ed columnist is a shameless propagandist, and I doubt even he takes his prognostications all that seriously. I don't know that it's his wife writing the columns, but it's definitely not an intellectual exercise for him.
Econ also set me on a path that has led me away from left-wing sympathies, far away. My best professor was a Marxist economist, obsessed with puzzling out the nuances of the labor theory of value, but he was first a great teacher.
Krugman remains the most often linked to "economist" by local LLR's.
Because reasons, so shut up H8trs.
Well Krugman is just a democrat shill. That is what NYT pays him for. But tell me, why does anyone even listen to him as he has been wrong so many times.
People underestimate the power of nothing.
Nothing much changing, for example.
I fear that what we see with Krugman in economics is likely replicated in the field of climate science. An over-confidence in predicting things that are too complex to reliably predict combined with an ideological bias and lack of humility. We have far less experience predicting climate than economics. In fact, we have no experience predicting climate, no really tested hypotheses, or theories, no experience to tell us what is correct or not. With economics we have centuries of that, and global climate is orders of magnitude more complex than even macro economics. Yet economics remains mostly unpredictable.
Were economics a real science, we might start taking economists seriously.
Unfortunately still employed.
To be fair, I doubt anyone predicted the current strength of the American economy outside of boasting and hoping. Sure, you can expect tax cuts and reducing regulations to improve things, but what we are seeing right now nobody would have bet real money on, except those of us in business, becuase in business you have to play to win, and if you wait too long, you die waiting for opportunity, so you take it whenever it even peeks around the corner.
Q: How many economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Three. One to change the bulb, one to point out that the light switch was set to off after the new bulb also doesn't work, and another to put the original bulb back in. And another to turn the switch on, but being a Piraha economist I can only count up to three, so the number of the counting shall be three.
I think Krugman mostly believed what he predicted. If he thought he would be this wrong, he would have been more interested in protecting his reputation than spewing propaganda. He didn't gain anything from this foolish prediction, but he did lose enormous credibility. He would not knowingly do that. In the words of Obama, "he acted stupidly."
Obama also told us that what we are seeing was impossible, would require a magic wand, and he had no ideas or vision on how it could be done. It's safer to be arrogant on the pessimistic side, but it virtually guarantees never achieving much.
Krugman also said that we wouldn't and couldn't recover from the 2008 recession - the "Great Recession" - without a decade-plus series of trillion dollar stimuli.
And here we are.
"My understanding is that stuff he says no longer agrees with his text book."
This is true. I've been teaching college econ for 15 years, and won't use his book because I don't want to spend half of every class period explaining why the textbook author and the NYT columnist don't agree with one another.
Yes, almost all the lagging and most of the coincident indicators are strong. But manufacturing has plunged, capital goods orders have slowed down to zero growth, and stock markets around the world have bounced only partway back toward their earlier highs.
Most of ours, too, though both NDX-100 tech-heavies and the S&P have made new highs. The S&P by. just a few points.
The NYSE average, the small-cap average, and the mid-caps have not reached their highs and some of those are still quite a ways away. The Dow Industrials may also get there, but they haven't matched the S&P either.
Sooooo.....
The point is, there may be considerable false confidence underlying some of the good news (stocks); while the realities have begun to diverge significantly. Real estate markets are showing problems, too.
The sudden capitulation of the Federal Reserve back in December sent our stocks shooting higher, but it is still quite possible from a number of perspectives that a bear market is underway already. Anticipated pressures on profit margins (higher wages, a reversal in the long downtrend in commodity prices, the ongoing strong dollar, and maybe someday a higher cost of money) could hurt corporate earnings even without economic activity having to slow down drastically.
Trump himself, like an old-time Democrat, is for labor at least as much as he is for capital. So he is not averse to some of these likely ramifications. Except for a falling Dow.
"Were economics a real science, we might start taking economists seriously."
Trump is the bad joke that no one, who is anyone, takes seriously.
There was some other Nobel Award winning economist on CNBC. He was explaining that the Trump tax cuts were a "sugar high". The economy will soon crash......When you don't balance the budget as a Democrat, it's Keynesian and in the long run we all die. When you don't balance the budget as a Republican, it's a sugar high and it leads to a premature death......I wonder if the people who decide the Nobel Prizes for economics are the same sort of people who decide on the literature Prizes.
