Tuesday, July 10, 2012

A Mysterious and Beautiful Woman Confronts Paul Krugman about Inflation

It's clear from her question that she is very knowledgeable about economics, taxes, government, the importance of private property and the weaknesses of Keynesian economics. Krugman blows the encounter by arguing in favor of inflation.






28 comments:

  1. your embeds are still missing. Make it work with plug ins that give the user control over loading flash etc.

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  2. Wow. Smart, beautiful, and versed in Austrian economics? If she is a Boston Celtics fan I have found my future wife.

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    1. RW, please interview both Spanish economists and the female questioner.

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  3. Love how this idiot dances around the question. Then he turns it into a sob story for the lower 25% unemployed. Her question and the real answer directly affect the unemployed. Those who are watching their purchasing power dwindle with no way to fill up the reserve tanks. The amount they have in savings is just being worth less and less even if they don't touch it.

    And his comment that since a note is not worth anything in particular........You Keynesian Fuck Krugman!

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  4. Hmm...

    So if I walked up to Krugman and stole $20 of the $100 he had in his wallet it would be theft. He didn't expect that to happen.

    If the government prints so much money that his $100 only buys $80 worth of goods its not theft if he expects it?

    What if the wizards at the Fed over inflate? What if he expected a 10% decrease in his purchasing power but got 20%? Has only 10% of his money been stolen?


    Can I avoid being a thief by telling Krugman when and where I am going to take $20 from him?


    What a quack. Inflation is a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

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    1. You made some great points. Having said that, you forgot to mention another possibility. What if the Fed under inflates (not likely, but still possible)? What if you expected a 20% inflation, but you only get 10%? Do you now owe the government 10 bucks? Of can Krugman just walk up to you and steal it from your wallet? After all, you were expecting to lose it, but somehow you didn't. Is is now okay for him to just steal it? Can we get a ''Mysterious and Beautiful Woman: PART 2''?

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    2. >What if the Fed under inflates (not likely, but still possible)?

      Let's cut a deal where You pay me for inflation promulgated by the Fed, and I will pay you for any under inflation. Let's make it for a 10 year period.
      I fully expect a massively overstuffed wallet in a decade, and you?

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    3. Quack? How dare you! This man has a Nobel Prize! That's as solid a credential as my AAA-rated Lehman Bond!

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  5. Have we reached a tipping point where Krugman will be challenged in any forum now?

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  6. Was she an EPJ plant? Stunning choice, BTW.

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  7. Near the end of his response, Krugman says this is how the capitalist system is supposed to work. Bah humbug!

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  8. "Low interest rates, which promote spending on housing and other durable goods, are the main answer." - Paul Krugman (Oct-07-2001)

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  9. He's so shifty-eyed.

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  10. Krugman is just a fascinating character. Does he truly believe these things or is he a psychopath? We want to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that he is a true believer that keeps self-deluding himself and really wants the best for people. But those shifty eyes...

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  11. Krooogman is too creepy for me to watch, listen to, or read. But so are almost all politicians.

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  12. I wonder how he feels about counterfeiting? Does this guy even understand supply and demand? What a sociopath.

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  13. Does she represent a sizable minority in the audience? Why was Krugman there anyway much less the audience

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  14. A little inflation is not theft...

    If Jones takes a knife and cuts Smith, Krugman would say Jones is not killing Smith...see it's only a small cut and very little blood. Jones cuts Smith again...no worries says Krugman. A thousand small cuts later, Smith is dead on the floor and Krugman would probably say "if only Jones had cut deeper, Smith could have been saved!"

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  15. At least he admits that it takes money from people because it devalues the currency. Until now I've never seen him even admit that!

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    1. Give someone enough rope, he'll eventually hang himself with his own words.

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  16. Matt Damon and Paul Krugman should marry eachother. Krugman, whether he believes himself or not, will never admit he's wrong because his paychecks don't bounce. Yet he is an example of the kind of education that Matt Damon denounced (in the bar) in Good Will Hunting. Damon, having complete amnesia of one of his more successful roles, lobbies for the further looting of people to provide public "education."

