What's really behind the deficit hawkishness?
MY WORKING theory of the Obama administration's recent deficit tough talk has been that the powers that be believe any new, deficit-funded stimulative measure would be impossible to get through Congress without some nod toward reining in the growing debt. Paul Krugman seems [...]
Paul Krugman reads the tea leaves in what looks like the best piece of economic analysis I have read this month. When we do the things we do well, this is the kind of thing we do:
Interest rates: the phantom menace: From various bat squeaks I’ve put together [...]
Paul Krugman is right to be worried about the unintended consequences of the AIG bailout:
We’ve greatly increased the chance of a Japanese-style lost decade, with I would now give roughly even odds of happening. Why? Because bank-friendly policies have squandered public trust in all government action: try talking to [...]
It's about deals to be struck, not sabres rattled
PAUL KRUGMAN'S column today makes a point I brought up not long ago—that there's a real danger to the global trade system of having high American unemployment figures juxtaposed against headlines on China's trade surplus for months on end. That [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Columnist Paul Krugman writes that policies to promote “job sharing” are “worthy of consideration” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13).
Let’s start at the New York Times. I know several economists currently without jobs (and certainly without regular newspaper columns). [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
Paul Krugman is impressed that in Germany “unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13). Indeed, Krugman is so bedazzled by the results of Germany’s extensive labor-market interventions that he [...]
Commenting on this post, Daniel Kuehn suggests that when Paul Krugman advocates European-style labor-market restrictions and subsidies, he (Krugman) does so not as a means of increasing employment today – in the midst of a recession – but, rather, as a means of keeping employment from falling as [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
To combat unemployment, Paul Krugman supports “labor rules that discourage firing” (”Free to Lose,” Nov. 13). If a student in my Principles of Economics course ever wrote such a thing on an exam, he or she would earn [...]
Paul Krugman taunts the innumerate right some more:
Reagan mythbusting, productivity edition: Just to be clear: when I show that growth by every measure has been slower since 1980 than before, I’m not claiming that this shows that Reagan/finance caused the slowdown. The upper hand, in this case, is [...]
Probably it's just that I have been reading too much about Mussolini's Italy.
But reading Paul Krugman this morning on the Republican Party's "sorcerer's apprentice" act made me think that we are a lot closer to Weimar America than I ever thought I would be...
At this point there are only two [...]
Pretty please, can we have some inflation?
YESTERDAY, I linked to a Paul Krugman post in which he links to an old piece of analysis he wrote on the Japanese economy in 1998, in which he says:To preview the conclusions briefly: in a country with poor long-run growth prospects [...]
|Peter Boettke|
Paul Krugman provides his take on the Beckworth graph showing the collapse of nominal spending and relates it to his 1998 work on Japan. The upshot, monetary policy will not produce the desired effect in our current situation. Scott Sumner responds and continues to push his position [...]
A new WPA might not be the best unemployment fix
HERE is Paul Krugman:As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through [...]
Is the Fed really helpless?
PAUL KRUGMAN responds to discussion on the David Beckworth chart—tracking nominal spending—that I posted yesterday. He discusses a liquidity trap model he drew up in 1998, while thinking about the Japanese economy, and writes:In that model, prices are assumed sticky in the short run, [...]
Disaster averted, for now at least
THIS is courtesy of Paul Krugman:There are a number of indicators suggesting that the initial shocks to output were every bit as serious this time around as in the early years of the Depression, so what explains the difference in outcome? First off, [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent on Friday to the New York Times:
Writing about health-care, Paul Krugman asserts that “conservatives … don’t want Americans to have universal coverage” (”The Defining Moment,” Oct. 30).
Among the earliest lessons that I teach my freshman economics students are (1) intentions are not results, [...]