"Trump is the bad joke that no one, who is anyone, takes seriously."
Look around. Everyone who is anyone is taking him very seriously: business and political leaders around the world, as well every investor, including Krugman now. That would be everyone manning the gears and motors that make the world run. If he was just a joke, he wouldn't dominate the news every hour of every day.
Insty posted predictions from 2017. Those economists were wrong wrong wrong. And they won’t pay.
But I’m sure they’re counting their money.
I am.
I knew The Donald would be a minor Reagan! We need this. The more money the boomers have, the less we rely on SS. Update the programs.
But Krugman won some prizes. Doesn't that mean he is smartz and stuff? Prizes! Medals! Participation trophies with the correct politics.
Trump is the bad joke that no one, who is anyone, takes seriously.
Yes we need “gravitas.”
No, the world elitist order needed upending because they’re failures.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Take Greg Mankiw, Harvard professor and former head of the GW Bush CEA.
Writing in his NYT column, read how his opposition to Trump's two nominees to the Fed Board dissolve into personal attack, which as it turned out still carried the day in Washington DC.
Hideous. These people have become what they decry.
Keep the Federal Reserve I Love Alive
By N. Gregory Mankiw
April 11, 2019
Not only do Mr. Moore and Mr. Cain also lack this experience, but they don’t possess the intellectual gravitas that Mr. Diamond would have brought to the job.
Whether Mr. Moore and Mr. Cain will be confirmed is unclear, especially in light of reports, which both men contest, that Mr. Moore has failed to pay child support and owes more than $75,000 in federal taxes and that Mr. Cain has engaged in sexual misconduct. But as a lover of the Fed, I am most concerned that they are simply not qualified, and I am hoping that the Senate will reject them if they are nominated.
We may not have many great public institutions left. But the Federal Reserve is one of them. Let’s keep it that way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/business/mankiw-moore-cain-federal-reserve.html
IF they could have replaced Obamacare, 4%.
Can u imagine?
No new normal of 2%.
Trumpit: "Trump is the bad joke that no one, who is anyone, takes seriously."
In the peoples defense, they are all working better jobs now under Trump and making more money with the rising wages, so there isn't as much free time for leisure/lazy thinking that Trumpit suggests.
Michael: "The sudden capitulation of the Federal Reserve back in December sent our stocks shooting higher, but it is still quite possible from a number of perspectives that a bear market is underway already."
The idea being that a "bear" market, long overdue, under these interesting boundary conditions might be relatively minor and shortlived.
Old joke:
If you laid all the world's economists one to end, they would never reach a conclusion.
Keep pushing for $15. That’ll slow things.
Don't worry Michael, something tells me Powell will see to it that we get 3 or 4 more interest rate hikes between now and Nov 2020 because...........Nov 2020.
A heretofore failed prophecy of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change that would force global warming, recession, war, and other monotonically progressive calamities.
IIRC Krugman eventually admitted that his comment was due more to his disappointment in the election results than to any rational economic analysis. Still, as dedicated Keynesians I would expect Krugman and Larry Summers and others to be cheering the current deficits instead of complaining about them. And as economists with three digit IQs I would expect them to be explaining why the economic theories of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, et. al., are not viable.
Ahhh, the good old days when Europe complained the dollar was too strong.
Then they complained the dollar was too weak.
They always complain. The irony is if France really wanted to kick Germany’s rear, they’d change the stupid Health insurance rule (that we stupidly adopted) and free their companies to be more productive.
The difference is I think this time, the Euro. Europe wasn’t as unified and I thought I read Germany is in a recession?
As to housing starts, maybe it’ll get better when the flooded dry out and get their insurance money?
Don’t you people realize Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist? Have some respect!
here isn't as much free time for leisure/lazy thinking that Trumpit suggests.
Plenty of time in the asylum.
The American problem is that prosperity, and a very great number of other positive things, depend on one unique person, a historical "great man".
Donald Trump is a great man, the sort of superhuman individual that shows up from time to time, who can win power against great odds, who serves to disrupt institutions, create new ones, change the arguments, and hold back tides. That is what Trump has done, hold back the tide of degeneration and despair, to take power away from your governing institutions, which left on their own would continue to impose their own natural tendency to decadence on your people.
