Said Paul Krugman, quoted in "NY Times columnist Paul Krugman blasted for touting ‘Biden boom’" (NY Post).
August 3, 2022
"The problem may be that the Biden economy boomed *too much*, feeding inflation, and that it now needs to cool off, which may involve a recession (but hasn’t yet)."
"But the basic fact is that so far the Biden economy has added 9 million jobs. So it has been a jobs boom, whatever else you may say."
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Krugman is such a fool. "Boomed to much.."
yeah buddy - in your pants.
So we are all better off, except where we are not.
Bahahahahahha. Yeah. Okay. Who listens to this liar??
9 million jobs added? why does that seem like a total fabrication?
remember - during Chi Com covid - our government told millions of "non-essential" workers to stay home ...
The Nobel Prize winner is right about one thing: it's the Biden economy.
Why would anyone pay any attention to anything Krugman has to say? Remember when he said the internet would ultimately have as much impact as the fax machine? Or how about when Trump won in 2016, and Krugman said the stock market would crash and never recover?
I wouldn't believe Krugman if he told me the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
And I think the Nobel committee should ask for Krugman to return his Nobel prize medal and the $1.4 million they gave him.
"Whatever else you might say" would be that those 9 million jobs are just a carryover from the Trump boom and return from lockdowns, and we're still far short of the level we should be at relative to early 2020. A chimpanzee could have presided over that.
We are still below the number of jobs filled pre-pandemic. A recovery back to normal is not a boom. Especially when most people are effectively taking pay cuts from inflation in excess of their raises or profit increases.
Did he get his Nobel from a crackerjack box ?
You shut down the economy and pay people many thousands of dollars to do nothing. There aren't jobs being created, they're simply being staffed, finally.
Krugman's a fuck just once again carrying the water. He recently admitted his error in saying that our recent inflation was transitor
Well, if Krugman says it is not a recession, then we are definitely in a recession. It says something about the NYT that they keep this guy around, despite him being (a) an obvious strident partisan and (b) almost always wrong, often to laughable extremes.
In his "defense," we are in a weird situation where the economy experienced an artificially created shutdown, so this is not the standard economics. That said, when you artificially shutdown the economy, losing a massive number of jobs, then re-open the economy without significant structural damage to said economy, you would expect the economy to regain those jobs back pretty quickly. This is exactly what we have seen. To call this is a "jobs boom" is disingenuous or just stupid. It is even more stupid since we still haven't regained all the jobs lost, much less added the required amount for population growth.
And, as always, inflation is a money supply issue. Lots of government spending and "qualitative easing" is inflationary and we have had a lot of it. Biden wants more of it and huge numbers and right away. Which I'm sure Krugman fully supports.
Are you as smart as a fifth-grader has been supplanted by are as you as dumb as a Nobel Prize winner.
People are just making up numbers now. According to BLS.gov, the last 9 months of Trump, post initial Covid disaster, saw 16.7 million job growth which seems better than Biden's 8.1 million in 16 months. And we are still below the February, 2020 employment total by 750,000.
With the benefit of hindsight, this bout of inflation seems like the simplest, most easily understandable episode of inflation in my lifetime. Literally, worldwide supply of everything was constrained in 2020 and 2021 thanks to coronavirus lockdown rules and stay at home orders. Then the Trump and Biden administrations gave people and local governments and businesses a lot of money to spend in the various coronavirus relief bills. Result: more money, fewer goods => more money needed to purchase a given good. Goods are globalised, but relief bills were country/currency specific, so the US (which was more generous/profligate than most other countries) had worse inflation. There was a lag as people were stuck at home, excess supply built up, and coronavirus relief took a while to actually reach recipients, but it started hitting from 2021. I'm not an economist, but this seems like a pretty straightforward explanation to me.
Blather about a "Biden boom" or whatever just seems like an effort to obscure a simple story. The "boom" was just global economic activity moving back towards pre-pandemic levels after lockdowns were lifted, and economic activity was no longer artificially depressed. That's a "boom," in the same sense that we're technically in a recession today, but it comes with an asterisk.
Never forget, this son of a bitch didn't even wait until the bodies were cold before he blamed the TEA party for the Gabby Giffords shooting.
