Harvard Economists Blast Paul Krugman for 'Uncivil Behavior'

breitbart

infosurhoy.com

By Wynton Hall 

In an open letter published on Saturday, Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff fired back at New York Times columnist Paul Krugman for his “spectacularly uncivil behavior” in the wake of a controversy over the scholars’ austerity findings.

“It has been with deep disappointment that we have experienced your spectacularly uncivil behavior the past few weeks,” wrote Reinhart and Rogoff. “You have attacked us in very personal terms, virtually non-stop, in your New York Times column and blog posts. Now you have doubled down in the New York Review of Books, adding the accusation we didn't share our data.” 

The scholars added: “Your characterization of our work and of our policy impact is selective and shallow. It is deeply misleading about where we stand on the issues. And we would respectfully submit, your logic and evidence on the policy substance is not nearly as compelling as you imply.”

Krugman has maintained that his Keynesian economic approach does not make him smarter than everyone else; rather, it makes him right.

“Am I (and others on my side of the issue) that much smarter than everyone else? No,” writes Krugman.  “The point is not that I have an uncanny ability to be right; it’s that the other guys have an intense desire to be wrong. And they’ve achieved their goal.”

The Reinhart-Rogoff-Krugman feud erupted after University of Massachusetts graduate student Thomas Herndon found flaws in the scholars’ data.

Jon Stewart Fires Back At Paul Krugman: 'If Somebody Is Ruining Their Brand' With The Trillion Dollar Coin, It's You

Brett LoGiurato 

Daily Show host Jon Stewart fired back last night at economist Paul Krugman over the idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin to work around the debt ceiling. It continued a riff that was forged over the weekend when Krugman slammed Stewart for being "lazy" in satirizing the idea.

Stewart mocked Krugman as "the only creature more noble than a freshly felched unicorn" and "the rare gray-bearded urban laureate." He took issue with Krugman calling him "lazy" in a blog post over the weekend, joking that he was "banging it out four days a week, 22 minutes a day!"

Stewart then played a clip of Krugman saying Stewart was "ruining his brand" by not doing enough research and mocking the opposition.

"I'm pretty sure that is my brand," Stewart quipped.

Then he added this kicker: "If somebody is ruining their brand with a trillion dollar coin idea, I don't think it’s the non-economist."

Stewart noted that he was a fan of Krugman.

Watch the full clip below:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart >>

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-vs-paul-krugman-trillion-dollar-coin-2013-1#ixzz2I3tywUHr

MoveOn.org nominates Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary

theblaze

The progressive activist group MoveOn.org is partnering with Hollywood actor/Hugo Chavez superfan Danny Glover in a petition drive urging the president to nominate New York Times‘ Keynesian economist and Obama enthusiast, Paul Krugman. So far, their petition has netted over 197,000 suckers… er, I mean signatories.

“We urge you to nominate Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary,” the petition states. “Krugman will protect Social Security and Medicare from benefit cuts, promote policies to create jobs, and help defeat the austerity dogma in Washington and around the world.”

Krugman, a fellow Nobel Prize winner and poster child of modern liberalism, would handily complement Obama’s progressive policies.  He’s also a big Obama apologist & Bush-blamer — aces for a liberal litmus test.

“It’s terribly unfair that [President Obama is] being judged on the failure of the economy,” Krugman has explained, “to respond to policies that had been largely dictated by a hostile Congress.”

'Full Employment in Two Years' Is Easy, Says Krugman

ForaTv

Paul Krugman, columnist for The New York Times and author of End This Depression Now!, asserts that Congress and uncompromising politicians are standing in the way of true economic recovery. Krugman believes that there are "easy fixes", but that leaders are failing to act.

KRUGMAN: Here's How The Whole Eurozone Could Unravel In Just A Matter Of Months

Read >>

US Net Investment Income

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

How’s that for a sexy blog post title? But this actually matters.

I’ve been arguing that the nature of US debt now is not, despite appearances, all that different from debt post-World War 2, when we pretty much entirely owed the money to ourselves. Now, of course, some of the money is owed to foreigners; but as I pointed out, America has large assets abroad, not too much less than its liabilities.

But wait, there’s more. American assets. often taking the form of foreign subsidiaries of US corporations, earn a higher rate of return than US liabilities — especially now, when there’s a lot of foreign money parked in Treasuries, but this was true even before the crisis. As a result, income from US-owned assets abroad — the blue line below — consistently exceeds payments on foreign-owned assets in the United States, the red line:

Again, if your image is that we’re deeply in hock to foreigners, that our extravagance has condemned us to a future of debt peonage, you’re wrong.

