Let Me Google That for You, Paul

By Mark Thornton

Paul Krugman attacked Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, and “honest money” and also took a shot at Austrian economists on his blog recently. He called honest money a “Ron Paul dog whistle” and then went on to query Austrian economists on their position on money-market mutual funds (MMMF). He doesn’t expect a serious answer.

(Thanks to Nielsio.) And check out the rest of Tim Kelly’s awesome (and very libertarian) cartoons.

[An MP3 audio file of this article, narrated by the author, is available for download.]

The senseless Batman killings in Aurora, Colorado, as well as those that occurred years earlier in Columbine a few miles away, have something in common with the number one cause of overdose deaths in the United States and an important potential cause of teen suicide: prescription drugs approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Well, not exactly his words, but this was the gist of George’s bizarre and irrelevant comment on Krugman’s column asking Austrians what their position is on money market mutual funds. In his haste to establish his mainstream bona fides to Krugman, however, George was blind to the fact that Krugman has been forced to recognize and address Austrian argument

“It is different with people whom special conditions of their occupation or their family affiliation bring into personal contact with the winners of the prizes which—as they believe—by rights should have been given to themselves. With them the feelings of frustrated ambition become especially poignant because they engender hatred of concrete living beings. They loathe capitalism because it has assigned to this other man the position they themselves would like to have. Such is the case with those people who are commonly called the intellectuals. Take for instance the physicians.

Paul Krugman’s jejune column querying Austrians on their view of money market mutual funds (MMMFs) — as if they have never thought or written about the subject — has been roundly skewered by Austrians here and here. But I have a question for Krugman: Why, Paul, would you be interested in the least about what Austrians think about anything?

Paul Krugman isn’t the only Princeton economist producing sloppy and ill-informed newspaper columns. Alan Blinder weighs in with a September 6 Wall Street Journal column on the “stark” [sic] differences between the economic programs of Obama and Romney-Ryan. Blinder starts out well enough: