Saturday, March 30, 2013

Krugman: Lincoln Was a Big Government Interventionist Who Debased the Currency

Paul Krugman occasionally speaks truth, when he is attacking Republicans. He did so in a recent post when discussing House Speaker John Boehner invoking Abraham Lincoln:
 Greg Sargent catches John Boehner invoking none other than Abraham Lincoln to inveigh against the deficit. This is pretty funny — in multiple ways.[...] Greg’s catch: Boehner truncated the quote, leaving out the part where Lincoln called for balancing the budget by raising taxes. And also the point that Lincoln was actually a big government interventionist for his time, a strong advocate of what we would now call industrial policy. 
But wait: there’s more. Lincoln’s most dramatic departure from standard economic policy was … drumroll .. debasing the currency (pdf). Here’s the dollar price of gold:

2 comments:

  1. The intentional pdf link seems inactive?

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  2. The loathsome Chris Hayes is moving to 8:00 p.m. weekdays on MSNBC. He's becoming a Magic Money Tree type and today they reran his advocacy of the trillion dollar platinum coin. He brought up the wonders of Lincoln's greenback debasement at the 6:00 point of this video:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46979738/ns/msnbc-up_with_chris_hayes/vp/50441081/#50441081

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