Thursday, August 23, 2012

Krugman Konfusion (Paul Ryan Edition)

Paul Krugman writes:
Dave Weigel made a great catch the other day: he notes that Paul Ryan has said that his views on monetary policy are based on Francisco d’Anconia’s speech in Atlas Shrugged.

Aside from revealing just how much of a Rand fanboy Ryan is — urban legend, my foot — this is interesting because that 23 paragraph speech isn’t just a call for the gold standard; it’s a call for eliminating paper money and going back to gold coins.
The problem with this is that Krugman  (and Weigel) are working under the assumption that Ryan  understands the d'Anconia speech and that he is pushing to go in that direction. They are making the same mistake the gold-hater Joe Weisenthal made.

As I have pointed out, once you go back and look at what Ryan has actually said about monetary policy, it's clear Ryan's a Fed man all the way. Krugman is just getting caught up in Ryan's razzle dazzle act.

One more point, though. If we take Krugman's point that Ryan does want a gold coin standard, Krugman makes one  objection to the gold coin standard this way:
And this means that Ryan wants to turn the clock back two centuries, not one.
But where does it say something used two centuries ago can not be good? I note that Krugman uses spaces between words. This started about 800 years ago. Does this mean we should throw Krugman columns in the trash because he is using a writing technique from that far back? There are many good reasons for throwing Krugman columns in the trash, chiefly the spaces in his logic, but not because he uses a technique to space words first developed 8 centuries ago.





3 comments:

  1. Ijustdontgetit....

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  2. Its funny how Krugman in his recent book laments about how well things worked in the past when taxes were high and regulation was tight. One of the many things he ignores is that we were also on a gold standard. I guess its ok to live in the past when you pick and choose the things you like. Typical of central planning elites.

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  3. how is it that krugman gets praise yet his concepts dont work? the only job they seem to get done is to kick the can down the road.

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