Tweet
The New York Times allowed Matthew Bishop to write its review of Paul Krugman’s new book, End This Depression Now! Mr. Bishop is The US Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief of the Economist, a very serious paper. Mr. Bishop himself is a Very Serious Person, although he doesn’t seem to understand the point of that term, and he takes umbrage:
Yet no opportunity to preach to the choir is missed by the populist Mr. Krugman, nor any chance to mock those he calls the “Very Serious People” who disagree with him.
…
To this Moderately Serious Reviewer, Krugman’s habit of bashing anyone who does not share his conclusions is not merely stylistically irritating; it is flawed in substance.
Mr. Bishop noticed that Krugman doesn’t give any credence to the economic theory created by public relations flacks for the billionaire consensus, that the problem is lazy overpaid over-pensioned incompetent US workers who immorally refuse to pay their debts to their betters. Certainly the problem isn’t the lazy writers hired by the pretend meritocracy, who faithfully reproduce that nonsense in dressy faux-British prose to justify the self-satisfaction of the 1%.
The few substantive comments put forward by Mr. Bishop are thoroughly trashed by Jared Bernstein, among others; so let’s move on to Mr. Bishop’s other big problem with the book:
Maybe his case for stimulating the economy in the short run would be taken more seriously by those in power if it were offered along with a Bowles-¬Simpson-style plan for improving America’s finances in the medium or long term.
Mr. Bishop thinks that Krugman is solving the wrong problem: it isn’t massive unemployment that is wrecking the country, it’s the long-term possibility that increased national debt might lead to increased inflation or taxes on the rich. It’s the mere possibility that some of the loss from the Great Crash might fall on the guilty elites instead of the rest of us.
Mr. Bishop can’t stomach Krugman’s mocking tone, his insolence towards his wealthy betters. Krugman is betraying his social class, appealing over their heads to the “informed public” (scare quotes are Mr. Bishop’s). Well, Mr. Bishop, democracy is not just another piece of pretense from the oligarchy, which the insider Krugman should pretend to accept while making his case to his superiors in one of those quiet rooms they approve.
Even Jared Bernstein thinks Krugman should do something else:
Instead, I’d urge [Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz] to think more about real politics and how to get out of this mess given the stark realities of political dysfunction.
Meaning no disrespect, I ask Bernstein how that worked out for him? Or for Christy Romer? They both failed at insider politics. Politics is not a meritocratic game, where the best argument and the best evidence lead to the best conclusions and actions anymore, if it ever was.
People who say this out loud are generally ignored by the likes of Mr. Bishop, and if they have enough clout to get that view out in the public sphere, Mr. Bishop inspects his bank balance and lets fly with all the supercilious disdain he learned at the feet of the Economist editors.
Krugman played their game. He spent the first years of the Obama administration putting his ideas into his economic papers and conference presentations in measured, professorial terms, and using his column to call attention to those ideas. His results are no better than Bernstein’s, though the fact that they are public at all is an affront to Mr. Bishop.
Suck on this, Mr. Bishop. You are arguing in bad faith, and your weekly rag is too. Neither of you are interested in the evidence or the logic of the argument. You aren’t even interested in the favorite of conservatives, the argument from authority: Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner and has big space in for the New York Times, and he was right and you and your clients were wrong about everything. You don’t care that he is an independent writer and professor while you work for the interests of the rich.
Your reporting conceals the real problem facing this country: the dominance of the rich, the elite, the lords of finance, the owners of dressage horses and Brawny Paper Towels. They don’t want to eat their losses. They want the middle class to pay those losses. What’s your solution to that problem?
—-
Edited to delete incorrect reference to date of Krugman’s Nobel Prize.
46 Comments
It is interesting that you are saying that Krugman is an insider. I have never seen him criticizing trade deals. And that to me is the most important element in collapse of American and European economies. However, having said that, I believe nothing is possible until and unless the elites feel the pain of what they have wrought on the rest of us. So we have to be patient, unless you want to start a bloody revolution. And this is one of the problems with the Occupy: they hope to defeat the elites with a few placards, and tents? I believe this will take blood and rage, and we are not yet ready for that. But this is how transformation always requires. Not just anger. It will take passion of millions of people for real change to happen, and sacrifice. And this will get really nasty. So until we get to that stage, we will keep complaining, but no one cares unless they feel threatened. This is how change happens.
I largely agree with this post, but you got one thing wrong: Krugman won his Nobel Prize while he was writing for the New York Times, not before. He was already a very well known economist, of course, and widely considered a candidate for a Nobel; but his academic status rose during his tenure at the Times.