I long for the day he draws his last breath.
"Did he get his Nobel from a crackerjack box ?"
I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that it was the same place as Cuomo's Emmy.
I call BS. The 9 million jobs Biden is taking credit for is a comparison to March 2020 when the economy was essentially locked down, businesses closed, and people "lost their jobs". Now that the pandemic is essentially over, most of those people returned to work.
Good job Joe.
Here are the numbers from the bureau of Labor Statistics:
Total Non-Farm Employment:
February 2020 (shortly after Joe took office):152.5 million
June 2022 (latest numbers) 152.0 million
Essentially a wash except for one thing. The workforce expanded by about 6 million during that time frame.
So Joe is basically 6 million jobs in the whole.
The prevailing view among most economists is that that last stimulus was not needed and that, along with supply issues and the war in the Ukraine, helped create the inflation we see today.
Krugman is disappointing. He knows better than to call an economy "The Biden Economy" or "The Trump Economy" (Presidents don't really have much control over such things) but he does it anyway.
That should have been Hinckley's excuse for shooting Reagan; he loved Jodie Foster 'too much.'
Krugman is the worst sort of elitist, cosseted, always wrong troll.
In other words, a NYT writer.
Only someone with an Ivy League pedigree could be this dishonest.
Gimme Trump’s dishonesty. At least it amuses.
We had 152.5 million jobs in February 2020. there were 151.98 million jobs in June 2022, according to Dept. of Labor BLS. It's a U shaped curve. Krugman's "boom" is just the usual NYT partisan cherry-picking.
Krugman is wrong a lot, the most famous being that the internet was just a fad. The problem is he, like all liberal economists, twist economic theory to fit his almost socialistic beliefs. Krugman never saw a spending bill he didn't like, because deficit spending somehow has a multiplier that makes up any negative effect. The very notion that Biden added 9 million jobs is absurd. I could go on about the labor participation rate, but let's keep it short. I'll just point out what liberal, but not a not a nut job Larry Summers said. The former Treasury secretary warned that President Biden’s stimulus package was far too large and would lead to far too high inflation. He was absolutely spot on. The only way that it could have been avoided is if the Fed had started raising rates 12 months ago. Now the only solution will be faster increase in rates and a recession.
Krugman makes Keynes seem like a conservative. I'm sure he still thinks the new spending deal is still a good idea. But only a very corrupt mind can somehow think it would actually help tame inflation.
As I have always said, Democrats spend all their time trying to legislate away the laws of economics with zero success.
There are lies, damned lies, and Krugman.
Zero or negative real interest rates for years and years followed by X Trillion in spending by Congress - what else did these "experts" expect BUT inflation? So now they are admitting that the fire is out of hand, and won't die out on its own. Great. How you going to put the fire out? Hint: last time the Federal Reserved had to choke the economy almost to death with interest rates higher than the inflation rate. We're not even close yet - not even close to doing that or even admitting that such will be required.
But let's bring this closer to home. Either they'll let inflation rage, which will hurt families every day they go to the. Or they'll chose the economy to cool inflation, which will hurt all the families that are jobless for a year or two. Their negligence (or is it recklessness) has real consequences other than us having to endure the musings of a NYT's economist.
Anyone who does not see Krugman for the political hack that he is, well…
It's my understanding, as Sisyphus says above, that we have not reached the employment numbers we were at pre-Covid. Couple that with the fact that businesses are having a hell of a time finding workers (a lot of businesses in northern Wisconsin are closing as a result) and you have to ask, where did they all go? Apparently, lots of people have removed themselves from the labor force. I wouldn't call that a ringing endorsement for the Biden economy.
Not Biden's choices, but credit/debit emission to spur gross domestic product, and programs that emulated economic viability in the wake of political, social, and scintific progress.
The baby was just too viable, too much of a "burden", for its own good.
https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/
Scroll down a screen and you will see a chart of total employment. It increases nicely 2010 to 2020 when it falls out of bed due to kung flu. Then, in 2nd half of2020, it increases sharply. 2021 to present it continues increasing but more slowly until we are almost back to what it was when kung flu hit.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
We are still 1 million jobs below the level of February 2020, from just before the pandemic, and 3.5 million below where we would have been had the pandemic never hit. None of this is really anything to do with Biden and his shit-for-brains policies- what "growth" in employment we have seen is almost all due to the blue states finally reopening fully starting in the Spring of 2021, 9 months after the red states started doing so.