Krugman: Will China’s bubble break?

JFunk via Shutterstock/Salon

AMERICAblog/ Paul Krugman on the current situation in China:

Consider the following picture: Recent growth has relied on a huge construction boom fueled by surging real estate prices, and exhibiting all the classic signs of a bubble. There was rapid growth in credit — with much of that growth taking place not through traditional banking but rather through unregulated “shadow banking” neither subject to government supervision nor backed by government guarantees. Now the bubble is bursting — and there are real reasons to fear financial and economic crisis.

Am I describing Japan at the end of the 1980s? Or am I describing America in 2007? I could be. But right now I’m talking about China, which is emerging as another danger spot in a world economy that really, really doesn’t need this right now.

Krugman notes that consumer demand is weak in China (35% of GDP, about half our level) and getting weaker; the rest being made up in trade. But they, like us have a real estate-driven boom in investment spending. The trick is to know how much, since number coming out of China are generally fudged to look better than they are.

The problem is that even these fudged numbers don't give the Professor a good feeling:

The obvious question is, with consumer demand relatively weak, what motivated all that investment? And the answer, to an important extent, is that it depended on an ever-inflating real estate bubble. Real estate investment has roughly doubled as a share of G.D.P. since 2000, accounting directly for more than half of the overall rise in investment. ... Do we actually know that real estate was a bubble? It exhibited all the signs: not just rising prices, but also the kind of speculative fever all too familiar from our own experiences just a few years back — think coastal Florida.

Krugman asks how much damage the bursting Chinese bubble will do to the world economy. He considers both sides of the question — China's undemocratic government is freer to act than our own, but everything coming out of China sounds like famous last words. Then concludes: "it’s impossible not to be worried".

Original Sin And The Euro Crisis

Paul Krugman/ NYT
A quick note right now, maybe more later.
One question that keeps coming up is, how can I reconcile my scorn for warnings about bond vigilantes with what is happening to Italy? This seems especially pointed because I have in the past used Italy’s ability to carry debt exceeding its GDP as an illustration that debt concerns were overblown.
The answer lies in the concept of original sin. Not the Pope’s kind, but the economics kind — the long-standing notion that developing countries were especially vulnerable to financial crises because they borrowed in foreign currency. (Yes, the linked paper actually raises some distinctions between currency mismatch and original sin; never mind for now).
The key point is that by joining the euro, Italy took a bite of the apple — it converted its advanced-country status, as a nation issuing debt in its own currency, into original sin, with debts in someone else’s currency (Europe’s in principle, Germany’s in practice). That is the root of its new vulnerability.
More on all this later, I hope.

Occupy Wall Street Movement &The Krugman Army

By Ed Driscoll

On Friday, James Taranto described Occupy Wall Street as “Krugman’s Army,” and the former Enron advisor certainly has gone all in with the movement:

• 

• “Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received. So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?”–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, Aug. 7, 2009
• “ ‘Kill the Cops!’ Shout Reported During ‘Occupy New Orleans’ Protest”–headline, DailyCaller.com, Oct. 7
• “Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point. … Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.”–Krugman, New York Times, Oct. 7, 2011
• “Almost all the bankers and hedge-fund managers on Wall Street are Jewish. There is a conspiracy in this country in which Jews control the media, finances–if you Google, Google ‘Wall Street Jews.’ Google ‘Jewish billionaires.’ Google ‘Jews in the Federal Reserve Bank.’ The Jews, who represent 2% of the population–it’s similar to Russia, the oligarchs and the plutocrats–a small ethnic minority, they have pooled their money together, amassed their money, to take control of America’s finances. I ask the Russian people to Google ‘Jewish billionaires’ in this country. You’ll find out that half the billionaires in this country are Jewish.”–Occupy Wall Street protester in YouTube video, Oct. 3, 2011
• “When I said that it was the job of policy intellectuals to fill in the details for the Occupy Wall Street protestors, I didn’t mean ‘don’t worry your pretty little heads about it, we’ll work it out,’ I meant job literally as in responsibility: people like Joe Stiglitz and me have an obligation to work on this, helping to translate what justifiably angry citizens are saying into more fleshed-out proposals.”–Krugman, New York Times website, Oct. 7, 2011

Meanwhile, Noel Sheppard responds at Newsbusters to Krugman’s latest column:

