One of the characteristics of people who perpetuate political talking points is their inability to be “confused with facts.” In such a society, one sticks to the narrative no matter what. So it is with Paul Krugman. FULL ARTICLE by William L. Anderson
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/11341/sticking-to-the-official-narrative/
Sticking to the Official Narrative
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Nice job! Thanks!
“There is a reason for him to pursue this false narrative, and it is not because he actually believes it.”
I can’t imagine what that would be. Please provide an example.
I think he believes it. I know that I often engage in selective memory by focusing on just the facts that support my preconceptions. I appreciate it when friends point out my mistakes but I am not a public figure with a reputation that depends on consistency with an existing view.
I think James P. Hogan’s introduction to his excellent discussion of Climategate
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan4.1.1.html
applies here.
“…in politics, the preconception is everything. To be able to move an agenda toward a goal, you first have to know what the goal is. It has only been realized comparatively recently in the history of human thought that such phenomena as how the planets move or why lighting strikes are indifferent to the antics of humans and not the whims of gods that be angered or placated. Hence, it isn’t so surprising that the kind of thinking that serves political ends goes back a lot further in our cultural development and comes more naturally to most people. In the day-to-day business of life, the object is to close the sale, win the election, get a favorable verdict. The slant is set from the beginning, and information and arguments are amassed that will persuade in that direction. Finding information and arguments against is the other side’s problem. With those as the ground rules, bending or stretching the story to the extent that opportunism allows, or burying the other side’s version if they’ll let you get away with it, all becomes part of the game. It’s how the visions were inspired that built empires, the rages provoked that won wars, and the fanaticisms born that created religions and swept mass movements into power. But it won’t change the law of gravity or the speed of light by an iota. Or the dynamics of the Earth’s climate.”
Or historical and economic realtity.
The last paragraph sums it up perfectly: Krugman cannot possibly believe in his own drivel. Strangely, he laughs twice: once when the masses subscribe to his garbage…and again when sound refutations (such as the one above) fall upon deaf ears.
The majority of people are good, but they are also lazy. Combine sloth with an easy-to-read opinion from a “decorated” economist like Krugman and you have a recipe for disaster.
Krugman = Wesley Mouch
Thanks for the piece. I must say, reading things like this makes me dread the thought of entering academic economics with dunderheads like Krugman and your colleague milling around.
Maybe he actually believes what he writes. Maybe what he calls “Economics” means is just a sophisticated to gain intellectual power to blast his own erroneous one step logic as first-class intellect, writing mathematical gibberish neither he or anyone else understands to be part of this select priesthood.
It disgusts me how they dirty mathematical science.
Mr. Krugman, are you an economist, “Or are you, in fact, a chronic and habitual LIAR!”
I think he knows what he’s doing. He always seems to have a smirk on his face. I once knew someone who would giggle while telling a lie. Krugman reminds me of this childhood “friend”.
Wonderful reading and a burst of fresh air concerning an otherwise stale subject in the normal news cycle, given the hypocrisy regularly seen there. It is troubling to think that our society is now directed by men and women who carelessly legislate from a position of ignorance with support and praise for their actions laid upon them by the very industry set apart to guard the people and the people’s interests through the process of truth telling. Heaven help us all!
Wonderful reading and a burst of fresh air concerning an otherwise stale subject in the normal news cycle, given the hypocrisy regularly seen there. It is troubling to think that our society is now directed by men and women who carelessly legislate from a position of ignorance with support and praise for their actions laid upon them by the very industry set apart to guard the people and the people’s interests through the process of truth telling. Heaven help us all!
I hate Paul Krugman (not personally of course)! He is like the Pied Piper of economic pandering whom people follow on faith.
Very good analysis! Will common sense never take hold in America? If it doesn’t, the enlightened minority will go down the tubes with the unenlightened majority.
Professor Krugman believes in enlarging the power of the state to control the economy and to redistribute from the successful to others. As the government grows prosperity shrinks. Voters will eventually make better choices in politicians.
