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Did "Big Government" save us?

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Rooster Posted: Mon, Aug 10 2009 2:37 PM

"So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/opinion/10krugman.html

Is Krugman right? (Just kidding, thought you'd enjoy)

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Ansury replied on Mon, Aug 10 2009 7:00 PM

LOL - I didn't realize that was a direct quote.  After I read that as Krugman's actual words, I couldn't get much farther.... ahaha.. oh... oh no... this will end badly.

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Yet one more reason why I say that Krugman isn't an economist; he is a political shill.

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Rooster:

"So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/opinion/10krugman.html

Is Krugman right? (Just kidding, thought you'd enjoy)

If there is a depression tomorrow...does that mean someone can put this up on Wikipedia? Stick out tongue

 

'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition

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Easily the funniest thing I have read since Dante's Inferno.

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Lilburne replied on Mon, Aug 10 2009 8:06 PM

Laughing Man:
If there is a depression tomorrow...does that mean someone can put this up on Wikipedia? Stick out tongue

No.  "JK", the mainstream-economics Wikipedia thought police sergeant would insist we were misinterpreting him somehow.

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Lilburne:
No.  "JK", the mainstream-economics Wikipedia thought police sergeant would insist we were misinterpreting him somehow.

It is almost Marxian in nature.

-Marx didn't mean value according to some price system, he meant it in abstract use value

-Krugman didn't mean the second depression won't happen according to some economic theory, he meant that a new age of happiness is evolving!

Stick out tongue

'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition

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This kind of makes me want to read some more Krugman stuff for the lolz, but I don't want to give the NYT any more ad revenue.

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Natalie replied on Mon, Aug 10 2009 8:51 PM

It would be funny except that it's not. Remember that NYT is the voice of gov/big corp propaganda with the strong leftist bend. If they say it's getting better and that it's not another Great Depression, it might quite possibly mean that the worst is still ahead... And maybe sooner than we expect.

If I hear not allowed much oftener; said Sam, I'm going to get angry.

J.R.R.Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

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The above article seems to be a rehash of this post a few weeks earlier.  I suppose the newer version is more populist, as it lacks a graph, unlike this bad boy:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/deficits-saved-the-world/

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Rooster replied on Mon, Aug 10 2009 11:04 PM

econ student:

The above article seems to be a rehash of this post a few weeks earlier.  I suppose the newer version is more populist, as it lacks a graph, unlike this bad boy:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/deficits-saved-the-world/

That reminds me, if you want some more laughs, read Brad DeLong's blog (yes I am a glutton for punishment), he likes to kiss Krugman's ass as often as possible.

In a recent post, he talked about different ways that fiscal policy can increase aggregate demand, he says,

"My standard references for these four ways of thinking about fiscal policy are Hicks (1937), Krugman (2009) (quoting Jan Hatzius: where is a longer version?), Keynes (1936), and Gertler (2009)"

Notice the Krugman reference is to that blog post from last month. Amazing that this post has already become a "standard reference"!

 

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Lilburne replied on Mon, Aug 10 2009 11:48 PM

Rooster:
Notice the Krugman reference is to that blog post from last month. Amazing that this post has already become a "standard reference"!

That's hilarious!  So DeLong treats as holy writ any assertion that dribbles down Krugman's scraggly beard.

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McDuffie replied on Tue, Aug 11 2009 4:44 AM

Taras Smereka:

Easily the funniest thing I have read since Dante's Inferno.

It's the funniest thing I have tried to read since I tried to read Dante's Inferno. Blech.

Read my Nolan Chart column "Me & My Big Mouth"

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This is really depressing. Thousands of people will read that Krugman column and believe every word because he won a Nobel Prize. How do dissidents like us stay optimistic given that we're hopelessly outnumbered, outfunded and basically out-gunned?

For every Ron Paul we have, they have 100 statist politicians. For every F.A. Hayek, they probably have 20 statist Nobel winning economists. And so on.

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Natalie replied on Tue, Aug 11 2009 8:51 AM

I'm not sure about outgunned with 85 million gun owners. And I have yet to meet anyone in that category who's happy with the government on the gun control and many other issues. Even if libertarians are minority... remember, only 5% population was actively involved in the American Revolution.

If I hear not allowed much oftener; said Sam, I'm going to get angry.

J.R.R.Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

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McDuffie replied on Tue, Aug 11 2009 1:02 PM

Natalie:

I'm not sure about outgunned with 85 million gun owners. And I have yet to meet anyone in that category who's happy with the government on the gun control and many other issues. Even if libertarians are minority... remember, only 5% population was actively involved in the American Revolution.

Hi Natalie. Two questions:

  1. Where did you get the 5% number?
  2. What do you mean by "actively involved"?

It's commonly believed that only 1/3 of the Colonists supported (by word and by deed) the American Revolution, and that another 1/3 were against it while the last 1/3 were ambivalent about it. This is based on an estimation by John Adams, however Rothbard showed that Adams was talking about American support of the French Revolution. I have never heard an estimate of 5%. I would like to know where you got it.

Read my Nolan Chart column "Me & My Big Mouth"

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'Thank you, Mr. Krugman, for explaining the dynamics of the current recession. The GOP would like instead to lower taxes for every problem and unleash the government, i.e. regluation. We saw how well that worked in the Great Depression. Millions homeless and 25% unemployment.'

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/deficits-saved-the-world/

Paul Krugman is probably ringing is hands together right now going 'Exccccelllent! Exceeellent"

'It is difficult to imagine any normal person wishing to meet Marx for a third time.' - Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition

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Kakugo replied on Tue, Aug 11 2009 5:29 PM

There is one thing I wonder about. Are government shills (ie mainstream economists) simply lying out of their teeth or perhaps, in spite of all their academic titles and credentials, they are simply failing to see what's happening? I mean, if even ordinary persons who've never heard of Gerald Celente or Ron Paul are rightly suspicious about the exagerated euphoria displayed by politicians at the "signs of recovery" what about persons who should know better than any of us?  

 Yes, it's time for the Dr Goebbels show!

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Rooster replied on Tue, Aug 11 2009 5:57 PM

Kakugo:

There is one thing I wonder about. Are government shills (ie mainstream economists) simply lying out of their teeth or perhaps, in spite of all their academic titles and credentials, they are simply failing to see what's happening? I mean, if even ordinary persons who've never heard of Gerald Celente or Ron Paul are rightly suspicious about the exagerated euphoria displayed by politicians at the "signs of recovery" what about persons who should know better than any of us?  

It's hard to imagine, but I really think they are mainly just reinforced by their training to only view the aggregates in macro -- any other analysis is just too foreign to them. This is especially true I think of less prominent mainstream economists. Maybe I'm being too generous. It is also true that people like Krugman would like to be an adviser at the White House, be respected by the "elite", and get the adulation of NYT readers.

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Rooster:

"So it seems that we aren’t going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/opinion/10krugman.html

Is Krugman right? (Just kidding, thought you'd enjoy)

Well, I don't think another great depression is coming - for the simple fact that labour regulations are not the same and I think the reporting of numbers during the great depression inflated things a bit high, or alternatively better and more modern statistics deflate them to a different level. 

 

That said, if anything, government has prevented a more robust recovery and will probably take enough away from future growth to cause another - possibly more severe - recession only a few years from now.

 

 

I suppose the positive is that at least Obama will be kicked out in 2012 and a more free-market republican - and not a "compassionate conservative" will be voted in.

existence is elsewhere

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