The problem with great men is that when they are done and gone, the tides come back, the institutions come back. This is because the underlying processes are still there. Trump is not creating a cultural change in your ruling class, he is not changing their hearts and minds, he is not infusing virtue in their next generation. And he isn't replacing them.
These things are usually beyond great men.
"here isn't as much free time for leisure/lazy thinking that Trumpit suggests.
Plenty of time in the asylum."
Care to discuss your addiction to painkillers? The doctor who prescribes them for you should be prosecuted.
Everywhere Trumpit looks, he sees grinding poverty, a ruthless super-rich caste destroying the middle class and a garbage-filled environmental wasteland. Does he live in Democrat stronghold California?
[Everywhere Trumpit looks, he sees grinding poverty, a ruthless super-rich caste destroying the middle class and a garbage-filled environmental wasteland. Does he live in Democrat stronghold California?]
I'm glad you're finally getting it.
The Krugman take on Trump reminds me of the economics class scene in "Back to School":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSSSPVPB4zI
There is a natural entropy to civilizations and empires and economic systems.
Their success brings inevitable systemic poisons and degenerative diseases.
I am of this school, that of Schumpeter and Spengler et al.
Whenever such a system is in its stage of decline, there are episodes where it succeeds, for a time, in reversing its course. These episodes are always created by a great man.
Trumpit said...
Trump is the bad joke that no one, who is anyone, takes seriously.
But they do take him literally.
I was in Australia on Nov 8, 2016 and had access to the US business channels in my hotel room. I watched the market fall in after hours trading and subsequently rebound in a matter of hours. Those having drunk the "if Trump is elected we're all doomed" Kool-Aid sold in a panic, to be followed by buying by the "Trump is going to be great for the economy" crowd. It happened so fast, all somebody like me could do is watch. It was quite the spectacle.
The next day the front page of the Sydney Daily Telegraph had a full page picture of Trump and a big:
W.T.F.
(Will Trump Flourish....or fail?)
Bought a copy, natch.
buwaya - maybe you should get a clue from the topic of this thread:
Disaster Prediction Fails Miserably
and give it rest. For. Just. One. Thread.
"Experts predicted economic Armageddon under Trump — where are they now?"
In the same place they were before. Krugman is. Progs have no shame. In progland no prog is ever wrong. It's where reason goes to die.
Krugman was only awarded the Nobel as part of the international, anti-Bush movement to elect a leftist democrat as president in 2008. His work on economic geography was solid, but not Nobel-worthy. What better than to have a high profile Princeton economics professor writing columns in the NY Times about the great things leftism would bring to help the cause. Note that Princeton showed him the door.
A parallel process confuses people.
Civilizations rise and fall, due to the very human factors of creation and degeneracy.
But technology very rarely falls. Technology advances, almost always regardless of the condition of the civilizations that develop it or use it. Its got a ratchet.
And it happens largely on its own. It builds on what is known, and improves on it, adding new capabilities and greater efficiencies. Its implementation can be slowed down through deliberate or inadvertent public policies, but these can only be limited, local, and temporary.
Its growth is an independent force, that masks the success or failure of the human systems. This is why, for instance, the Soviet Union had a massive increase in industrial production and human development in spite of backward policies. Imperial Russia was already in the high-speed stage of economic takeoff, implementing the vast range of 19th century tech in a virgin terrain, and it continued in spite of wars and revolutions and upsetting of institutions.
bagoh20 said...
Trump studied economics at the school of hard knocks
Also at the Wharton School of Business, which many overlook as they criticize him as an uneducated buffoon.
You are seeing the same thing today- Mueller didn't get Trump despite all the assertions that it was only a matter of time. All those people who were wrong have moved on like the past two years never happened.
Trumpit: "Care to discuss your addiction to painkillers?"
Not at all. My "painkillers" are the hilarious and moronic offerings by our resident lefties and their LLR allies.
They never fail to make me laugh and laughter is the best medicine.
The best part: laughter does not require a prescription.
BTW, who can forget the last time a republican won the Presidency and immediately on several lefty discussion platforms the lefties starting discussing their medications?
Lets just say Wow! And That Certainly Explains Alot!
Krugman was extrapolating from the market's initial reaction. The market dropped initially the night of November 8th because Trump's victory was wholly unexpected, not because the participants were necessarily worried about Trump's economic policies. Once it adjusted to the new reality, the market recovered before the next morning's opening in New York. Krugman was just a fucking fool with that forecast- he should have known better, but I wasn't surprised he didn't.