It seems New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been better behaved than Tea Party attendees.
Read the following paragraph from Monday’s “Panic of the Plutocrats” and you be the judge:

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Maybe Krugman has missed images like these:

Click over for multiple shots of Occupy Wall Street types living in homeless-style squalor, being carted off by the police, etc. And as Noel adds, “As most folks are aware, there are worse pictures as Britain’s Daily Mail reported Saturday including a protester defecating on a police car.”
As Taranto quips today, “Remember when Krugman was making up lies about conservatives employing ‘eliminationist rhetoric?’ He now commands an army that is engaged in a campaign of actual elimination.”
More > 

Krugman: "Obama’s continuing insistence on compromising ... is looking obsessive and compulsive"

Read >

#Krugman - No, We Can’t? Or Won’t?

The New York Times/ Paul Krugman

If you were shocked by Friday’s job report, if you thought we were doing well and were taken aback by the bad news, you haven’t been paying attention. The fact is, the United States economy has been stuck in a rut for a year and a half.

Yet a destructive passivity has overtaken our discourse. Turn on your TV and you’ll see some self-satisfied pundit declaring that nothing much can be done about the economy’s short-run problems (reminder: this “short run” is now in its fourth year), that we should focus on the long run instead.
This gets things exactly wrong. The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing. Yes, there are huge political obstacles to action — notably, the fact that the House is controlled by a party that benefits from the economy’s weakness. But political gridlock should not be conflated with economic reality.
Our failure to create jobs is a choice, not a necessity — a choice rationalized by an ever-shifting set of excuses.
Excuse No. 1: Just around the corner, there’s a rainbow in the sky.
Remember “green shoots”? Remember the “summer of recovery”? Policy makers keep declaring that the economy is on the mend — and Lucy keeps snatching the football away. Yet these delusions of recovery have been an excuse for doing nothing as the jobs crisis festers.
Excuse No. 2: Fear the bond market.
Two years ago The Wall Street Journal declared that interest rates on United States debt would soon soar unless Washington stopped trying to fight the economic slump. Ever since, warnings about the imminent attack of the “bond vigilantes” have been used to attack any spending on job creation.
But basic economics said that rates would stay low as long as the economy was depressed — and basic economics was right. The interest rate on 10-year bonds was 3.7 percent when The Wall Street Journal issued that warning; at the end of last week it was 3.03 percent.
How have the usual suspects responded? By inventing their own reality. Last week, Representative Paul Ryan, the man behind the G.O.P. plan to dismantle Medicare, declared that we must slash government spending to “take pressure off the interest rates” — the same pressure, I suppose, that has pushed those rates to near-record lows.
Excuse No. 3: It’s the workers’ fault.
Unemployment soared during the financial crisis and its aftermath. So it seems bizarre to argue that the real problem lies with the workers — that the millions of Americans who were working four years ago but aren’t working now somehow lack the skills the economy needs.
Yet that’s what you hear from many pundits these days: high unemployment is “structural,” they say, and requires long-term solutions (which means, in practice, doing nothing).
Well, if there really was a mismatch between the workers we have and the workers we need, workers who do have the right skills, and are therefore able to find jobs, should be getting big wage increases. They aren’t. In fact, average wages actually fell last month.
Excuse No. 4: We tried to stimulate the economy, and it didn’t work.
Everybody knows that President Obama tried to stimulate the economy with a huge increase in government spending, and that it didn’t work. But what everyone knows is wrong.
Think about it: Where are the big public works projects? Where are the armies of government workers? There are actually half a million fewer government employees now than there were when Mr. Obama took office.
So what happened to the stimulus? Much of it consisted of tax cuts, not spending. Most of the rest consisted either of aid to distressed families or aid to hard-pressed state and local governments. This aid may have mitigated the slump, but it wasn’t the kind of job-creation program we could and should have had. This isn’t 20-20 hindsight: some of us warned from the beginning that tax cuts would be ineffective and that the proposed spending was woefully inadequate. And so it proved.
It’s also worth noting that in another area where government could make a big difference — help for troubled homeowners — almost nothing has been done. The Obama administration’s program of mortgage relief has gone nowhere: of $46 billion allotted to help families stay in their homes, less than $2 billion has actually been spent.
So let’s summarize: The economy isn’t fixing itself. Nor are there real obstacles to government action: both the bond vigilantes and structural unemployment exist only in the imaginations of pundits. And if stimulus seems to have failed, it’s because it was never actually tried.
Listening to what supposedly serious people say about the economy, you’d think the problem was “no, we can’t.” But the reality is “no, we won’t.” And every pundit who reinforces that destructive passivity is part of the problem.