Instead of erecting more ineffective government regulations and agencies, we should outlaw fractional reserve banking. This is a simple and low cost way of preventing bank failures. It would also soak up some of the recently printed excess dollars . After this, we should abolish the Fed. Interest rates should be set by the market, not manipulated by politicians.
Krugman is a confessed Keynesian. ‘Nuff said, but I can’t resist pouring a little accellerant on the bonfire of his vanities.
In order to be a Keynesian one must be either ignorant or dishonest–or possibly both. From some of his writing and achievements, I deduce Krugman is intelligent, which means…
Anyone calling himself an economist who would refer to World War II as an “enormous public-works project…which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs,” as Paul Krugman did in a column in The New York Times, November 10, 2008 , (see, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html) is something worse than dishonest.
Ron Finch points out one reason, which is once you are “stuck” with a “Schtick” you kind of have to “stick” with it because otherwise you get stuck with the Inconsistency Label. Good point, Ron — if Krugman were ever to acknowledge ANY intellectual Debt to Austrianism or Miseanism, he’d probably have to gag himself with a spoon.
I think deregulator666 gets pretty close with his/her quotation:
In other words, the Overall Agenda is what we have to deduce — that is where we are likely to find what drives the tactical choices, the chosen story-lines / the talking points / the “schticks” and other routines to feint us off their real intentions / the reverse-engineered bedtime stories for adults from Presidents and other leaders / and so on.
I am such an amateur in this field that I still naïvely hope for something called Honesty.
I see it in Dr. Ron Paul — but when others see it there, they mostly don’t seem to recognize genuineness when they come across it. Have we been so corrupted by politicians and their “buying us with our own money”, that we still think there is some difference between the economic policies of President Bush Jr. and President Obama? And that we think Dr. Ron Paul (as an example) is just another politician?
I have to commend William L. Anderson for his fine article.
He does not answer his own question and poses it only in closing to generate thought.
There is some small reason to speculate that Krugman believes his own propaganda — what I would refer to as his Economic Maladroitness and ultimately his Intellectual Waterloo (that is yet to come) — but then I can say that from an Austrian perspective. Most people have not heard of the Mises site or the Economic Thought that undergirds it.
Just an example of a Keynesian who actually still believes in that economic philosophy (even in the face of the economic tragedies of the last few decades) please watch the first 20 minutes of this video (and then the next 20 minutes when Peter Schiff gives his rebuttal perspective on what has happened in the last few decades — and more).
Peter Schiff debates David Epstein of Columbia University — Nov 11 2009 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM23TZxzOw8&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Now if David Epstein can believe what he spouts, I suppose Krugman can believe his own Keynesian postulations as well.
But I tend to see the Krugman agenda probably more as others here do as well as William L. Anderson probably does, I suspect.
IMO Krugman even with all his criticisms of Obama’s Economic Team is on that team.
His is the party line IMO.
His ‘truth’ in his columns IMHO is in the service of the Democratic agenda. That is the Big Picture. And while it might disgust us, it is how the Big Boys Play The Game.
We should not play that game, because we only have one Life to live. Unless you want to make your morals subservient to something other than your own sense of self-worth and morality, you cannot play that game. You should not because you will belie your own True Reason for Living.
That is the dilemma we are in. We cannot fight fire with that same fire.
One possibility is that the propaganda we get from the Economic Mainstream will prove itself to be so transparently and dramatically wrong, vulgar, and (sadly) so damaging to America (and the World) that the People will finally wake up — as Ron Paul and people like Peter Schiff so earnestly hope.
It is tragic that America has to (and many other countries also have to) first pay the price of that damage before we can all, as a society, see that the emperor is naked. None of us really wish for that eventuality, but as Peter Schiff points out, that may be the only good thing to come out of this upcoming tragedy.
Even though that price is far too high — and from the Austrian perspective, completely and ludicrously unnecessary — what other choice is there, dear friends, other than to watch it all play out?
Let’s pray that this ‘play’ does not include a world war, which is entirely possible.
In my short life, I have learned that leaders here are no less reckless than leaders in other nations — well maybe a tad less reckless.