Gospace : "Also at the Wharton School of Business, which many overlook as they criticize him as an uneducated buffoon."
Maybe the left simply assumes Trump cheated and plaigarized in school lime noted cheaters/plaigarizers Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy who were both caught.
Also, Biden has repeatedly lied over the years about his law school class standing similar to how Stolen Valor Da Nang Dick Blumenthal lied repeatedly over the years about his military service, which LLR Chuck passionately defended.
Economics is a real science, it’s just that its practitioners are not real scientists. There is too much at stake to leave it to the professionals.
buwaya - maybe you should get a clue from the topic of this thread:
The name "chickenlittle" might be taken, but I think "HennyPenny" is available.
Economics is corrupted by its ties to politics. If organic chemistry could be used to justify political initiatives, it would be corrupted, too, and has been on those rare occasions it is used to justify the actions of politicians.
Trumpit said...
Trump is destroying the environment, the middle class, and is a uniquely bad president. Trump will wreck the economy if given another 4 years to do so. Tax largess for himself and his rich cronies will be his revolting legacy.
*******************
Heh. That's up there with "Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lyin' eyes."
And I don't think you know what "largess" means. It certainly does NOT mean "getting to keep more of your own money", which is what tax cuts do.
And it happens largely on its own.
I don't agree. There has be some underlying conditions of law and civilization. There is an argument that Rome did not begin the Industrial Revolution because there was no patent law.
Russia had enough to begin and there Russians have been great mathematicians for a long time.
That quote, and its inaccuracy and invective, is typical Krugman. It shows in a nutshell why it is ridiculous to listen to the man.
He could have been cautious -- economics is about human behavior, it is not physics -- but he made a foolish prediction, based on his own ideology and his hatred of Trump, and failed, miserably, and in writing in the "newspaper of record."
Weird choice for a hero, but it makes sense if you believe (as I do) that the left picks their heroes not on what they do, or their intelligence, or their ability to describe the world in accurate, actionable terms, but only on what they say.
Krugman's words were absolute, despite the boilerplate " . . . a first-pass answer . . ."
He didn't hedge at all. He could foresee no other outcome.
I could. I guess that makes me a better economist than Krugman, although my formal economics education consists of two survey courses at a community college.
I think trumpit's comment about painkillers was directed at me, if trumpit is rational enough to direct anything,.
She (I assume a she) has some fixation on medicine and we have seen this before. Probably some unfortunate event that caused her to lose her mind. Sad to see.
"Blogger Yancey Ward said...
Economics is corrupted by its ties to politics. If organic chemistry could be used to justify political initiatives, it would be corrupted, too . . "
Politics is as old as mankind itself. Science is a few hundred years old. When you mix politics with science, the result is not scientific politics, it is politicized science. People are political creatures, not scientific creatures.
Krugman has expressed his admiration for the Asimov character Harri Seldon. Seldon, in Asimov's Foundation trilogy, made politics into a science, getting things exactly backwards. Saying that politics is a subset of science is a bit like saying that people evolved to drive automobiles, and that we know this because the steering wheel fits human hands, and humans have just the right number of feet in the right place to use the brake and the accelerator, and most importantly, driving an automobile fulfills the important human task fo getting from point A to point B with safety and efficiency.
history dictates, you can look at Toynbee or bagott glubb, or gibbons, as much category error as he entertained, regimes rise and fall, Thucydides with his Periclean basis covered some of this, later so did livy Sallust plutarch, for another expanding power.
about this time half a millenia ago, spain was the great power, one might say the armada was the time of the crest, to cede the floor to france and the the uk, paul kennedy, though he was clever in 1988, but he was a little premature,
Buwaya, with all due respect, your Nietzschean analysis doesn't quite apply to the US. It never did. America has always thrived on the combination of liberty and the entrepreneurial spirit. In that respect, there have been many 'great men' but the economy isn't dependent upon any one of them. Trump may, in fact, be a great man who has made great decisions but he alone doesn't drive the market.
Ref O Mike and Ferdinand& - This is why I do not blog.
Cato the Elder would have made a lousy blogger. A limited range of frames for events.
I'm sure even his friends found him tedious.
"carthago delenda est" was correct, but no doubt annoying.
