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This nine-minute British video of Krugman arguing with a British venture capitalist and a conservative Member of Parliament makes most of the same points as Nick Hanauer’s TED lecture on income inequality. But Krugman is arguing with two Brits who are spouting Heritage Foundation talking points, which I find somewhat shocking. For no good reason, I expected people with British accents to be much smarter than that. The full nine-minute video is here. I recommend it.
What they seem unable to grasp is that when an economy gets shut down, somebody has to prime the pump to get it flowing again. By definition, that has to be the government, since they have the authority to print money and the ability to borrow money at the lowest possible interest rates. The financier argues that what is really needed is smaller government and Krugman all but accuses him of following the Shock Doctrine, which is exactly what he was trying to do, but he is so imbued with this smaller government doctrine that he is totally unaware of his own insincerity.
112 Comments
I thought your title was an oxymoron. Hmmph.
The Federal Reserve is a private bank, it is not the government.
What they also don’t seem to grasp is why the economy is being shutdown, which is nowhere to be found in any dialogue that receives attention.
The Shock Doctrine is something like, yea create a financial implosion of the economy, create “answers” and then strip people of their freedom.
Please explain to me how the continued use of debt as money will get us out of the “hole” that we have been digging and truly taking to new levels since 2008? Government spending? Creating more debt really?
Krugman is paid to preach, probably from that same debt base he so longingly wants more of.
Ben Shalom Bernanke is part of an organized Family. So were Greenspan before him, Paul Volcker before him, and the German born Family Elder (and basis for Daddy Warbucks in “Annie”) Paul Warburg, who created the Federal Reserve private bank in an act which proved to be the end of American self determination.
We are run by a foreign private bank loyal to organized Family interests, and they call it a meritocracy. Nobody has enough power and independence to question this, since JFK wanted to end the Fed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bernanke
Before Bernanke’s work, the dominant monetarist theory of the Great Depression was Milton Friedman’s view that it had been largely caused by the Federal Reserve’s having reduced the money supply. In a speech on Milton Friedman’s ninetieth birthday (November 8, 2002), Bernanke said, “Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna [Schwartz, Friedman's coauthor]: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”
we are slaves…….the end
So, I guess you were unable to listen to the video. You got to spend money to make money. Everybody knows that, don’t they?
Well, it was worth it to see Krudman accusing those pinheads of deceit. I guess there’s a surplus of pinheads to take dives against the ole Krudman.
He still ain’t going to address privatized Keynesianism and neither are the pinheads.
Let’s see the Krudman go up against a welterweight socialist.
1. The Central Federal Reserve is not a private institution.
2. The Government does not issue debt. It issues two forms of money:
- Non interest bearing
- Interest bearing
3. taxation is not necessary for the government to operate. It is Social Policy.
Krugman has become the Arthur Laffer of the left – a pied piper with simple sugar coated answers. The irony (unseen by the morons on both the right and left) is that each peddles the same bullshit: we can grow our way out of the deficit by “stimulating” the economy with yet more debt. The only difference between the two lies in who gets to spend the debt financed largess. In the Krugman (Laffer) version it’s the pols (taxpayers) via more gov’t spending (more tax cuts). That difference is the product of partisan politics, nothing else.
Both the left & right buy this crap because it’s what they want to hear. That, and its promise of a pain free remedy, the bitch goddess of the unwise.
“Krudman”? Is that really necessary just because you disagree with this Nobel economist?
Sigh. How sad that the best U.S. can do for public intellectual on economics is Krugman.
Wigwam, this Krugman column says pretty much the same thing as he says in that video.
The Austerity Agenda
wigwam great diary!! Great to see ya fonts doing great reporting on Paul Krugman who is only one of very few economists who are still telling the truth and not like all those others who have been bought and paid for by the .0001% to lie to the rest of us that “They are Job Creators” which we all know is pure BS!…
The Conservatives have failed…to adapt to modern circumstances.
Their primitive idea relates to farmers and people getting together to build a bridge or raise a barn where there is no need for and no availability of investment capital. They prefer no government interference in that system. But, if you consider the time period when that was prevalent (in America) there was also slavery and the 1% certainly enjoyed that cheap labor.