In short, there are 1,000,000 fewer Americans working today than in February of 2020, and the prospects going forward don't look all that optimistic right now.
’A chimpanzee could have presided over that.’
Had Biden done nothing at all we’d be in better shape economically. And please smack Krugman upside the head if you see him. There’s no threat of arrest or bail in the big city… ;)
Shut down a giant economy for two years. Then open it back up and count the jobs ‘created’.
What a schmuck.
Silly Krugman nonsense (as almost always). The economy didn't boom so much as the Democratic party poured sugar on top of ice cream on top of cake on top of cookies on top of honey. Then they cried "I had no idea!"
Biden (1) blocked evictions leading to inflated rents, (2) gave everyone $1,400 whether they needed it or not, (3) increased unemployment for lower paid workers and caused them to lose money by going back to work, (4) gave away $$$ child credits, (5) gave vast amounts of free money to Wall St. to pour into stocks, Bitcoin, real estate, etc., (6) funneled billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical companies for their vaccines and experimental COVID treatments, and (7) locked down the businesses that make things and do things so people had to spend more money for physical items such as food, cars, and lumber.
Finally, the pandemic caused millions of people to realize that commuting to a white collar job is asinine, so they shifted their spending to second houses, RVs, and luxury lifestyle purchases. The money for the luxuries came from the low interest loans.
Where's my Nobel Prize?
I'm an economist and I remember when Krugman was one as well.
Did he get his Nobel from a crackerjack box ?
Don't you mean "Noble".
I wonder how many illegals it takes to mow the lawns of his mansions as he chides us for driving pick-up trucks.
When the Maoist youth Brigade at the Times starts protesting his salary and private jets, I'll enjoy the show.
It was Trump who shut down the economy over Covid.
Bad link to the Post. Correct link
‘I'm an economist…’
There are at least three on this thread, and we’re in violent agreement, re: former Enron advisor Paul Krugman.
Those jobs are not equal to the jobs lost during the lock downs. So there is no “growth”. The only thing that has grown is the amount of money the fed has printed to prop up Democrats, pay off cronies and ballon the market.
Like a Monty Python skit, Krugman gets paid for being wrong.
Biden didn't 'create' 9 million jobs - these were people returning to work after the covid 'shutdowns'. I think there is something horribly deceitful about claiming these as 'created jobs'.
And the economy didn't 'boom', it was recovering very well from the covid shutdowns, and then Biden and Congress injected a few trillion into this recovering economy triggering damaging inflation. Of course, the supply chain issues were pushing prices up before that, and this might have been largely 'temporary', so of course Biden, (never underestimate his ability to @#$# things up!), had to injected more money into the recovering economy solidifying the miserable inflation.
And Friedman is also a miserable liar.
I remember exactly this kind of argument under Obama. Become president during a major recession, then do nothing, then take credit for the recession gradually ending. "Adding jobs" means, some of the earlier jobs come back.
---Krugman is disappointing.
Yes. Isn't he, though?
Still, there is this. Latest data as of this morning.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NEWORDER
"Krugman is disappointing. He knows better than to call an economy "The Biden Economy" or "The Trump Economy" (Presidents don't really have much control over such things) but he does it anyway."
The smartest comment said here today.
Ah the Krugster. Usually wrong, but never in doubt. Shut things down, send ten million or more people home--then when nine million of them come back, you've "created" nine million jobs. Calling Krugman an overrated ignorant boob is unfair to boobs everywhere.
The problem may be that the Biden economy boomed *too much*, feeding inflation
The bus was making record time before it took the corner too fast and plunged off the cliff.
Watch other pundits, even liberal ones, when he appears with them on the Sunday programs. Not a well liked guy. Self-righteous, and wrong so often, even in a field notable for calling things incorrectly.
Rottwang's Cabaña Boy aka Freder Frederson writes, "Don't you mean 'Noble'[?]"
Honest to God, Jesus, and Allah, he wrote that. I corrected his punctuation out of pity.