And in totalitarian nations, as we saw 20 years ago in June 1989, there is still less regard for one’s constituents. When your hold on power becomes shaky, what better way is there than to manufacture an external enemy to bring “your people together against the common enemy” and to solidify your grip on power.
Not only that, as a leadership, you can then make your people ‘logically’ and conveniently ignore the economic hardships you have led them into — and you can keep everyone ‘employed’ manufacturing bombs, bullets, ships, tanks, planes and rockets.
Hunger? Cold? Lack of amenities? Who cares when you are fighting to save the Motherland?
That is what Krugman should contemplate on, because from an Austrian perspective, when China implodes due to following exactly his own precise Keynesian prescription for “recovery” what will he tell the world? How will he justify his advice? That it wasn’t done ‘properly’?
Will he tell the world from his perch at the New York Times, that economic immorality and ignorance have nothing to do with harming Life? That a refutable economic theory put into practice by other countries had nothing to do with killing people? That China printing its own currency as fast as The FED prints American currency just to keep its own Chinese currency from appreciating had nothing to do with THAT country’s upcoming economic collapse? And that possibly thereby an internal revolution in China and then her subsequent attack on Taiwan and even perhaps a resulting world war had nothing to do with a misguided application of Keynesianism as a putative solution for our and China’s current economic woes?
Dear Dr. Krugman, IMO at THAT time, you’ll have to come up with a new Schtick because the old one just won’t Tick.
I would just like to know where Paul Krugman thinks Keynesianism, Greenspanianism, and now Bernankianism have NOT failed us?
IMO money-debasement schemes from Governments and Central Banks got us into our current problems, and now we are using the same approaches to fix those problems? Excuse me? This is most certainly not Human Intelligence’s finest hour.
Thanks for the article.
We should also remember that it was the Clinton administration that pushed the GSEs to drop their lending standards in order to make homes ‘more affordable’ to subprime borrowers. But I think its counterproductive to get into this democrat vs republican debate. Both parties are owned by Wall St.
Jay, quite right — I agree with you.
Ever-enlarging government sectors engorge themselves at the expense of the Golden Goose, who is close to expiring.
Without the products of the goose, what will they engorge themselves on? Asian and Middle Eastern nations will not send us their goose-meat forever.
Neither of the major parties seems to get that.
Excepting of course some brave individual members.
Without replenishing the goose, we all face some manner of privation, the poorer, as usual, more than the rest (Dickens or no Dickens).
http://mises.org/daily/573
To A. Viirlaid. Thanks for your kind words.
May I disagree with something you said without being too disagreeable?
“We should not play that game, because we only have one Life to live. Unless you want to make your morals subservient to something other than your own sense of self-worth and morality, you cannot play that game. You should not because you will belie your own True Reason for Living.
That is the dilemma we are in. We cannot fight fire with that same fire.
…what other choice is there, dear friends, other than to watch it all play out? ”
I think that politics is too important to be left to politicians. I am glad that Thomas Jefferson, Ron Paul and others did not sit on the sidelines. I would gladly join the fray if I were qualified. We need people who WILL NOT play (the game) us for fools. One need not compromise to be successful as Ron Paul has shown.
You will not want to stay to the end if honest men do not engage. There are many freedom loving Americans looking for an honest option. I would like to see the Libertarian Party step up and announce that the bipartisan party has failed. Elect LP candidates and they will dismantle the government and repeal every tax they can. The LP should focus on the state houses. The states could likely strip the Federal govt of power. Government must be limited.
I think I get it now. Krugman benefits from going with the herd and he likes government which predisposes him to want to justify it. And what would he get from seeking the truth? Mises, Rothbard and others have sacrificed much to find truth which is unpalatable to the herd and its leaders. It would have been easier in many ways to just go along like Warren Buffett. And like Krugman, they could have been cheered and decorated if only they had been willing to set aside honesty.
Unfortunately, the lies can not lead us to greater wealth and honor. Only Liberty can secure the Blessings of Liberty. Statist armies do not even secure the statists for ever.
And someone asked what will they say when the central planning fails? That is easy to answer. They always say the same thing. It was someone else’s fault. Their plans are thwarted by greedy people who refuse to do their bidding. They don’t see that self interest is a universal property underlying all Human Action, including their own.