What Krugman is arguing is that in more recent times we have learned that the government can smooth out ups & downs of a business cycle by taxing a bit more or spending a bit more. Even Republicans like Alan Greenspan were comfortable with some of that. They didn’t much care for the minimum wage, but they understood how this kind of economics works.
But, the argument about the Great Depression is really more related to what we have today. With tremendous wealth disparity you can say it’s immoral, but another problem is that when the disparity leaves the 99% with insufficient money for a strong growing economy, then it’s dysfunctional. And, when the wealth of the nation becomes stagnant in the pockets of the 1% it becomes almost worthless — causing a stock market crash.
When Bernanke joked about the Fed causing the Great Depression he was really saying that cutting off the money supply really would kill the real economy. We saw that, in a sense, when the toxic assets (bad mortgages mostly) kept banks from lending. No credit, no economy … crash.
Today it’s just the long slow draining of the pockets of the 99%, so the 1% can live like kings and turn us all into slaves. It’s still immoral, dysfunctional and unsustainable.
America has reacted to some extent to get our economy going again (a la 2000), but Europe has to act too. Beyond that it’s a hard slog to convince people we have greater systemic problems. Clinton didn’t make a big effort to fix it and Bush didn’t seem to care. Obama has had to make an even longer trek than Clinton to get us back to survivability.
It’s a long long way to Tipperary.
Wow you are a piece of SHIT aren’t you.. Who is paying you to spew your BS.. Is it the Koch (pronounced COCK) brothers who’s Billions was earned by their progenitor from STALIN.. And we all know that Stalin got all of his money by spilling other people’s blood.. Just like Great great grand Pappy Prescott Bush who plotted with others to overthrow FDR. But it was a brave American General who blew the whistle on those TRAITORS..
You don’t expect any policies coming from the powers that be to turn the economy on main street around… do you? Hello no!
We are heading off the cliff or a massive train wreck and it’s only a matter of time.
An economy is healthy when people have decent paying jobs. Capital is not interested in 0% unemployment because they use this labor surplus to exploit more profits
Capitalism simply does not cut it the way it’s been played… that is for the 99.99% of the people.
I would add to your post that the federal government can not become insolvent in anything denominated in dollars. We print our own money after all. Oh and the feds can buy anything, anywhere priced in dollars. So deficits are meaningless (unless we were at full capacity.)
The Federal Reserve Bank is, strictly speaking, a public bank. It’s governor’s are appointed by the government and the profits it makes, after costs, are put back into the treasury. The real problem with the fed it is secrecy and unaccountable and undemocratic character.
Dude ! Two words … Margaret.Thatcher … and her spawn, David.Cameron
The fed is a creature of congress or so I have been told.
Check out what Doug Henwood writes about the Fed here:
http://www.wallstreetthebook.com/WallStreet.pdf
The problem is the undemocratic and secret character of the bank. It is not some Jewish banker conspiracy. With your name being occupygaza I even wonder if you are trolling.
The English Ruling Class are know for their predilection to violence, not their acumen.
The Great Depression began with overproduction in agriculture in the early 20′s, spread to overproduction in manufacturing by the mid twenties (check out falling real prices for consumer durables in this period), and then hit finance and real estate in late 1920s. The rate of profit fell as more capital sunk into lumpy fixed investment in plant, machinery, the built environment etc. and wages and compensation were insufficient to keep up with the new productivity associated with internal combustion, electric motor etc. Finance is tertiary to production.
Why? Explain please.
Krugman is anti-austerity … unless you give him enough bling to preach otherwise:
http://www.portugaldailyview.com/whats-new/krugman-nobel-prize-economist-in-line-with-portugals-government
Z
Synoia !
How goes it, my friend ?
Quoted from the article I linked to:
“According to the newspaper, the Portuguese opposition was displeased with Krugman’s comments on the Portuguese government’s austerity drive. The US economist said publicly that he “would do nothing differently from the Portuguese government“. Krugman revealed, however, he was very critical of the austerity measures imposed not only in Portugal, but in most of the European countries as well.”