Now, to the subject at hand... Everyone who has critiqued, flamed, LOL'ed, or otherwise pummeled poor Mr. Krugman with howls of derisive laughter ought to pause and reflect that he may be using the word boom to imply a meaning somewhat remote from the meaning often used by the Wall Street cognoscenti.
For example, there is boom, as in the ka-boom created by a Chinese 12 gauge shotgun loaded with 3" Remington Magnums, generally not a "good thing" for anyone concerned, boom, as in the sound of a Boeing 737-500 during a dispute between the human pilot and the autothrottle. And the famous BOOM! associated with Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Any of these meanings are metaphorically apropos in the context of Biden's economic policies.
For once I think Krugman is right. The labor shortage and the very low unemployment rate indicates a badly overheated economy. This is a rare occurrence. No doubt due to over-stimulation by government. I’ve never seen labor so scarce.
In short, there are 1,000,000 fewer Americans working today than in February of 2020
Actually, thanks to COVID, there are 1,000,000 fewer Americans.
It was Trump who shut down the economy over Covid.
Trump left it up to the states to determine their course of action.
Which explains why California is still sucking eggs while Florida is booming.
’…and the war in the Ukraine, helped create the inflation we see today.’
Please identify the market dynamic by which war causes inflation.
'With the benefit of hindsight, this bout of inflation seems like the simplest, most easily understandable episode of inflation in my lifetime.'
Hindsight not necessary. Every sane pundit I read predicted it.
'It was Trump who shut down the economy over Covid.'
And I've always said it was a huge mistake. Fauci and Birx should have been fired within the first week, and should be in prison once a republican AG takes over. I've also said that Trump's personnel choices were terrible. If he does win yet a third election, he needs to hand over his staffing decisions to someone like Miller or Grenell.
Also, fuck all liberals. You've ruined what was once a great nation.
Redefining "recession."
Redefining "added."
On the jobs front, since January 2021, the only that has happened is that people have RETURNED to the work force. Going back to work is not a "new" or "added" job.
At one point the Bush 43 economy was reported growing at 7%. Nobody said it boomed too much. And it there was hardly any inflation to speak of, nothing like what's going on now under Biden.
Krugman providing economic misinformation is the bottom story of any day. If you don't want to do your research on his role in Enron; then just look at whatever savings you still have.
---Krugman is disappointing.
Economically, yes; but, the orders are still arriving, and progressive prices (i.e. redistributive change) follow with the financial boom.
these were people returning to work after the covid 'shutdowns
Recovery from the spread of social contagion, following the corrected perception, excluding planned parent/hood, of Covid-19/20/21/22 and recurring viral outbreaks.
Howard writes, "It was Trump who shut down the economy over Covid."
Wrong, as usual. Most of the lockdowns were state policies, which is why we may contrast New York's massive COVID mortality rate created by the arch-criminal Randy-Andy Cuomo against South Dakota's sane and intelligent COVID policies implemented by Kristi Noem. This fact would be apparent to anyone curious about the different state-by-state ordinances and executive orders. If Trump imposed those lockdowns from the Federal level those differences wouldn't exist, and pandemic policies and procedures would have been consistent rather than diverse.
They say even a broken clock is correct twice a day. We wait in vain for Howard's adherence to this rule.
Blogger Howard said...
It was Trump who shut down the economy over Covid.
No, it was Birx and Fauci. Trump made the mistake of believing they were competent. Birx actually went around the country telling governors to shut down their state. She even brags about it in her book. DeSantis threw her out of his office. Ducey did not go that far but, fortunately for AZ, he did less than other D states.
according to https://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/us/, CPS employment reached a maximum of 158,866,000 in February 2020. 755,000 have been lost since then according to the household survey.
We've added about 5 MILLION people to the country, since 2020 https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/, and there are nearly a MILLION less jobs. Some Boom!
It's not overheated, it's just a shortage of various things, and prices rise to allocate the shortage to the most efficient uses. It's not a real inflation, in other words.
If the Fed accommodates the price allocations by permitting wage increases to cover it, then that will be inflation, and a real inflation. Prices of shortage stuff will have to rise further to resume allocating the shortage, and so on.