Thank you too, Ron Finch.
You are right that we cannot idly stand by. Like you perhaps (but don’t underrate yourself) I too am disinclined to get directly involved in the political process.
However like you I do cheer the Ron Paul-s of the world.
It does not have to be the Libertarian Party alone. Good women and men in the GOP and Democratic Party can stand up and be counted among those in the Honesty Roll.
As you correctly understood I did not intend all forthright people to disengage from the process, but only from the Dishonest part of that process. For whatever battle one joins in one’s life, one should do it for the highest principles — not simply to attain the next appointment or to win the next election. Perhaps I did sound a tad defeatist — not my most sincere or heartfelt intention to be sure.
I see now that Peter Schiff is running for the Senate.
We need these competing viewpoints because thereby the current economic faults are being slowly and systematically identified. The current approach will fail IMO, and then these other approaches are more likely to be studied by those who have not yet examined them.
This site alone provides a wealth of material for those who are ready for a new awakening — a new intelligent practicality and pragmatism — not a self-serving ideology of the failed economic past.
Americans (and other in the Western civilization) will see that Democracy (and its current immoral manifestation, the Welfare State) as currently practiced is not sufficient. It has fallen into disrepair. You are right — it needs less negative thinking — even jaded people like me can shake off our lethargy and reengage.
We need to enhance the Democracies and their Economies with more awareness and understanding (for those of us who do not know, or need reminding) of the very real hardships and sacrifices of past generations.
Only 4 or so generations prior to us people lived a very long work day. People had to work to live. Farms did not operate as single-crop mega-factory enterprises. They operated as family enterprises (some still do) where many crops and animals were raised. People had to contribute in order to survive. There were no reality shows — Life was Reality.
And 3 generations prior to that many people were still serfs or slaves even in the enlightened West.
Our forebears and their contemporaries have suffered a lot in order to allow us to live as well as we do. Yet few of us give thanks or show understanding for wherefrom we have come. We are instead more likely to think in the jaded terms of “what have you done for me lately?” It is as if we lack the imaginative powers to see what we have today as compared to humans in the past. One poster wrote elsewhere that we are dissatisfied, unruly, depressed, disengaged, always looking for that next temporary fix of distracting stimulation, even though we individually live better than all the Kings and Popes throughout history. Where does that illness come from?
And as another writer once wrote:
Sorry, I got a little carried away. I think the topic is how to try to fix the current economic mess we are in — and how to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future.
But perhaps the answer lies partly in that honesty with which so many people belonging to those past generations approached the living of their lives?
I suppose that is the meaning of my meanderings.
While human nature does not change all that much, it does seem as though the past was lucky in one respect — it seems to have been over-represented with people like Ludwig von Mises as compared to today.
We can thank the past for that too — and I agree with you again — were it not for that legacy we would be far more hard-pressed to understand what the necessary changes are.
As crazy as it sounds, I just wish some of the intellectual (elitist?) leaders of our economic institutions (The FED, Treasury, FDIC, etc.) had been raised on family farms, where they had to do chores, clean stalls, and plant vegetable gardens.
Somehow they (and their equals on Wall Street) have forgotten where wealth in America comes from. It comes from WORK. A four-letter word (seemingly) in their vocabulary. Remember that commercial — “We make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it.”
Wealth does not come from extracting (arbitraging?) other people’s wealth by paper shuffling, bond trading, Gordon Gekko-wrecking of manufacturing enterprises, fancy financial instrument ‘inventing’, or other such ‘contributions’ to American life.
If you see relatively simple financial stratagems making big money on Wall Street you can be almost assured of seeing someone just EXTRACTING wealth from the rest of America.
That is not rocket science — the ‘contributions’ of those stratagems to society is negative, in proportion to the amounts of the ill-gotten proceeds.
When I see an institution like The Federal Reserve of the United States acting as an accomplice, cheerleader, and even leader of such insidious activities, I have to wonder if our society has gone berserk.