Talking about speaking from both sides of your month: Krugman thinks the Portuguese government did the right thing in administering austerity to its citizens, but he’s also against austerity measures being imposed on Portugal and in most other European countries as well.
Z
SadlyyesIwouldlovetobeyourslaveforever.yevich !
I would be much surpirsed if he were an advocate for austerity anywhere during a recession. Maybe he meant something else. He has been a pretty steady voice for spending here to break the recession. He is known as a Keynesian.
There is a difference between (a) a country sovereign in its own currency imposing austerity on a country that is not sovereign in its own currency and (b) the latter taking steps necessary to comply with the demands of the former.
He is against the former and allows for the possibility that there may be no choice in the case of the latter.
Why should you be surprised, he’s an intellectually dishonest hypocrite … which I suppose which makes him the perfect modern day “liberal” democrat.
This is a guy that told us what a wonderful job his former mentor Bernanke did during the crisis printing up money until wall street stopped making him say uncle; a guy that backed Jonathan Gruber’s practice of promoting the health care bill without informing readers that he was getting paid a large amount of money for his research on that bill; and a guy that provides innocent reasons as to why the vast majority of his wonderful profession almost always “misdiagnose” the economy (see: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong).
Z
If the stimulus in 2009 was larger, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The amount of stimulus was just enough to stop a full blown depression.
The problem now is that the political establishment has been taken over by the “austerity” wing (both democrats and republicans) and won’t take the steps to end this ordeal. The wealthy and especially the uber wealthy may see a drop in their bank accounts, but they never see a lowering of their standard of living.
The problem with using monetary policy exclusively is that the money being pumped into the banksters pockets are staying in the banksters pockets. It’s called the velocity of money. Money pumped in though low interest rates and quantitative easing, has almost zero velocity, there fore it doesn’t create any demand, therefore no one hires. The only time a company hires people is when they don’t have enough labor to satisfy demand for their product.
Remember every trillion dollars pumped into the banksters pockets is about $3,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Just think how much more demand we would have in this country if that money went into the pockets of someone who would either spend it or actually pay down individual debt, and feel comfortable taking on some debt again to buy something.
For those folks who claim the stimulus of 2008 didn’t work, just look at the GDP numbers over the past 4 years. GDP went up as the money worked it’s way into the economy, and as the stimulus money wound down, the GDP numbers winding down. It’s not a coincidence. It’s real and it’s a fact.
Portugal is in a recession.
Z
Bad guy I spose, but he is right on the economics here.
So is California. It is not sovereign in its own currency and must legally balance it’s budget. So it has to impose austerity. The U.S. government does not have to impose austerity.
That is the point Krugman is trying to make about Portugal vs. the EU. The imposition of austerity on Portugal is misguided. In the short run, Portugal may have no choice — short of leaving the Euro — but to comply.
You are right about monetary actions having little impact on the economy. We need fiscal stimulus (what Krugman wants). But the chances of getting that through congress are next to zero. After all do you think the republicans would want to help improve the economy just when they are about to win it all?
I’m not saying that he’s always wrong … he’s right about a lot of things too, but he’s intellectually dishonest IMO. He’s got loyalties to institutions, his profession, his standing in that profession, and some of the people that he rubbed elbows with as he ascended in his career that are more important to him than the truth.
Z
I choose to think he has blind spots, sort of like Ben and the rest of us. But he is right about what is the problem now. And his ideas would help us. (not perfect but good.)
I guess I’m talking to myself here. LOLOL
Thank God for Krugman!!!
We are all about to find out what happens when there is no FDR to save the USA
The USA GOVT has better start spending vast sums of money fast!
If not there will be no future for the current group of Americans forget future generations
Police all over the USA know we are dealing with a ticking time bomb! that can go off at any time!
“the USA has millions of young males walking around with no hope, no fear, and they don’t really give a damn about your life or my life.”
