Seriously? Part Dieux

Thursday 1 July 2010 - Filed under Economy + Journalism + Stimulus

Just when I thought that Paul Krugman couldn’t be any more full of shit, he proves me wrong time and again.  From a recent Opinion column in The New York Times:

Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending. (emphasis added)

Seriously, Mr. Krugman?  We are now officially over 13 trillion fucking dollars in debt (that is 13 with 12 zeroes at the end which looks like $13,000,000,000,000), and the government has not yet spent enough money?  How you cease to be fired is a complete fucking mystery.¹

Krugman oft cites FDR’s New Deal policies as being the savior of America from the eeeeeeeeeeeeevils of the free market, but even the academy doesn’t buy that shit anymore.  In 2004, 2 UCLA economists completed an in-depth study as to why the Great Depression lasted so long.  Their findings?

After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

And even more poignantly to our current woes:

Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump . . . We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.

[. . .]

The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes.  Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.

So a major study detailing exactly how FDR’s “stimulus” policies were not only a failure at bringing about the end of the depression, but actually lengthened it by nearly 100% doesn’t sway the likes of Krugman who keeps on insisting that stimulus by the trillions is what is needed, even when the fucking Euros have abandoned those high spending policies in favor of “fiscal austerity“.

Seriously, Krugman.  You are an asshole.

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1.  That’s right: you work for The New York Times, likely the only rag in the nation that would actually pay you to write the shit you write.

2010-07-01  »  madlibertarianguy