I only took a couple first level Econ classes in college, but I knew better than to make that stupid prediction. Maybe Krugman should have stopped where I did at Econ 102. Imagine the savings in cash and reputation. Does this mean I should be am a more respected economist than a Nobel prize winner? Why not? Explain.
Trump is destroying the environment, the middle class,
Lololol
The middle class is being destroyed by blue states and their taxation. And Obamacare. The CBO said so.
China and India, the 2 biggest polluters, 2 billion people get a pass. Is there nothing this man can’t do?
buying by the "Trump is going to be great for the economy" crowd.
That was me!
now Krugman was on record arguing for a property bubble in the early 00s, to reinflate the tech bubble from the 90s,
your contributions here are appreciated buwaya, it requires a certain distance to properly scan the horizon,
Everywhere Trumpit looks, he sees grinding poverty, a ruthless super-rich caste destroying the middle class and a garbage-filled environmental wasteland. Does he live in Democrat stronghold California?]
I'm glad you're finally getting it.
You live in the DPRC and you’re complaining about what you see?
You voted for that! Lololol
Its not Neitzschean really, it is I like to think a purely empirical model.
Take in enough information and you see patterns. Those are the lessons of history.
And one of the patterns is the value of humility. There is no inherent capacity to avoid decline or disaster.
It behooves the tribespeople to believe in the value, or existence, of their values, morale is essential to success after all, but this is a delusion. A delusion necessary to success. One of the endless paradoxes.
But an external observer making bets on outcomes should avoid getting caught up in that.
At one time I was a fan of Paul Krugman. That doesn't mean I agreed with his politics, but back before he became a New York Times columnist, he had a blog and I would eagerly look forward to his posts, which would occur maybe once or twice a month.
And what I liked about them was the economics. His speculations and theories were interesting. It was thought-provoking, and there was not much politics in it.
So I thought it was good news when he got the New York Times column. Boy, was I disappointed. After a few months I couldn't stand to look at it. I wondered what had happened to him. I wondered if he had had a stroke.
Because aside from the incredible partisanship and tribal hatred that was constantly on display, it was just stupid. Most of his NYT columns are substance-free.
But aside from this, if we can strip out the partisanship and just look at the economics, I do have some things in common with Krugman, or at least the Krugman that used to be. But to see that I have to ignore every partisan thing he says.
In my view, we are in dire danger of falling into a major recession. But it's not really because of Trump. It's because of the last twenty years. The problem is we have too much debt and we print money when we get in trouble and we have a huge problem in the way we are interacting with China.
Who would have predicted it but Trump is the first politician we have had for a long time that acts as if we have a problem and is trying to do something about it. Of course part of that is just the consequence of trying to act in the interest of Americans. You can not do that if you are politically correct.
In the run up to obamacare, Krugman accused young people who chose not buy health insurance of "gaming the system," since if they become ill, the government would pick up the tab.
These young people were not gambling, in the sense that they knew the house odds were against them. What they knew was they were being offered a thing for $x, and its value was 0.5*$x. People making intelligent, rational market decisions are a problem that the government needs to address, says Krugman, the nobel-prize winning economist.
Original Mike said...
buwaya - maybe you should get a clue from the topic of this thread:
Disaster Prediction Fails Miserably
and give it rest. For. Just. One. Thread.
buwaya is looking at the river of history. He is right in one respect as it is always flowing in one direction.
And to be honest looking at the republican voters he is right. There is too much apathy and cowardice.
What I think he is missing though is that while he correctly ascertains the "Great Man" effect he misses that they seem to pop up just when needed. The loyalists, Polk, Wilson, Carter, BushClintonBushObama all brought this nation to the edge.
And every time someone came along to save us.
I don't think we are that lucky. Something is intervening.
There are persistent rumors that Krugman's NY Times columns are written by, or edited by, his wife, Robin Wells. Robin Wells is a hard-core leftist SJW.
Someone else already touched on this but we really need a good public debate between economists on the subject of Capitalism vs. Socialism.
And to be honest looking at the republican voters he is right. There is too much apathy and cowardice.
And if you think we are bad, The UK elites are beyond revulsion.
