Now here we are at an economic zero hour for the American empire, and perhaps for modern civilization itself, and many in the global urban elite think that Paul Krugman, this establishment triathlete with his Princeton professorship, his New York Times column, and his Nobel Prize, has the equation for salvation. So what is Krugman’s formula? What commandments does the magus have scrawled on his blackboard for us, his plebian flock?
To understand that, one must understand Krugman’s intellectual heritage, such as it is.FULL ARTICLE
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Renaissance. Please change the spelling quickly. It ruins the force of the essay.
ABOM, are you referring to the use of “renascence”? That is a word, and it is being used correctly.
Biblical prophesy foretold of an Anti-Christ who would mislead many. The teachings of Keynes are opposed to biblical economic teaching . . . Romans 13:8 (re keeping out of debt) and his debunked and refuted theories border on the teachings of an Anti-Christ . . . And Krugman is his prophet.
I’m curious. Who are the “global urban elite?” Is the author one of them, in San Francisco? What does such a statement mean? Is there such a thing as the “local agrarian elite?”
I think you could substitute that phrase for the “fashionable and connected intelligensia” or “respectable conventions of prevailing opinion” or any other such phrase.
The global urban elite are a network of individuals concentrated largely in New York City, Los Angeles, D.C., London, Paris, Brussels, and the world’s other major urban areas. They are socialist and cultural Marxist and single-mindedly devoted to eradicating any remaining traces of the classical liberal order. They hold the levers of power in the West and despise the people over whom they rule. They know the present game is unsustainable so in anticipation of the denouement, they are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.
Krugman is one of their useful idiots; an absolutely uncritical and fatuous thinker along the lines of Tom Friedman.
As one of the “local agrarian elite” I find the term “priming the pump” insulting to my intelligence when used by the “global urban elite.” If they have ever primed a real pump they would know that a very small amount of water is used to just get it started. It would make no sense to fill the well with all water you wanted in the first place only to pump it out, but then Keyensian economics is to economics as their use of priming the pump is to a agrarian elite.
How do Keynesians explain the fact that households savings have been at their lowest points?
If you actually read the entire newsweek interview, they praise him for being a supposed anti-establishment/rebel genious.
krugman’s self righteouness and intellectual dishonesty make me cringe.
what a scam
Although I was aware of the material cited in this article, the illustration adds a nice touch!
Krugman is so uber “Keynesian” that even Lord Keynes rejects much of what Krugman says.
Krugman is “crude Keynesianism” on crack.
Has Krugman every given serious study to the work of Keynes or to the history of macroeconomic thought? Most economists I’ve come across are certain he has not. Krugman himself admits he doesn’t read economics written in prose, or produced before the modern hyper-math period.
Bottom line. Krugman is an intellectual embarrassment and perhaps the fitting public representative of the economics profession itself.
I just want to say I think that’s one of the best photos LvMI has put together yet.
I also greatly admired Azimov’s Foundation Trilogy. When I was twelve. It’s an egomaniacal nerd’s fantasy because it shows them as masters of the universe. In the books the excuse for the failure of the nerds’ central plan is an external shock that occurs when a genetic freak who doesn’t behave according to the equations takes power. Darn it, the equations are fine, it’s those darned human freaks who mess everything up.
If this is the intellectual heritage of our so-called leaders then we’re in big trouble.
Hal Varian was also inspired to become an economist by Azimov’s _Foundation Trilogy_.
Modern economics = science fiction inspired by .. science fiction.
I loved Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, read it when I was thirteen. But Asimov merely assumed that Hari Seldon and the Foundationalists were fundamentally right in their equations, whereas Keynesians refuse to acknowledge the flaws in their economics. Real life usually isn’t as dramatic or as extraordinary as fiction. If it were, it wouldn’t be “ordinary”.
I get the sense that Keynes lived for persuading others and besting others in complicated enterprises that would test any ordinary academic’s nerves. He placed a premium on his grand intentions and plausible solutions, not on sound reality. He obviously lived for the moment if he could say, “in the long run we’re all dead.”
And such people change their mind as their old intentions begin to sound stale. He would never have been an “Austrian” but he would’ve changed with the fashions. Actually, its kind of a shame he didn’t stop, he could’ve actually destroyed Keynesianism before it settled in. Hayek recalled that Keynes once told him that he would “reign in his students if they ever take these ideas too far.” He died of a heart attack a week later.
If Keynes had lived a bit longer he would have disappointed all the Keynesians.
