Wednesday, May 23, 2012

In Review: Paul Krugman's New Book

My review of Paul Krugman's book, End This Depression Now!,  is up at the San Francisco Review of Books.

15 comments:

  1. I have a friend. He loves Krugman. He spouts the same crap to me with extreme condescension. (But I still like the guy).

    But the baby-sitting thing is a huge smoking gun! You have demolished the whole Keynesian (at least Krugman's version) "theory"!

    He won't consider it.

    As someone said in another blog today: "There are none so blind as those who will not see".

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  2. "In the real economy, products don't disappear during a downturn, what happens is that prices fall."

    In the real world, prices (notably wages) are sticky.

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    1. Yeah, that's why people get laid off!!

      THEN the wages fall.

      Oh, and try explaining sticky prices to some poor shlump whose house is underwater!

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    2. Funny, you cite "the real world" and then give a perfect competition model, Keynesian critical quip.

      Try again.

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    3. In the real economy products do disappear during a downturn. Factories stop making them.

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  3. Thanks for reading the Krugman paperweight so I don't have to.

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  4. "Who knew, Austrians scare zombies?"

    I think Tom Woods might have had a clue....

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrcM5exDxcc

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  5. Rob when you going to write a book that correlates money supply numbers and buisness cycles. A praticle book that can be used. Be a good one.

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    1. Milton Friedman already wrote one. It's called A Monetary History of the United States.

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    2. I'm still waiting for that IP book.

      Don't know whether to thank you or feel sorry for you for your efforts, RW.

      " Invariably there would be questions about whether that meant we were on the verge of another Great Depression---and I would declare that this wasn't necessarily so, that there was no reason extreme inequality would necessarily cause economic disaster."

      Ah, the ol' Porgy and Bess response. Another relic from the G. Depression. At least you can hum it.

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  6. Of course Austrians scare Krugman and all "progressives". Their avoidance of our arguments and their refusal to engage our ideas say everything about their self-confidence in their own "beliefs".

    We're the tough kids and they know they had better avoid the high school hallway where we hang out. So they avoid us. We've won and they know we've won.

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    1. The irony of economic Progressivism is that it results in many of the things that Progressives claim to hate. Its also kind of ironic how the left has latched onto Keynes, who held great disdain for working people and certainly couldn't care less about the pursuit of social justice.

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    2. I know Krugman loves to reference the 1950s as a period when the US had everything right in his mind, so I assume there must be some of that in this book. If so, how does Krugman explain away the fact that we were on a gold standard in the 50s and more importantly, floating exchange rates didn't exist? Certainly if the gold standard were detrimental to an economy as Krugman has stated on numerous occasions, he needs to explain why it didn't impede the post WW2 recovery. He also needs to explain why he ignores it in his idiotic correlation proves causation arguments when he calls for very high income taxes to regain this 50s prosperity.

      Furthermore, how do Keynsians get around the fact that when Keynes wrote the GT, most of the world was on a hard money standard and exchange rates were fixed? I am not even sure Keynes would be a Keynsian if you told him that world was on a floating exchange rate system. The first thing that would come to his mind would be that those stimulus dollars will flee your economy as soon as they are gotten.

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  7. What's the Schiff quote in the book? What does Krugman say about Ron Paul? Anyone know?

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  8. Don't you love the way hypocritical intellectual frauds like Krugman whine about the dangers of "extreme income inequality" without a trace of guilt even though they themselves represent the 1%. Mark Skousen recently wrote about how he got Krugman to agree to debate Steven Moore at Freedomfest 2012 but Krugman later weasled out by demanding an exhorbitant six figure speaking fee. More proof that Krugman is an intellectual coward and a money grubbing greedbag. Paul Krugman is the greatest waste of brain power in the history of economic science.

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