To judge the quality of Dr Noah Carl’s work authoritatively, one would have to be an expert in at least one of the following fields: psychology, intelligence research (a sub-field of psychology), and/or economics. The campaign against him began with an ‘open letter’ that was signed by hundreds of academics, but they did not have expertise in these areas. (For the most part, they had qualifications in fields like anthropology, gender studies and critical race studies). This is a clear departure from the established norms that, until recently, were adhered to in academic debates, a point made in an editorial about this affair by the executive team at the Heterodox Academy:
Suicide of the West is the subtopic.
There is not much good about getting old but not having to live with the crap that is coming is a relief.
Blogger mockturtle said...
"Someone else already touched on this but we really need a good public debate between economists on the subject of Capitalism vs. Socialism."
Not an economist. But I participate in economies all the time.
One is voluntary and the other isn't.
One is organic and the other is fabricated.
One is moral and the other is evil.
Paul Krugman. The guy who didn't even wait until the bodies were cold before he blamed the TEA Party for a Bush-hating Atheist who shot up Gabby Gifford's town hall.
Fuck Paul Krugman.
"There is not much good about getting old but not having to live with the crap that is coming is a relief."
Yeah, I find myself worrying about it less and less.
IIRC, Krugman has successfully predicted 15 of the last 4 recessions!
Let's not forget the old widows who sold all of their stock after reading Krugman's predictions. How many of those starved to death on the mean streets of Manhattan? Shame of you, Paul Krugman.
I think Krugman believed he could conjure up a recession by calling for one.
the dr. strange of economics, I think he overvalues his talent, but he isn't unique, I was hearing one of these investment advisors (who shall remain nameless) that the dem 'medicare for all' plans will be good for pharmaceutical companies,
narciso observes: the dr. strange of economics, I think he overvalues his talent, but he isn't unique, I was hearing one of these investment advisors (who shall remain nameless) that the dem 'medicare for all' plans will be good for pharmaceutical companies,
Medicare D has certainly helped them immensely.
Krugman is a reverse Cassandra.
{Paul Krugman. The guy who didn't even wait until the bodies were cold before he blamed the TEA Party for a Bush-hating Atheist who shot up Gabby Gifford's town hall.
Fuck Paul Krugman.}
You truly are a nasty troll.
A shame about Stephen Moore and Herman Cain. The Deep State is deepest at the Fed.
@Drago -- Stock valuations on long-term measures (the cyclical 10-yr p/e variants) are the highest in our history. Above the two other outstanding outliers, 1929 and 2000. The idea that a bear market now could be minor is unlikely. 1929 led to a 90%drop in the Dow Jones; 2000 led to a 50% DJIA drop and an 80% drop in Nasdaq where the techs were the single largest source of overvaluation.
rehajm offers: think Krugman believed he could conjure up a recession by calling for one.
And he's not the only one. I watch FOX Business News every morning and there has been an effort by many never-Trumpers to predict gloom and doom and discourage investment. They're starting to come to, now, but it was getting tedious.
Krugman called it, and MAN! did he Nail It!
I've NEVER Seen a Nobel Prize winning economist so Accurately Predict, EXACTLY what would happpen.
Well, Except for the details, like Unemployment numbers, stock market, etc. But other than that!
lauded, vaunted by the left to enhance/legitimize their influence,
chosen only for their willingness to shill
"You truly are a nasty troll."
Krugman is nastier.
Have you ever read any of his columns, Trumpit.
Krugman regularly insists that conservatives want to crash the economy because they like to see poor and working people suffer.
I suppose he has that weird NY personal history where the only Republicans he knew were wealthy WASP's.
I suppose that he's not a bad economist when he avoids pronouncing on politics, but that is what he does worst, and what he believes he does best.
There are persistent rumors that Krugman's NY Times columns are written by, or edited by, his wife, Robin Wells.
Rumors? You mean like the fact that Krugman has explicitly said to interviewers that he's had his wife critique his columns in advance and then made them more stridently political in response to her comments?
"Krugman is nastier."
I haven't seen Krugman say, "F*ck you!" like that troll did, so you're wrong. Trump has done nothing good to stimulate the economy. He done bad things like allowing polluters such as oil companies to drill, frack, poison, etc., in order to make ungodly profits. I would put all those CEO's in Guantanamo for an extended vacation for causing global warming havoc. Let Trump build a world class golf resort there, and train the CEO's to be caddies.