– Krugman was a Nobel Prize winner before he began writing for the New York Times, and he was right and you and your clients were wrong about everything –
Really? Here’s the Nobel Prize winner’s advice on getting out of the recession that began in 2000:
“To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.” – Paul Krugman, August 2002
Of course Krugman had plenty of company in the Econ PhD. stupidity club:
Amerrican consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage.” – Alan Greenspan – February 2004
“House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals.” – Ben Bernanke – October 2005
You can find the Krugman quote here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
What’s interesting is that I don’t recall the NYT hiring outside reviewers from, say, The Nation or The Guardian to savage anything written by David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Thomas Friedman, William Safire, John Tierney, William Kristol, or any of the other conservatives and Republicans who have written for it over the years.
Yet the Times has never protected him like they do their conservative columnists. Even as Safire was spinning 100% fact-free yarns in his opinion columns about Mohammed Atta in Prague and Wales, and even as Judith Miller was posting Iraq War fan fiction under her journalist’s byline, Paul Krugman nearly lost his opinion column for citing in good faith a Salon story by Jason Leopold concerning Bush Army Secretary and Enron figure Tom White that was alleged to contain an inaccuracy.
The Economist is in a strange place.
It preaches austerity in combination with demanding growth.
I’ve read the Economist on and off for over 40 years, and generally found it relevant. On this subject it is crazy-stupid or suffering from cognitive dissonance.
How does one achieve growth without demand (customers) buying all of one products off the shelves, so one has to add extra shits (paid workers) to one’s factory and distribution chain to supply the demand?
The so-called “Job Creators” will not create one job, hire one person, until the person hired will increase their profit.
In their defence The English have never really understood growth through consumer demand (aka: Trade, considered vulgar by the English 1%). The Economist is a English newspaper.
A small reading of Bronte and Dickens will give you the English perspective. Or watch Beatrix Potter’s biographical film “Miss Potter” and pay attention to the scene where she rants at her mother about her finance’s “trade” and calls her family “par venue.”
Sorry but that’s no different than it ever was. The real problem with the country is the knuckle-dragging morons who aren’t part of their social class and never will be but who apparently would rather be their forelock tugging stooges than risk the possibility that the “undeserving” – usually someone of a different skin tone – might catch a break.
I’m not sure I would read that as Krugman’s advice, but rather as Greenspan’s strategy to rescue the Last Bush from the consequences of his arrogant ignorance.
Paul Krugman, economist= High priest to the god of money and capitalism. He is John the Baptist in the desert heralding the coming of the new paradigm. He uses the word Depression therefore that is considered progressive, although, those who have suffered these last 12 years have been aware of the unresponsive government and the plutocrats that control it for some time. The unemployment rate has always been higher for minorities even twice than the national average for African-Americans. They have been in a depression since the days of emperor Reagan when the “normal” was 4% for national unemployment and now it seems that 8 to 9 percent is the new normal. So where would that leave most minorities?
I think the one thing good about what Krugman has done is call our current situation a Depression and recommend we use the same methods as used in the Great Depression to fix the economy. Obviously, this is a message that has to be beaten back post haste by the powers that be in both DC and Wall St. But we need to remember that recovery also included significant reform of the financial sector and large Federal jobs programs (the largest of which was called WW2).
I regard Jared Bernstein’s review as largely a CYA. He talks about recommending “politically possible” actions. I would suggest that the elections of 2006 and 2008 were the American public doing their part in response to Republican political party which had thrashed our country for eight years, and an economic collapse due to thirty years of Reaganomics. Obama and the Democratic party had a clear mandate to reform the system as per FDR. That’s why comparisons between Obama and FDR were popular. Instead we have witnessed as Chris Hayes (and others) have called it, the failure of the elites. The current “system” has failed where this leads our nation to next is not good since it seems that needed reform will be much more difficult, and may require going outside the existing system.
Love it. Masterful.
And am amused at the folks who think your piece is about glorifying Krugman.
Politics should be a meritocratic game, where the best argument and the best evidence lead to the best conclusions and actions unless corrupt selfish politicians feather their own nest over the collective welfare of society through bribes AKA campaign contributions.
So the question is how do we get the people not interested in payoffs and rubbing elbows with the 1%ers so they are unbuyable to become elected to office ?
Seems the person willing to run these days is the last person that should hold public office.
Hand marked , hand counted , out in the open, ballots and publicly financed elections would eliminate the selfish greedy crew that currently masquerade as devoted public servants.
Bernstein is pimping the Obama Administration’s “grand-bargain” scenario, wherein entitlement cuts get scheduled in exchange for near-term tax increases. Peter Orszag calls that “the barbell approach,” where both ends go up together (or something like that).
Thank you for this succinct and remarkable post. You’ve done it again.