So the Fed has to let "real wages" fall, against the urging of the media and every politician.
Then prices come back down when the shortages resolve themselves.
One way of not accommodating wage increases is removing dollars from the economy, which is what raising the interest rate accomplishes. The Fed sells debt and burns the proceeds until the interest rate is at what its new higher target designates.
Still fewer jobs than before the pandemic and changes to definitions does not change reality anymore than Fauci changing the definition of “gain of function” to make the Wuhan research legal prevented the global catastrophe he was warned about.
The bus was making record time before it took the corner too fast and plunged off the cliff.
Pretty much. That, and it was rolling downhill. Some people suggest the boom was conceived with Obama, survived its tweens with Trump, and is progressing to a wicked velocity with Biden... his Choice, time will tell if we have a baby or a fetus.
Time will tell if it's a baby boom or a fetal fatality.
Dennis Prager said today that Paul Krugman has been wrong more that anybody writing in the English language. Dennis is not wrong.
Heh, Paul Krugman, hah. He still thinks enron stock is a good buy.
Also,lest you've been ill informed, he along with yasir Arafat are indicative of how worthless Nobel prizes are, ohhh, dobama too. Good grief. What a bunch of slobbering simps.
The meth head needing a score has more integrity than Krugman. Has he been right about anything?
He has never recovered about his statement the economy would crash and never recover under President Trump.
Krugman went Full Howard.
Never go Full Howard.
%45 of restaurants can't make their July rent was one national headline yesterday.
Blogger Howard said...
It was Trump who shut down the economy over Covid.
Umm, no, he left it up to the states, as he should have, and the blue state D govs in particular went mad with power (though a few RINOs did too).
Has Howard declared Stacey Abrams the winner in the Arizona primary yet?
Say what you want about Paul Krugman, but he knows which side his bread is buttered on.
I'm so old I remember when Democrats counted "jobs created or saved".
Krugman lost all credibility years ago. Anyone who pays attention to what he says should get a refund.
Feb 2020 152 million. April 2020 130 million. June 2022 151 million.
So we are not ‘booming’ and are not quite back to pre-Covid employment numbers.
Point being, these experts must think us idiots: we can look at the numbers and see the lie.
Wrong-way Krugman to the rescue, again.
So as others have said, we haven't gone into pre-COVID net-positive territory on jobs yet, national debt is up trillions since the COVID shutdown, inflation is pressing into double-digits with the effects of feed cost increases about to be felt in the downstream grocery chain over the next few months, with the fall slaughters.
Meanwhile GDP was negative for the last two quarters and the running tally 'GDP-now' is also trending downward. Then there's the Treasuries yield curve - an important recession bellwether that's hardly been mentioned (to my surprise): The 10-year/2-year has been in reversal for a month, and the 10-year/1-year and 10-year/6-month are in the same condition, for almost as long, and we're pumping out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, mostly to foreign countries, as we tweak China's nose and make fart noises at Russia.
We have Top Men working on it. Top. Men.
Too many jobs. Too much income. Diversity making us stronger everyday. Putin on the verge of surrender (any day now). The only problem is Biden is too good a president. America doesn't deserve him.
There is nothing efficient about high inflation.
Wealthier people can pay more for necessary goods and services. It’s not that the less wealthy don’t have a need/demand. It’s that they can’t afford the price.
This is basic stuff that eludes simple experts.
"Trump left it up to the states to determine their course of action."
The Left still has its knickers in a twist because Trump wasn't the dictator they wanted him to be.
Anything Krugman has to say deserves the Althouse Bullshit tag!
Krugman is not that dumb but he believes we are,
It's no surprise that Biden's top two economic advisors, Brian Deese and Jared Bernstein have no business experience. More surprising is that neither has an advanced degree in economics. Deese is a lawyer and Bernstein has advanced degrees in social work. Deese is a campaign operative and Bernstein was an advocate for social policies.
That could explain why the country is in such a mess, but the 17 Nobel Prize winners in economics who said the spending increase wouldn't cause inflation also had a lot to do with it. Krugman was one of them. So was 98-year-old Robert Solow. Even with real economists partisanship and advocacy are in the driver's seat.
Translation: everything sucks and it will get worse. You just have to understand Krugman speak.
