Krugman?!

The Nobel Committee in Economics has gone dotty. Krugman did good, serious work on international trade ~ 25 years ago, but since has become a political hack. For example, he tried to make unemployment in Bush's first term look bad by applying a completely bizarre methodology to measuring it. When other eras' unemployment rates were measured using the same methodology, they were even worse. A truly appalling, intellectually dishonest clown.

Edit: The details on the unemployment matter:

"...liberals have lately taken to adjusting the household survey numbers so as to get the "true" unemployment rate. One technique is to add to the number of unemployed those working part time for economic reasons, temporary workers, and others marginally attached to the labor force. In November, these adjustments would have given us an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent instead of the official figure of 5.9 percent.

Princeton economist Paul Krugman claimed in a Dec. 30 New York Times column that the adjusted data "indicate the worst job market in 20 years." However, the BLS (i.e., the Bureau of Labor Statistics - C.) shows unemployment rates as high as 12.8 percent in the mid-1990s using the same methodology. Therefore, Krugman's claim is factually wrong."

- Bruce Bartlett, National Review Online

Media note:

Bloomberg: "Bush Critic Krugman's Nobel Another Blow to President's Legacy"

Oh, for...

When Krugman forgets to take his meds:

"America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here."

NYT column, March 29, 2005.

LOL!!!!!

Michael Moore with a PhD. And this guy is being held up as Nobel-worthy! The great thing is, now that he's gotten the Nobel he'll be under intense scrutiny. Embarrassing statements like this can't be forgotten anymore.

Michael Moore with a PhD

How dare you, Mr. Carnophile. I had coffee in my mouth.

Sorry, Cody.

But I can't take credit for the laffs: It's easy with material like that to work with.

The guys at Powerline share your assessment:

“Eventually, Krugman veered off into left-wing commentary (I've always wondered whether it was President Clinton's decision not to make him head of the Council of Economic Advisers that pushed Krugman in these directions -- punditry and hyper-leftism; he wrote somewhat bitterly about that snub at the time). The economic analysis Krugman serves up in his New York Times columns is often an embarrassment. Obviously, op-eds are not the best format for sophisticated analysis, but there is no excuse for Krugman's persistent fudging of data and inability to distinguish economc fact from partisan desire that Donald Luskin and others have chronicled over the years.”

Link here:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/10/021766.php

An embarrassment to the Nobel Committee. Speaking of coffee spews, there must have been a million of them when economists woke up this morning and opened up the paper.

You should have read the Austrio-sphere. Whew!

How come conservatives are the only ones posting in this thread?

No one's around to enforce the quota. Glad you woke up in time.

Technically, all those posting in this thread are liberals.

Codyed just blew our cover, Carnophile. Do I shoot him or do you?

Haha. I'm a progressive. Can't shoot me.

Damn, and all this time I was assuming you are all right wing neo-fascist thugs. Boy is MY face red!

If we do that, enevada, Krugman's claim about assassinations will appear to have been vindicated. So it's better to forbear. Let's just make him attend a re-education session. When he apologizes - and has to be a sincere apology, Cody - we'll readmit him to the fold.

At last, we will reveal ourselves to the liberals. At last, we will have revenge.

I saw a moose earlier this morning, a calf. It was standing in an undeveloped lot, eating the last vestiges of greenery on a snow covered landscape. I felt like that moose--lonely, unsure, etc.

The Swiss directive is pretty clear Cody. You were supposed to shoot the moose, in the name of all flora dignity.

Here, this fell out of your knap-sack:

http://www.ekah.admin.ch/fileadmin/ekah-dateien/dokumentation/publikationen/e-Br...

