Tag: krugman

On This Week, the usually very precise Paul Krugman fell down the huge bottomless linguistic pit created by Bill Clinton and the DLC.

Krugman bemoaned the lack of any progressive economists in the Obama administration while being lectured by the like of Peggy Noonan on antediluvian economics.

Progressives have most distinguished themselves from the usual run of coastal liberals by being isolationist, insular, often tainted with more or less aggressive chauvinism.  

The last clear progressive “economist” I ever read was the fire-breathing The Nation columnist, Alexander Cockburn.

Cockburn styled himself a socialist while directing much of his fire at his fellow alternating lead The Nation columnist, Christopher Hitchens, who was a liberal and/or socialist.  Cockburn’s somewhat bizarre economics, rarely on display, was oddly reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson’s isolationist economics and even had a hint of Jefferson’s rabid racism.

Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower were both regular contributors to The Progressive.  The Progressive is a Madison, Wi, publication that traces its beginnings to Bob LaFollete and hews closely to LaFollete’s ideas without some of the ugliness.  Progressivism began with Teddy Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party and has a history of wild warriors against conservatives of any breed.

Most notable in my view was Huey Long.  

“If you can’t take their money, drink their liquor, eat their food, screw their women and then look them in the eye and tell them you are against them, you’re not man enough to be in the Senate,” declared the Kingfish.  

No doubt Huey was first in line with his “Share Our Wealth” organization but he beat FDR bloody when FDR made draconian cuts to the pensions of veterans and their families.  FDR never forgot nor forgave, his hatred for Republicans was mild by comparison.

No way in hell was Krugman talking about the like of Huey Long.  Not terribly likely the two would ever see eye to eye.  Certainly Krugman would have known enough not to debate Huey Long while standing alongside Huey at a urinal.  A fellow senator did that in the Senate restroom and Huey simply turned sideways without saying a thing.  

Best,  Terry

Washington should stop fighting the “fiscal phantom” of the deficit and start worrying about the coming “austerity bomb,” warns Paul Krugman in his New York Times column.

http://www.moneynews.com/Stree…

This seems to me a rather odd place to find economic wisdom.  Rightwing rags, which I take this to be, are not notable for truthfulness in my experience.

Sure liberal websites are full of Krugman but they are also heavily contaminated with the atrocious nonsense about the need to cut the deficit in the midst of a depression.

How this translates into no need to worry about the fiscal cliff is beyond my simple mind.

Cutting to the quick:

The real danger, according to Krugman, is the “austerity bomb,” otherwise known as the fiscal cliff, the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled for next year.

A rose by any other name is a rose.  So is a skunk.

If anyone knows of a single elected politician, even an Alan Grayson, who warns we should increase, not lower, the current deficit, I would love to know his or her name and see evidence of this heresy from establishment religion.

I would expect such a man or woman would be quickly eliminated from Congress at the first opportunity voters have to do so.  That was the case with two formerly impregnable senators, Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening, who dared vote against the Vietnam War – the only two out of the whole damn Congress.  [I am talking of LBJ’s concocted Tonkin Gulf Resolution.  The Vietnam War had been going on a very long time.  Gruening was even eliminated by later peacenik hero, Mike Gravel, in a primary.]

True prophets have been known to lose their heads.

For what good?

Ummm, I dunno but I like such martyrs for my own twisted reasons I am unable to explain.  Perhaps it comes from being a Vietnam veteran before there was even a Vietnam War.

Best,  Terry

The New York Times op-ed by Paul Krugman Paralysis at the Fed needs a little parsing in terms of what’s really going on, so I thought I’d give it a try. Please excuse my non-status as an economics guru, the fact that I’ve never won a Nobel Prize, and my cynical tendencies. The real story’s out there, it just takes some digging. I’ve done some digging.