Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong are going Gulf sturgeon crazy into the New Year over Murphy losing the bet.
DeLong calls out Murphy on losing the bet and continues:
The most terrifying thing of all is that being completely, comprehensively, unmistakably, fundamentally, fatally, totally wrong has not led Robert Murphy to rethink or modify any of his analytical positions or ideological beliefs by even one iota.
I mean, one would expect an announcement on his weblog like: "I have been totally wrong, about everything. I am closing down this weblog for five years to avoid misleading readers while I intellectually retool. You will find me sitting at the feet of Paul Krguman, chanting 'om mani padme hum' until I achieve enlightenment."Let me get this straight, DeLong expects an economist to shutdown his web site for an incorrect forecast. Maybe DeLong should show us how this is done, at Project Syndicate, in June, he wrote:
I – have gotten significant components of the last four years wrong. Three things surprised me (and still do). The first is the failure of central banks to adopt a rule like nominal GDP targeting or its equivalent. Second, I expected wage inflation in the North Atlantic to fall even farther than it has – toward, even if not to, zero. Finally, the yield curve did not steepen sharply for the United States: federal funds rates at zero I expected, but 30-Year US Treasury bonds at a nominal rate of 2.7% I did not.Compared to DeLong, Murphy looks like the haruspex Spurinna.
But, let's move on to Krugman, he goes beyond DeLong's cheapshot and acts just plain stupid. He writes:
Has there been anything comparable on the Austrian/Austerian side?Why would any economist who knows anything about Austrian economics and bankster austerity programs link the two? Austrian economists have never supported any plan to suck dry the masses via taxation to payoff banksters holding government debt, which is what austerity programs are all about. As the leading Austrian economist, Murray Rothbard, put it:
I propose, then, a seemingly drastic but actually far less destructive way of paying off the public debt at a single blow: outright debt repudiation.This is the exact opposite of austerity programs, which are designed to prop up sovereign debt and insure the banksters are paid. In other words, Krugman isn't getting a forecast wrong here, he is getting FACTS totally wrong.
As for Murphy's forecast, I have discussed before, in an important post, why exact timing in economics is very difficult.
That Krugman and DeLong jump on Murphy over a forecast suggests they have problems attacking Austrian theory. But they are lurking around Austrian blog sites, anyway, to jump high when they can spot something to blabber about. Indeed, it looks like Krugman and Delong are trying to mimic the high jumps of the sucker-mouthed, plate-covered Gulf sturgeon of the Suwannee River--a species headed for extinction.