Here is a helpful piece by Paul Boettke in Forbes that distinguishes between Krugman the economist and his contribution on New Trade Theory, and Krugman the partisan pundit/hack:

The economist Paul Krugman used to warn his readers in afterthoughts and footnotes that we should never allow the best to be the enemy of the good, and that while his work has blown up the first-best theorems of equilibrium economics the core ideas of the classics should not be thrown away. But the political pundit Paul Krugman does not warn his readers about the pitfalls. Instead, he rails against the unworkable laissez faire model at the same time as blaming the current administration for pursuing a laissez faire philosophy. Markets and unscrupulous businessmen and conservative politicians come under assault, while enlightened political leaders and insightful thinkers working together are seen as the solution to the social ills that free market fundamentalism has supposedly wrought. This is why Krugman can claim to be the liberal conscience of the intellectual crowd in the U.S. today.

Link here:
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/10/13/krugman-nobel-economics-oped-cx_pb_101...

I disagree with Krugman about one thing, the government shouldn't be giving a plug nickel to the financial industry. I will resent until the day I die my tax dollars bailing out those jerk-offs who made this economic mess. Maybe the world NEEDS a credit crisis right now. Teach us a lesson. I should think all you Reaganomonists out there would be up in arms over the government bailouts. Where's the outrage?

Carny, you seem to have some understanding of economics. You wanna splain to me how pumping a $1,000,000,000,000 in borrowed credit into the financial system is going to ease the locked bowels of the credit crisis caused by too much credit?

There is, of course, the point that Krugman has been predicting just this mess in the hated NYT liberal press for at least three years. Maybe that's what has you so exercised about him. He saw it coming and the Reaganomonists didn't. Just like 9/11. No wonder Republicans hate government. It just reminds them of yet one more thing they don't know how to do. It just calls into question who was right, the Reaganomonists or the Keynseians.

Geneg, you protest too much. Give in and vote Republican...you know you want to.

I actually like this passage:
You wanna splain to me how pumping a $1,000,000,000,000 in borrowed credit into the financial system is going to ease the locked bowels of the credit crisis caused by too much credit?

although the digestive tract metaphor is rather...vivid.

But yes, there's definitely an addiction to the hair of the dog here. Bernanke's response - which does make sense in the short run, taken on its own terms - is that banks and other lenders are afraid to lend because they fear bad times a comin'. So they're trying to accummulate a lot of liquid assets, e.g., cash and other liquidity. They do not want to make, e.g., ten-year loans to businesses because a ten-year business loan note is not a liquid asset.

The idea is that if you supply them with enough liquidity they'll eventually say "Okay, we're liquidenough; let's start making loans again." This might work and it might not. Yesterday's stock market performance suggests some people think it will. For an example of a country in a very similar situation in which this kind of "monetary easing" has not really worked, see Japan, last ~ 15 years.

Regarding who predicted this, lots of libertarian Austrian neo-liberal free-market fundamentalists also did.

>22 Carnophile: There's nothing I trust more than a good fundamentalist...

IIRC, free-market fundamentalist is one derisive term euro-lefties use for those of us who think serfdom is a bad thing.

>24 Carnophile: Remind me again who fought for universal suffrage in Europe?

Oh... Yes... It was those bloody Euro-lefties..

First of all, you took my joking comment far too seriously. But since you raise the subject...

Trying to map the politics of like 150 years ago into today's left-right categories is just silly.

>19 enevada: - Here's a link to Peter Boettke's weblog, if you're interested. Him along with his co-conspirators make for some interesting reading, especially Peter Leeson, who has done great work on the economics of piracy.

This article investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation, minimize crew conflict, and maximize piratical profit. Pirates devised two institutions for this purpose. First, I analyze the system of piratical checks and balances crews used to constrain captain predation. Second, I examine how pirates used democratic constitutions to minimize conflict and create piratical law and order. Pirate governance created sufficient order and cooperation to make pirates one of the most sophisticated and successful criminal organizations in history.

(An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization)

Remind me again who fought for universal suffrage in Europe?

Wasn't there some guy who was famously quoted about trading one tyrant for millions? Something along those lines.

Oh, and I do know that left-leaning Greg Palast is no fan of Krugman either. So it's not like this is just about partisanship.