An Interview With Paul Krugman: Inspiration For A Liberal Economist

HERE...

The Jobs Revolution/ Edward E. Gordon

 By Edward E. Gordon

What are the myths and realities related to current systemic changes in U.S. jobs and employment? In a recent New York Times column, Paul Krugman correctly muses that neither political party wants to talk about reducing unemployment. But he then states, “Bear in mind that the unemployed aren’t jobless because…they lack the necessary skills.” His prescription for unemployment: “We could have W.P.A. type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads.”

Unfortunately, we are not living in the 1930s. Major road building construction has been automated and mostly requires skilled trade workers who have completed technical training programs. Jobs for common laborers are disappearing.

Krugman is correct when he says, “There is nothing wrong with our workers—remember just four years ago the unemployment rate was below 5 percent.” It is true that most Americans are hard working people, but Krugman wrongly attributes the past situation to a highly skilled workforce.

More...

Fatal Fatalism/ Paul Krugman

Our current economic discourse is pervaded by fatalism. Leave aside the people who insist that somehow Obama has destroyed capitalist incentives by passing Mitt Romney’s health care plan and threatening to raise tax rates to Clinton-era levels. Even among people who should be sensible, you hear many assertions that run something like this: historically, recovery from financial crisis is usually slow, so we have to accept a slow recovery this time around too. Actually, that’s more or less what Obama has been saying.

This fatalism is deeply destructive — because there’s no good reason we need to experience many years of high unemployment. What historical experience shows isn’t that there’s no answer to post-crisis slumps, it only shows that most governments have responded to such slumps with the same kind of fatalism and learned helplessness we’re showing now. (Hey, Greg, I have first dibs on that!)

We are not, after all, suffering from supply-side problems. We don’t have high unemployment because workers lack the necessary skills, or are stuck in the wrong industries or the wrong locations; the hypothesis that we’re mainly suffering structural unemployment has been repeatedly shot down by evidence. This is a demand-side slump; all we need to do is create more demand.

So why is this slump, like most slumps following financial crises, so protracted? Because the usual tools for pumping up demand have reached their limits. Normally we respond to demand-side slumps by cutting short-term nominal interest rates, which the Fed can move through open-market operations. But we now have severely depressed private demand thanks to the housing bust and the overhang of consumer debt, so even a zero rate isn’t low enough.

So what’s the right response? Should we just throw up our hands, and say that having 12 million or so adults who should be working out of work, and roughly $1 trillion per year of output we should be producing not getting produced, is just a fact of life? Or should we be using unconventional policies to deal with an abnormal situation?

The answer seems obvious. We should be using fiscal stimulus; we should be using unconventional monetary policy, including raising the inflation target; we should be pursuing aggressive measures to reduce mortgage debt. Not doing these things means accepting huge waste and hardship.

But, say the serious people, there are risks to doing any of these things. Well, life is full of risks. But it’s simply crazy to put a higher weight on the possibility that the invisible bond vigilantes might manifest themselves, or the inflation monster emerge from its secret cave, over the continuing reality of enormous human and economic damage from doing nothing.

The truth is that we have nothing to fear but fear itself — fear and complacency — the two things we have to fear are — amongst our fears ….

Anyway, seriously, the fatalism that has overtaken economic debate is a terrible thing. It is, indeed, the main enemy of prosperity.

1937 in 2011?/ Paul Krugman

 

Impoverished girls landing GA, US 1937 by Carl Mydans/ From  MLC Photography and Music - Strobist Society

 

Gauti Eggertsson has a nice piece on the New York Fed blog about the great monetary/fiscal mistake of 1937, which sent the Great Depression into a second downward leg. As he notes, the underlying situation bore a significant resemblance to current events: unemployment still high (actually under 10 percent if measured by modern standards, so quite similar to now), but with rising prices thanks to commodity shocks.
Where I part with Gauti here is his assertion that modern economists won’t make the same mistake. The research staff at the NY Fed won’t; but the ECB very probably will, and the Board of Governors is under a lot of political pressure to raise rates.
We’ve learned a lot less these past 74 years than you might have imagined — or rather, we learned some stuff, but have spent the last few decades unlearning it.
Update: And here’s Lorenzo Bini Smaghi of the ECB insisting that yes, we do intend to repeat the mistake of 1937.

Paul Krugman: Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

Paul Krugman: Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.