“we can’t build enough prisons to lock them all up, or employ enough cops to keep them under control”
most people who live in USA cities don’t have to go to Iraq to see a War Zone, they just need to go a couple of miles, and yes this War zone is getting bigger and bigger.
most of us think, the cops are going to keep us safe, and the masses of poor people are going enjoy their lives of poverty? really
the cost of paying cops is going drive taxes thru the roof in the USA
prisons are not free either!
if you think this is the way to go, please go buy more guns and bullets you are going to need them.
by the way these new criminals are going to be white, black, latino, asian, male, female, they are going to be very organized, because they know how to use twitter, instagram, facebook, etc. to plan crimes.
the good news is the rich will be richer, however they want be able to leave their gated communities surrounded by armed guards, their communities will look like prison communities. for LOL
ride around with a city cop, for a day, you may find your self loving Govt. Spending
rural communities all over the USA are dying, and they will be hell holes to
either way your taxes are going up! BIG TIME
in the world of MAD MAX security will be very expensive.
I’ve been following you. But you’r right. Not a lot of action here.
How long will people live in poverty and no hope before they rebel? That seems to be your question.
You make some good points and you’re right: it is obviously different when you have the ability to issue your own currency than when that is out of your control. And I agree that Krugman is probably saying that Portugal basically has no choice right now … though I don’t agree with that … but he doesn’t support the decision by the EU to try to impose austerity on the European countries.
It’s not necessarily a choice between imposing austerity and not balancing your budget though. You can raise taxes too to balance the budget obviously, though in California’s situation that is very difficult to do.
Z
No, I heard you …
Z
To my mind, what gives the conservative, pro-private sector position away–as articulated in the video by the two British talking heads–as thoroughly ideological is how it must be followed in all circumstances. When the economy is booming we hear how it is the result of private, not public, efforts and how the private sector deserves all its profits. When the economy is just plugging along the virtues and necessary backing of privatization is roundly applauded. And when the economy is in the tank, what do we hear but more about how the private sector needs all the available cash and is the only solution to getting out of the slump. When what you want to see happen applies without question or hindrance in all situations, you are likely dealing with an ideological, not practical or rational, agenda.
“What they seem unable to grasp”–or more likely know quite well but pretend otherwise–is that austerity and diminishing government in favor of the private sector is all about the movement of wealth upward. It was good of Krugman to point out this elephant in the room. As long as venture capitalists, CEOs, investment bankers and other members of the owning class think they are safe, immune, and will be wealthy in perpetuity, then they will continue to rob from society and put as little back as they can get away with.
Great.
Sic transit gloria Mateus Rosé
x2
Hell of a hockey game on.
not long!
highly educated young people with no hope, no future, are going to be very impatient, they are not going to accept poverty very well
“yes the USA has millions of college educated kids walking around confuse, looking for the dream that is now a nightmare”
ask them, how long they plan on looking at the rich get richer why they get poorer, just ask them
I am surprised that OWS has not taken on more of a presense. Heavens knows there really is a 99% and 1% out there.
There is a hugely important controversy between Krugman and MMT that is relevant here but needs another post.
Yes, that is something I choose to ignore since Krugman is in the right ballpark.
it is coming!
you can tell the Elites fear the OWS, look at the number cops they use and other resources they use to monitor it.
OWS is going evolve into something much more potent, these young people are very creative
remember they did not call themselves Occupy DC, they know who their enemies are
I think we are about to view the 60s, 21st century style
these young people are pissed!
Can’t be soon enough. Imagine what would happen if some of the police “kinda” changed sides?
I’m afraid this whole OWS and unemployment will get violent. People will simply not stand for it forever.
Krugman’s been wrong before and is like anyone and everyone else breathing is still wrong about any number of things but here he is absolutely empirically correct in the basic thrust of his argument against austerity. The fact that no cogent refutation of that basic argument on that score in these comments- all the criticisms here are either well off that particular point or just logically vacuous ad homs. Read through the comments above.
Austerity during an economic down period is counterproductive from any direction one looks. Whatever else he is wrong about, he is right on that.
Oh, and I was disillusioned as well when I discovered that British people who I’d come to think of through lit and popular culture as clever and intellectual compared to us seppos are in fact pretty much fully as stupid as we are.
He’s an advocate of Obama and Obama is an advocate of austerity… Catfood Commission, anyone?