    Excuse me for bringing up Damon. I am just so sick of moral monsters who are well-financed and hence, can buy what's necessary to build their own confidence in order to spread destructive lies that become more embraced as our situation gets worse. If we are losing the intellectual battle, it is not because we are inferior in reason, persuasion and evidence. People will not come to grips with how bad a state Western Civilization is in, because the medicine needed is very painful to swallow. What they also may not realize is that this medicine will be swallowed in the near future.

    So many people are fooled by others who can argue well, but do not have good "arguments." Krugman, an example of the worst getting on top, will simply declare victory even though he was destroyed by Pedro Schwarz. The acceptance of that victory depends upon how damaged reasoning ability/morality is among listeners. Subversion of thinking worldwide has resulted in millions of people being unable to see what is purely evident and right in front of them. This is why they will scream for more taxes on the rich; this is merely cooperating with our system of plunder, instead of cutting it out, root and branch.

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  17. She brilliantly Krugged the Krudman!

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  18. I looked up synonyms for the word “swiped”:

    abducted, captured, carried off, carved out, ensnared, gathered up, gotten hold of, hauled in, obtained, pulled in, seized, snagged, snatched, embezzled

    You get the picture.

    Krugman has now unambiguously admitted that purchasing power is being snatched away by the purposeful policy of inflation but that it’s not really “theft” because the snatching is done for an allegedly noble purpose. (This is all done, of course, without due process of law in any event by a bureaucratic agency). I transcribed the master’s words from the video.

    Beautiful Spanish Woman: Don’t you think inflation is theft?

    Evil Krugman: Inflation is only considered theft if you consider anything that people didn’t expect that affects people for the worse theft – I mean there is no promise – a Euro note does not promise on it that it’s gonna have a fixed purchasing power in terms of goods –that was not part of the deal. UUUUhhhhh, a bond, there are bonds where you are protected against inflation and there are inflation-protected bonds and people pay a premium for that. It’s not theft in any legal sense, and if you are worrying about people who are not responsible for the crisis paying the price for the crisis, how about the 25% of Spain’s labor force who are unemployed? How many of those people caused this crisis? What is actually happening is that an enormous price is being paid by unemployed workers all across the western world. If a little bit of inflation, no one is talking about Zimbabwe, no one is even talking about 5%, if 3% inflation is way to get some those innocent victims out of their misery, I would think that is something well worth doing. It seems to me a strange kind of morality that is desperately concerned that people who bought bonds might be somewhat surprised by a modest erosion of the value of those bonds, uhhh, that’s a terrible sin, but having people who did nothing wrong be unemployed and have their lives destroyed as it’s just part of the way the capitalist system is supposed to work.

    Does anyone else think it odd that Krugman never addresses the Austrian position* that the money dilution is what causes the unemployment in the first place so that the result of Krugman’s program is theft PLUS unemployment? No wonder Krugman won’t debate Bob Murphy.

    *Seeing that Krugman had just been smacked to the ground by the Austrian Pedro Schwartz

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  19. She is my daughter... Smart and humble. She did not say where she works. She speaks 6 languages. She is 24 years old.

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  20. A lot of armchair economists here. Perhaps you can also share your genius theories on the recent Higgs Boson discovery.

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    1. It's great that you think an appeal to authority fallacy is going to sway any EPJ regulars.

      I'm a professional statistician and have advanced degrees in statistics. Believe it or not, every so often I'll make a statistical error in my work, and when that happens, if someone catches it, it doesn't matter who is pointing out the error; even if they have less training than I do, I don't get to be right. Neither training, nor experience, nor recognition from peers is enough to make incorrect arguments correct.

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  21. A banker needed money and told his friend, hey, why don't you put your gold in my bank, and I'll give you this paper currency and you don't have to worry about getting robbed. I'll keep your gold safe.

    His friend said, "No way, you'll just steal my gold".

    Oh come one, "You can trust me, and I'll even pay you interest on your gold!".

    So the friend gave over his gold and got paper money from the banker, with 5% payment each year.

    Then one day there was inflation and the friend wanted his gold back and went to the banker, "Where's my gold?".

    "Sorry", said the banker, "All the gold is gone. I created more paper money than I had gold and all the other gold depositors got here first and took it all, and I'm broke now".

    "What? You've destroyed us both? Why????" yelled the friend.

    "It's my nature" said the banker.

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