Dr Krugman can be criticized on a number of grounds, but he got this right: we are in depression. There are around twenty million who want jobs and fifty million in poverty. So why didn’t Matthew Bishop talk about,those kind of problems and what,should be done about it? Oh wait, he did. He wants a little of that old time austerity to reign in our profligate ways. What a fool,
X2
Ironcomments June 21st, 2012 at 12:27 pm 7
J.P. Morgan has been controlling monetary policy and propping up this broken system(capitalism) since the Panic of 1893. The US Treasury and Fed are thin veneers of government control(meaning elected officials who must answer to the people who elect them). So one must ask if whether what is really happening to are so-called American capitalistic system today is anything new? Why does it need to be propped up by schemes and disingenuous persons?
Jamie Dimon is just the latest person at the helm of one of the plutocrat firms(puppet master).
More appropriate that Orazag would believe.
Orszag should remember what happens when barbells get dropped. Both ends go down, breaking everything they hit.
To answer the final question of your culumn : They don’t see this as a problem. Jamie Dimon is perfectly happy with the process of taxing the poor to enrich the very few. The real question is why he isn’t hanging from a gallows.
Academi/Xe/Blackwater
In Minnesota, the government just handed over quite a pile of money to the Vikings football team to build a stadium. The owner is reputed to be a billionaire.
Around the same time, one of the best players on the team, announces he wants to be traded; He is paid about a quarter, or a fifth of what similar quality players earn.
Guess who the fans are mad at?
One thing that needs to change (don’t ask me how) is what we value.
It’s a serious problem, when a person’s worth and value is measured almost exclusively by how much money he/she has.
and thanks for another fine article, Scarecrow.
One teensy little factual correction here, though the principal of the argument is not really affected: the financial entity now known as JPMorgan Chase really has little to do with either JP Morgan or the former Chase Manhattan Bank.
Call me an insider; I was working at “JPMorganChase” – which was the result of a merger between those 2 firms – (allowed by repeal of Glass-Steagall, since Chase Manhattan was a regular “bank” and JPM was an investment bank. They couldn’t be part of the same firm under G-S) when it “merged” with Bank One.
Actually, Bank One bought JPMC. Guess who was president or ceo of Bank One? Our fave, Jamie Dimon. Guess who became CEO of the new, merged institution? Obviously, Jamie Dimon.
After the merger, as “integration” began between the two companies’ ways of operating, employee policies, benefits, rules, etc. it became quite clear that “Chase” had become Bank One in everything but name. They kept the Chase and JPM names because they were much older and carried more prestige. But it’s really Bank One.
And let me tell you, it wasn’t just consumers who got screwed. Chase was a much, much better place to work than Bank One-Chase.
I can’t say I go back to the founding of either JMP or CMB, but I can tell you they were different from today’s Bank One version of the three. Aand that’s all Jamie Dimon.
Aargh – no edit! I should probably have called my post OT, although it fits with the more general theme of bad faith.
second, “principle,” not “principal.”
Sheesh. Sorry.
As for the on topic theme: yeah, having the winger review the liberal, while never allowing the reverse, is yet another example of “IOKIYAR”, and its corollary, INOKIYAD.” (do I need to translate the second acronym?)
Very interesting bit of history there. Thanks for telling it.
A similar merger happened when First Union acquired Wachovia and then marketed under the name Wachovia (now the ugly red and yellow signs of Wells-Fargo).
No kidding. Hard to tell which bank was which unless you had a scorecard. Still hard to remember which ones are alive and which ones have passed into history….
Moving around organizational charts and renaming things is what most CEO do in order to make it seem like they are in charge. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” I use JP Morgan because it was the man himself who engineered our modern day Federal Reserve. It his commercial progeny and a few others have been running the show since.
You point out the finer details of which set of sharks ate the smaller sharks and in what order.
Thanks for the correction. I’ll edit.
Why ever would a Wall Street co-dependent publication hire outsiders to criticize their insiders?
The Times would do that only if they were interested in Truth with a Capital T.
And we all know that the editors at the NY Times are not interested in Truth. That became truly and painfully obvious the weeks that Judith Miller was feeding the information she had delivered her via the folks at the George Bush the Younger WH into her news stories. As a result of the web she and the WH wove, this nation entered into the Shock and Awe campaign against the Iraqi people.
Great post.
Are you referring to this Wachovia another one of our upstanding banks?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
Love Krugman’s mocking tone .He has recently become mentally tough ,e.g. Gore Vidal and Milton Friedman ,and no longer lets conservatives beat up on him .It’s not enough to have a message ,or prestigious cred ,one must be able to ‘sell’ the message .Now ,I will buy his book because I respect the public service he’s performing .
Yeah, the boobs should know their place.