The labor shortage and the very low unemployment rate
When so many able-bodied people have just given up on working, and thus are not counted in unemployment numbers, the unemployment rate is a meaningless comparative metric.
"But the basic fact is that so far the Biden economy has added 9 million jobs. So it has been a jobs boom, whatever else you may say."
I don't know how anyone can be an economist without understanding the broken windows fallacy, but Paul Krugman seems to have made an entire career out of that sort of ignorance.
I have a bridge I want to sell to you.
Krugman is an idiot. The economy didn't boom and cause inflation. The Fed opened the spigot on the money supply, which caused the economy to boom and generated massive inflation. He's been wrong on the economy for decades. He's nothing but a mouthpiece for the current Democrat talking point.
Okay states are responsible. How do you explain why red states are poor, sick and uneducated while the blue states are wealthy, healthy and smart?
Now I know where Hunter buys his crack.
Dumping $trillions into the economy could reasonably be expected to produce at least a temporary "boom" (as well as inflation) due to the substantial increase in demand from citizens with pockets full of freshly printed money.
Unfortunately the "boom" is temporary but the inflation settles in for the long haul. Until the choice is between runaway inflation or the severe forced economic contraction that will bring it to an end.
As with a junkie shooting up: the junky knows there will be a long-term price to be paid for that behavior, but, having been conditioned by the rush, goes for the quick rush of pleasure heedless of anything beyond the immediate present. ;
Just as our government continues to advance big spending bills, heedless of the long-term cost.
I am not saying this in response to idiots like Krugman, Howard and Inga, but really we need to:
Make Orwell Fiction Again!
Howard writes, "How do you explain why red states are poor, sick and uneducated while the blue states are wealthy, healthy and smart?"
Yeah, wealthy, healthy, and smart.
If Krugman wasn't an academic I would think he was disingenuous. But I think lots of economists are overly formulaic. It isn't really directly on point with his quote here, but this cartoon was from maybe a decade ago and I think is fairly accurate in what Keynesian academics think.
Krugman and Bernanke create jobs
Isn't Krugman the guy who suggested the gov't declare a fake alien invasion, then ramp up spending to employ everyone to "fight" it.
That's some real wealth creation, there. The alien invasion got renamed to climate change, however. And we're not all getting rich selling carbon credits.
I know someone who is as delusional as Krugman.
I thought she took the cake. Apparently not.
Engineers will recognize this as an underdamped system ... a big car with no shock absorbers on a rocky road and a driver with his foot on the gas. It won't end well.
Vault Dweller: w/all due respect…
What formula exists that suggests Brandon created a booming economy?
Blogger Beasts of England said... ‘I'm an economist…’
There are at least three on this thread, and we’re in violent agreement, re: former Enron advisor Paul Krugman.
Along with the other two commenters that also remembered Krugman being an Enron advisor, I believe it should be pointed out Enron was a massive fraud and it also went broke.
Blogger wendybar said...
"Bahahahahahha. Yeah. Okay. Who listens to this liar??"
Keep scrolling down. They will reveal themselves shortly.
Record gun sales in Mess-a two-shits,(that's Massachusetts for Howard) Guess it's not the progressive paradise it's claimed to be.
Always "short" Krugman
Howard said...
Okay states are responsible. How do you explain why red states are poor, sick and uneducated while the blue states are wealthy, healthy and smart?
How can you exp[lain that Unicorns poop Skittles, Howard?
What's that, my statement is false?
Well, it's no more false than yours.
"The problem may be that the Biden economy boomed *too much*, feeding inflation, and that it now needs to cool off, which may involve a recession (but hasn’t yet)."
Shorter Krugman: I'm not a economist, but I play one in the media.
"Did he get his Nobel from a crackerjack box?
No. Fiddle Faddle.
former Enron advisor Paul Krugman
That's why there is a recession, and single/central/monopolistic solutions (i.e. redistributive change) is why there are progressive prices ("inflation"), but the orders are in and time will tell if it's a baby or a fetus.
Honest to God, Jesus, and Allah, he wrote that. I corrected his punctuation out of pity.
That is actually a private joke between me and Michael K. (because he called me nobel, not noble)
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