It’s the Krugman partisan paradox: how do be accurate in his assessments and remain a Democrat and shill for a president who won’t do what Krugman knows needs to be done
Krugman has never advocated austerity that I am aware of, not in this recession. He may like Obama but then lots of people do and that doesn’t make him evil. He knows that, at least for now, there is nothing else out there.
Here’s the nut for me. I may exaggerate this a little but not by much. We have now had unemployment of around 25 million (U6) for the past four years. If that is not a depression, it has got to be close. Our leaders, of both parties, have no answer. They talk jobs but none appear. Corporations have trillions in cash. Maybe, just maybe, this thing we call capitalism works just fine for the Dimons of this world, but it evidently does not work for the average person. OWS.
I hope it does not get violent
however, the current leadership in DC, thinks this is some type of game and it is not.
to many americans who done it the right way have loss everything
they work hard, studied hard, went to church weekly, stayed out of trouble, and they still loss everything. not good
we all need to remember the USA is still a very, very, young nation.
we still are a very young nation, and we all need to grow up.
I agree.
I’m not a Krugman fan ,but he was very impressive here ,in fact ,I would say he kicked ass .On the flip side ,this is proof that he chokes his punches when here for fear of criticizing Obama’s austerity zeal .
It’s like an adult talking to the mentally unstable. It only takes one liberal economist against these leviathans to make them look as vapid as they are. Here’s a question for the intellecutally challenged to answer; with all this “confidence fairy” talk and cutting spending, lowering tax talk, How does that square with the fact that businesses are sitting on $2 trillion of cash, and the Bush tax cuts have been in place since 2001 and 2003, and yet, WHERE ARE THE DAMNED JOBS! Yet these insipid little fools get on tv and spout their non-realtiy, non-fact based ideology and fools around the world buy it, lock, stock, and barrell. When is the damned media going to do their damned jobs and call these liars out for who they are. Oh! I forgot, they work for the conservative ownership of the media! Well, good luck with the truth getting out! The real problem lies in the fact we have an anti-intellectual public, who refuse to think for a living, and let the benefactors of Citizens United sell them snakeoil and they buy it unquestioningly. In other words, the American public are active participants in their own demise!
“Let’s see the Krudman go up against a welterweight socialist.”
Who? Here in the US? We got one of those? Names, man, we need names. :)
Clueless twits. Let them eat cake.
The aristocracy is still in place. We never finished the revolution.
Perhaps they’ll actually occupy Wall Street. Hopefully they will get pissed enough to shut down the stock market.
Calling out the cops doesn’t necessarily indicate fear. If I don’t want gophers wrecking my golf course, I call out an exterminator, but not because I’m afraid. I suspect fear will not be part of the equation until “the Elites” are personally affected.
“Austerity during an economic down period is counterproductive from any direction one looks.”
Does that include the direction from which the 1% looks?
Hi everyone.
I just now noticed that this somewhat whimsical post from last night got front-paged. Thanks for the comments.
I have my differences with Krugman but consider him to the the sanest economics commentator that it read regularly by the reading public. And, in the video above, he’s dead on.
My concern with his positions is his (very conventional) claim that that borrowing money is less inflation inducing that printing or minting it. The MMT folks have issued some very cogent counter-arguments, e.g., that anyone can pawn their bonds at a bank and get freshly issued bank money, which is operationally equivalent to and just as inflationary as money freshly issued (printed or minted) by the Treasury. I’ve not seen Krugman respond to that.
Seems like the skewed wealth distribution should be in there somewhere. But I guess that’s why the government should not cut spending at this time. To put more money in the hands of the people. Funny how they forget that as soon as the economy improves a little.
I’m not sure where we’ll hang the economists? Probably between the bankers and the venture capitalists, after the politicians, of course.
WPA
Problem is… our entire Corrupt Democratic and Republican government wants austerity.
Of course it will be the 99% who pay for that austerity… because our entire Corrupt Democratic and Republican government is shoveling money to the 1%.
How about all together… facing each other.
We’d have to cut down too many trees. Maybe we can recycle plastics for the gallows.