I suppose the American empire will someday end, but it won't be due to any pattern informed by readings of Gibbons, Hegel, Marx, Toynbee, et al. So far as I can tell, its decadence is a source of its vitality. Historians were confidently predicting the fall of the Roman Empire from before 10 A.D........The British and Soviet empires vanished in short order, but most other empires stick around long after their expiration date. The Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires had a long goodbye and were it not for WWI might still be with us........Roman soldiers when they retired settled in the province of Extremadura in Spain. The conquistadors mostly came from that province. It's not too fanciful to claim that the Spanish Empire was as much a continuation of the Roman Empire as Byzantium--another empire that kept on chugging along......I predict that the future will be unpredictable.
I don't recall Krugman ever apologizing or even acknowledging the depth of his error. Extreme partisanship leads to extreme error.
Krugman isn't complicated. He's a leftist first, and an Economist second.
"I suppose the American empire will someday end, but it won't be due to any pattern informed by readings of Gibbons, Hegel, Marx, Toynbee, et al."
You have one name that doesn't belong with the others. In any case, the USA has no "Empire". Too bad we didn't. Then we'd have some return for the Trillions of $$$ and hundreds of thousands of lives we've spent overseas for the last 77 Years. Our ships and troops are all over the Globe, but we're more "World Policeman" than Imperialist. Where are the cries of "Yankee Go Home?" instead its "Stay here and protect us, and thanks for those low tariffs!"
"You truly are a nasty troll."
Krugman is nastier.
Have you ever read any of his columns, Trumpit.
Trumpit read ?
"A shame about Stephen Moore and Herman Cain. The Deep State is deepest at the Fed."
You can't be serious about those two. They are a joke. They will help the rich, and damage the U.S. economy.
As opposed to the 18 trillion the fed handed out to the banks at zero interest.
I appreciate trumpikt's endorsement of the two I favored for the Fed.
Gasparino has been prett6 darn anti-Trump. Must’ve galled him to write this. And it worries me because of the “Do the opposite of the experts rule.” We might be at peak Trump economy.
I fear that, as we near November of 2020, Dems and GOP Trump haters will be dumping stock like it was toxic waste in order to force a turndown.
My earlier comment about Krugman wasted an opportunity to say something real about economics by implying that my ideas about what we should do in any significant way correspond to what Krugman would do now. That's probably not the case at all. All I really I should have said was that at one time I was listening to Krugman. But that was a mistake. Krugman is malignant. He's an idiot. He has horrible instincts. And he's part of the reason we are in the trouble we are in.
So what do I actually advocate?
We need a very deliberate and protectionist policy aimed at China. Everything should be contested and we should switch from forcing American companies to go to China to punishing them if we do.
We should embark on new policy of demassification by breaking up some of the largest and most successful companies on the American and world landscape: Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
We should adopt policies that as both a moral and economic statement favor a multitude of companies and not a few.
We should be breaking up our big banks while we have the chance. If a bank is too big to fail, then that's a problem! Organizations go bad. If an organization is so large that you can't take it out without doing extraordinary damage to the economy, then that means it needs to be split up, even if doesn't have an obvious problem now.
We should be breaking up the credit card companies. Two or three are too few.
We should be demanding that our schools, which are completely dependent upon taxpayer financing be ideologically diverse. We need some way to start to destroy the malignant monocultures we currently have and replace them with new alternatives. Our children don't have a chance with the universities as they are. And our society has no constructive future if we continue down this road we are on.
Trumpit explained... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ
Blogger Seeing Red said...
Keep pushing for $15. That’ll slow things.
5/4/19, 10:44 AM
Ironically, I don’t think it will slow things. It may appear to in the very short term, but it’ll work out well for the upper lower class, and the lower middle class. What it won’t do is help those people who it is supposed to help.
The problem with economics, and the (self-professed) economic experts, is that they tend to look at things in isolation, and don’t understand human behavior - especially of those who are proactive in their own lives.
Blogger Bob Boyd said...Krugman is a political hack, he is as stupid as he looks.
True enough, but let's not forget, he's an expert on the economy. Are you an expert? Well okay then.5/4/19, 8:56 AM
Tell us of the sanctity of "Experts". First, you need to know the "Expert's" motivation that should tell you everything. If "Experts" where so good then why do we continue to have massive problems in Debt, Economic Structure, etc., especially when you are talking about Political decisions - which are not solely based on Economics.
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