PK is a paper tiger. It’s farcical that accusing con men of heresy can pass for earnest analysis.
What is a sincere meritocracy, comrade? It is a contradiction in terms.
Mr. Bishop thankfully knows that Krudman is “solving” the wrong problem. There is no fair share of capitalist pain and PK has long accepted this. He just pretends that inequality, what his antagonists hold as an investment, is incidental.
A useful enemy is such a treasure.
And who, pray tell, are operating in “good faith”, eh, comrade?
I was asked by a media owner if they should hire Jason Leopold after the Army Sec White blow-up
I found that Jason was and had been fair and accurate – the email controversy was nonsense – he had good documentation – but he was and is still tainted goods however – the PTB never forgive an attack on one of their own. Sec White should have been tossed – but of course was not.
I am glad he has found income over the years since then.
And interestingly enough, the fact that Harvin gets one-fifth what other top-rank players in his slot get is not exactly emphasized by the local establishment media.
Ironically, Secretary White himself wound up being damaged goods with the PTB, not for his connection to Enron and its illusory profits, but for a decent thing he did: Opposing the military invasion of Iraq.
Paul Krugman is a respected, conventional economist of a high order. He is not a Marxian, revolutionary wannabe. Unfortunately, the “conventional” window in economics has shifted significantly, leaving him (and a few others)stranded.
Krugman was was right about Dubya before 9/11. He was right about Iraq. He was, and is, right about the economy. He is right about the Republican party’s irrational, totally idealogical core. He is right about the pathetic weakness of the Democrats on the economy. He is very skilled at writing about these things for a general audience.
He has shown great insight and foresight. He has leveled blistering criticism at professional colleagues, and former friends, in a very public forum. Far from advancing his academic career, he can never be forgiven by TPTB for his advocacy.
As has been noted by several others above, this review says far more about the NYT, and the depth of its journalistic, academic and intellectual corruption than it does about Krugman, or his book.
This is in the same genre as NYT’s David Brooks column last week where he laments the grotesque failure of the rabble to pay proper respect to our betters who are “immeasurably superior” in every way, evidenced by their net worth.
no, they think Harvin is out of line.
To the sports media, it doesn’t matter that Harvin can be fired tomorrow without cause, or that he is one play away from being finished as a player. Or that he busted his ass for the team.
Sports media are all directly or indirectly obligated to the owners of the team.
Comrade Krudman was not, is not, and will not be right about the economy.
Not sure what direction you are coming from. Your comment further above was too advanced for my poor understanding. But, briefly…
Krugman says austerity during a recession (or depression, depending on your point of view) is bunk both theoretically and empirically. He supports his contention with theoretic and empiric evidence. He argues for whatever expansionary policies are possible, monetary or fiscal. He also says that eventually the financial system has to deal with unsustainable debt, but that should wait until stimulus gets the economy going and people can find jobs. It is not entirely clear what measures he would recommend in the long term, but it seems likely he would advocate e.g. raising the SS cap rather than cutting benefits or raising the raising the retirement age. cf his article today, he’s certainly not going to recommend “privatizing” Medicare or SS.
With consumer spending 80-85% of the domestic economy, I find stimulus hard to argue with. The confidence fairies don’t seem to be doing their magic in England, although Cameron seemed willing to go down with the ship. As is Merkel. While the bond vigilantes and other ghouls seem to have risen in Europe to take down the weakest members of the herd one at a time, they’re nowhere to be seen on this side of the Atlantic.
There is an unprecedented opportunity for the U.S. government to borrow money at practically no cost to provide stimulus.
U.S. economic policy is being controlled by financial elites who are intent on rolling back the New Deal to the age of the robber barons. The social contract has been broken and the above referenced review of Krugman’s book demonstrates the extent to which the disastrous ideology of austerity has permeated “conventional wisdom” of the political and media chattering classes.
These are, or course, arguments from conventional economics. Kurgman has never claimed to do otherwise. More fundamental critique of the economy is available, and in my opinion has much merit, but is so esoteric in this politial climate as to be almost metaphysical.
And was not Krudman asleep on the job when that opportunity was developing, comrade?
His job is cake, now: Talk the obvious and continue to ignore the fundamnentals.
Krudman should shoot for the meta-economic but he’s got it made in the asylum.
Say, why should “bond vigilantes” want to ruin their investment? Isn’t that one of those fictitious “market failures”?
I feel your pain, tovarish.
However, I don’t find it useful to excoriate people for their level of awareness of the deep and total corruption of our “democracy.”
I do find Krugman’s pointing out (what is to you) the obvious to millions of readers to be courageous and useful.
What, not even the “experts”? Perhaps the necessity of ignoring outliers has led you to this conclusion, comrade.
I should form Compradors Anonymous.