Cheers
“Hal Varian was also inspired to become an economist by Azimov’s _Foundation Trilogy_.”
Lord, please save us from those who would save us.
Mac -
“He obviously lived for the moment if he could say, “in the long run we’re all dead.”
And we all wonder why our politicians with term limits loved Keynesianism. They too clearly live for the moment, or should I say live for the “term” because in the long run, they won’t care.
Actually Isaac Asimov soon had to come up with a superhuman “Second Foundation” with psychic powers to nudge human action into line when their equations stopped working… eventually even such central planning didn’t work and he had to imagine “Gaia” a planet-mind that would turn humanity, animals, vegetables… into one organism always in agreement with itself… so basically admitting the incompatibility of central planning with any free will…
”’See, unless you follow this formula, the empire will fail and be followed by a thousand years of barbarism.’”
Krugman even gets this wrong. Anyone who’s read the novels nows that one of the main lessons was impossibility of the imperial government stopping the collapse… the political and economic trends were beyond government’s power! It’s easy to see why PK omits this point.
(..plus it was 30 thousand years, 1 thou was the best case scenario, but never mind that)
Does anyone else think Krugman and Bernanke kind of look alike?
I seem to recall that in Foundation, Hari Seldon was a psychohistorian. I suppose Paul Krugman sees himself as a psycho economist?
To compare Krugman with Keynes is rather unjust. Sure, Keynes was wrong on many things but hhe was certainly more subtle – I think he would have been genuinely horrified at what his supposed ‘disciples’ (especially Krugman) are peddling today.
Undoing Socialism
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Krugman Is A Keynesian And A Socialist And A Charlatan!
We mustn’t forget that Keynes was a closet socialist. Krugman on the other hand is openly a socialist although he would try to paint himself as a disinterested academic.
They are both charlatans, ego-driven interventionists, and the scum on the surface of the ocean that will eventually be discarded and forgotten once mankind leaves behind these, the Dark Ages of economics.
One of the things I like the most about the LvMI is the fact that virtually every time Krugman comes out with one of his NYT columns, this blog almost immediately exposes his economic ignorance.
I wish there was an easy way to redirect all those who comment on his NYT blogs/columns to the LvMI, where they can see how they have been fooled by that pathetic hack.
The article merely backs over an “intellectual” who’s brain has already been run over, but the comments deserve comments.
1. Yes, Krugman does look like Bernanke with a toupe. (Have you noticed that every time Bernanke lies, a hair falls from his head?)
2. The Nobel committee has never been able to give a “Peace Prize” to Gandhi, but have given prizes to Arafat and Gore, and Krugman. A fine example of guilt by association.
3. The last time I saw “local agrarian elite” referred to was by Bobby Kennedy, who, in the run-up to his candidacy prior to his assassination, was demanding land reform in third world countries before the US became involved in economic assistance. In America, the “local agrarian elite” was pretty much smashed by the Civil War, but it took WWI to establish that German machine guns were not impressed by the breeding of the British nobility (so much for Darwin’s theory). To applaud our cultural acceptance of science since the Crimean War, the “global urban elite” seem to appreciate their frailty, as documented by the hysterical over-reaction to “swine flu,” as contrasted with infectious disease outbreaks which primarily affect the tropics. We, at least, recognize that pathogens are no respecter of status, position, or awards, just ecology.
Excelsior
In a NYT op-ed of November 8, 2008, Paul Krugman, arguing that FDR’s New Deal policies did not go far enough to relieve the Great Depression, said, “What saved the economy and the New Deal was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.” >http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html< Krugman is not an economist but rather a sociopath because only the latter would refer to the wholesale slaughter of human lives, the widespread destruction in Europe, Asia and Pacific islands of physical plant, economic infrastructure, human habitation and cultural artifacts, plus the massive privation and starvation engendered in many place throughout the world by the rampant diversion of production from consumer goods to military hardware, which comprised World War II, as a fiscal stimulus. Fiscal stimulus?! Public works project???!!!
Keynes, of course, was likewise a sociopath who once said of the discredited "science" of eugenics that it is "the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists." Referring to either of these men as economists is a semantic perversion.
For additional commentary on Keynes, Krugman and Barack Obama, see my article entitled BARACH ALMIGHTY, at >http://www.jesus-on-taxes.com/uploads/Barack_Almighty.pdf<
“Indeed, there is something almost calculated in the unblinking wrongheadedness of both Keynes and Krugman.”
No “almost” about it.
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