It’s an unsustainable system. Not only is it predicated on the extraction of something for nothing (extra profit and its maximization), but also it insists that that something extra must grow in perpetuity in a finite environment. And to be fair, at the start this seems like a reasonable proposition.
At the very best, Capitalism means that the few prosper at the expense of the many. In this respect, it is inherently sociopathic. And regulated capitalism (an oxymoron, really, like reciprocal altruism) only delays or temporarily softens the effects and evens out the boom-bust cycle. It has never been otherwise but only appeared that way by ignoring those on the exploited end of the stick.
Most (all?) of the economists we see on the TV are talking about a perpetual motion machine and how to keep it spinning: “C’mon, folks! You just need the right kind of eyes and Faith–the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, you know.” It’s the kind of magical thinking that suggests that if we just believe hard enough and clap our hands . . .
Exactly…
You know more about the real world and economics than all 3 of those bufoons put together.
Here’s a knife. Now would you rather I cut you or you cut yourself?
No other suggestions Herr Krudman?
Hwy, you’re a lot of fun, comrade. Is it always so easy to send you into a raging mania?
Vivek Chibber. The Krudman won’t take the fight.
A Nobel ain’t what it used to be, honey. A Nobel in economics never was.
Two words. Wealth Redistribution.
When the bleeding heart bullshit artist walks that road, then he’s on the path to truth.
“The problem now is that” even capitalists don’t believe in capitalism.
Yeah, I think that your interpretation is right. I didn’t understand the article clearly when I first read it. I was too anxious to criticize Krugman becoz I get tired of hearing him portrayed as some sort of liberal economist hero or something. But anyway, you’re right … I didn’t understand the nuance of what he was saying. I didn’t take the time to. I jumped to conclusions.
Z
Not to forget (Bill) Clintonesque Tony Blair.
Sure, but deflation due to another global slowdown is a greater threat under these conditions.
It softens up the ground for attack, if you don’t have enough factual ammo to do the job. A very widely used tactic in this blog. Pretty sad, isn’t it?
Logic has a liberal bias.
“A very widely used tactic in this blog.” Is that a fact.
Did you even read what you linked? Do you have any reading comprehension?
Rationality is a liberal disease.
Krugman has made the argument that austerity is NOT always the wrong thing to do. There is a time for everything. The time for austerity is during an economic boom, not during a slump.
God spare us the Krudman logic.
This “paid to preach” crap is the lie that conservatives tell when they have no facts to rebut what is being said. Thus, climate scientists, not the phony “skeptics” on the oil companies’ payroll, are paid by “Big Science” to promote a hoax in order to get research funding. Yeah, right.
How does spending get us out of the hole of a depression? Well, when there is such a great collapse of demand that lowering interest rates to zero or near zero does not stimulate economic activity, then the government must “prime the pump” of the economy by spending. This is basic economics.
That you apparently can’t comprehend. That’s your fault.
It’s pretty simple really. Increased supply devalues whatever it is that there is now more of. Increase the amount of dollars out there, i.e. print more money, and the value of the dollar goes down; it takes more of dollars to buy something.
Now that’s not always a bad thing. Inflation works wonders for those of us who owe money on homes, cars etc. Unfortunately, those who lent that money, i.e. the well off (and recently bailed out), prefer to protect the value of their accounts receivables. And these well off fund our political campaigns. Hence austerity.
There are archives. Do your own homework. I don’t care enough about it.
A “fact” you don’t care to support?
Classic.
Can’t read between the lines, can you comrade?
WADR, it’s not really that simple, is it?
If the government prints a billion dollars and pays a million idle workers a thousand each to make widgets of various sorts, then you’ve both increased the *supply* of widgets, and the *demand* for widgets, as those workers both produce and consume more.
That’s Keynesianism.
The government may of course overshoot and just displace already employed workers, and *then* you’d get inflation, but that would – at this point – be just a felicitous by-product of the whole operation. Because inflation is little more than a redistribution from lenders to borrowers.
Thanks for the reference.
Ooops. That’s the direction from which it makes perfect sense.
Certainly Keynesian stimulus would reduce the economic suffering somewhat but let’s consider the fact that the government we’re expecting to “prime the pump” is the same government that has demonstrated repeatedly a remarkable ability to funnel working & middle class money into the hands of economic royalists. Just as we saw with the ARRA, is it not extremely likely that any future stimulus would direct much of the spending toward the same connected companies that always get taxpayer money? Or upstarts with ties to politicians? Unless we have some modern-day equivalent to the Works Progress Administration in place, what’s the point? We’d be enriching the same business entities that have profited handsomely throughout the recession and doing little to guarantee a significant boost in employment- and just because they publicly call for austerity does not mean they would not accept government money! Why should private companies figure at all into the solution when the trend of the day is to increase automation, force worker productivity upward and cut the workforce even as profits rise?
Of course all this ignores that capitalism- and any system which accepts its basic tenets- encourages the monopolization and devouring of natural resources as well as the destruction of the natural environment. I don’t feel like the supposed transition to an “information economy” does anything to help matters, either! Any system which relies on unending economic expansion just for ordinary people to maintain a decent standard of living is preposterous and will inevitably fail.
Let’s not also forget that the increasing wages and steadily improving standard of living that America saw from the end of the 19th century to about the 1970s was quite an anomaly in the history of capitalism. Typically, the people have only been spared the worst consequences of capitalism’s excesses when the risk of socialist revolution was highest. That really ought to say something about how well it serves the interests of the average citizen!
MMT seems to be the control fraudster’s new religion.
Um, your moniker has been bothering me for some time now. Is it possible that you don’t recognize the message?
That’s not Keynesianism. Keynesianism does not replace crapitalism, it only covers it’s ass.
Inflation is lot more than a redistribution from lenders to borrowers. It’s could be a crisis for capitalists or a means to hoodwink proles.
Don’t sacrifice one simplicity for a more foolish one.
Sure, hyperinflation is good for no one. I was talking about inflation rising to 3 or 4%. Not 1000%.
And one might also admit that, for the first six to eight months, the *real* value of wages falls before catching up again, because we don’t renegotiate our wages that fast. But the *real* value of household debt equally falls, and falls faster, and falls for longer.
But, whatever. Do your thing, dude. Viva la revolucion! socialize the profits!
Yeah, or it could be a means to weed out less “productive” capitalists for more “productive” ones like … ugh, financiers.
Hey, are you sarcastic too? But what about the name, comrade?
I know. I hate it when something oppressive makes sense from that angle. :)
Can’t do anything about my name. But feel free to diss-Obey.
;0)
Srsly, it’s been my online moniker for years now. So, hard to change it. And this is the first time people have been bothered by it…
(fwiw, it’s pronounced O-BEE)
Rest assured, Obey wan Kenobey, the force is with me.
“Because inflation is little more than a redistribution from lenders to borrowers.”
You dont know what you’re talking about.
Wow, what a sharp-witted and illuminating come-back!
It sounds an awful lot like a guy that is trying to draw a tightrope through a position that keeps the folks that just gave him a prize happy and also adheres to what he has been preaching about austerity. He sounds like a politician and judging by some of the intellectually dishonest shit that I’ve seen him write in the past, I don’t place it past him whatsoever to be purposely drawing that line. In fact, I believe he did.
First he keeps the guys that give him the bling happy by saying that they had no choice in going with austerity. Then he keeps the anti-austerians happy by saying that the eu shouldn’t have imposed austerity on Portugal. And then finally he says that if the eu tries to force feed Portugal more austerity, they ought to resist. How are they supposed to resist if they had no choice last time? Although they ultimately were unable to resist this time according to Krugman, somehow next time they’ll be in such great shape that they’ll be able to tell the eu to fuck off? What alternatives will be available to them next time that weren’t available this time when he claims that they had no choice?
My mistake was in quickly reading the piece and coming to the conclusion that Krugman’s babble was definitively bullshit becoz there is a fine line that can be drawn between his statement and still be logically consistent: that they had to go austerity last time, but next time the conditions will change such that they won’t have to.
Z
Indeed. That insightful observation backed by irrefutable facts sure shot you down.
The math is clear, debtors win in any realistic inflation scenario and holders of debt and accumulated wealth lose.