Those are the types of activities that I would wish all honest people would disassociate themselves from. Perhaps that is what I was trying to say in the prior post.
When I wrote:
I should have left out “Bond Trading” since instruments of Debt will always exist and wlll require trading to manifest the current market rate of interest.
What I meant to include was Currency Trading, since all such activity is driven by the differing rates at which nations debase their own currencies relative to others as well as reflecting trading surpluses and deficits.
That trading is useless in one sense — it can be eliminated once all money currencies are replaced by one commodity form of money currency that we all know operates far better and less harmfully than paper fiat money.
That elimination would allow a lot of very smart Currency Traders to help humankind in other professions. And no wealth need be needlessly extracted.
IMO both of these activities are far less harmful than the other shenanigans that occurred in the Economy and that demand our attention. I should not have lumped these trading activities into the pot.
Happy New Year to all!
UNBELIEVABLE — will they ever learn?
Dubai?
No, China — now even CNNMoney is warning us.
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2009/12/30/n_china_real_estate_bubble.cnnmoney/
And THIS, from Keynesians and Krugmanians, and their money-printing-presses, is the supposed ‘solution’ to economies operating “under capacity”?
PLEASE, a little more Honesty for the New Year!
Ron Finch wrote:
“I think that politics is too important to be left to politicians. I am glad that Thomas Jefferson, Ron Paul and others did not sit on the sidelines. I would gladly join the fray if I were qualified. We need people who WILL NOT play (the game) us for fools. One need not compromise to be successful as Ron Paul has shown.”
As A. Viirlaid said, “don’t underrate yourself”. You and others here are far, far more articulate regarding freedom, free-markets and the unseen negative consequences of government intervention as opposed to those, usually members of the R party, who talk about freedom and free-markets but don’t have the first clue, and couldn’t explain it if their lives depended on it. Certainly what they do and how they vote is aligned with anything but freedom. Indeed, can you name one other rep or senator besides Ron Paul who even comes close?
Look at this healthcare issue for example. Both sides of the aisle were talking about all sorts of government controlled schemes. Aside from Ron Paul, not a one mentioned a return to a true free-market.
So as to qualifications, “getting it” and having the ability to articulate it is a fabulous start.
But even if you don’t decide to run for office (a MAJOR undertaking, I know), don’t ever underestimate the power you have as an individual to influence and enlighten others in your sphere. I call it “The Power of One”.
Good, rational, logical ideas, properly presented, can change minds almost in an instant (ok, sometimes it takes longer but it’s still worth the effort). That’s precisely what happened to me and I do everything I can to “pay it forward”. It’s really gratifying to hear someone say, “wow, I never thought of it that way before!”
My personal biggest “reward” has come from educating my children–well actually, “educating” implies that I shoved this down their throats. In actuality, my kids asked me questions about ideas they’d been taught in school, which opened up discussions at home. My kids chose freedom on their own after hearing my arguments for it. My middle daughter now regularly argues with her government-loving history teacher (who has a MA in econ). Whether or not her classmates agree with her, the ideas are being presented (albeit with a sledgehammer I’m sure; my daughter needs some lessons in tact
) and it just might get some of her classmates to think, “hmmm…”
Corny as it may sound, I believe we really can change the world. One person at a time.
Jeffrey Borrowdale posted the following on facebook “I was with the author until the final conspiratorial sentence about Krugman not believing his own columns; it tarnishes an otherwise good piece of analysis.”
That was my reaction too the first time I read it. I had the feeling I missed something. So I read Krugman’s article and did some research. Here is my take.
Krugman says “America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II….”
I pulled up a GDP chart from the Federal Reserve’s FRED. According to Fred there were eight resessions from 1945 to 1985 and three from 1985 to present counting the current one. So, the tight regulations gave us a problem every five years and deregulation gave us a problem every eight years. You may call that “working” but I don’t. Also the stagflation and energy crisis that cost Jimmy Carter a second term were running rampant in the late 70′s. I think three decades is the most one can strech that “truth” if it were true at all.
Krugman says “The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s.”
The S&L Industry collapsed because people moved to money market mutual funds for the higher yields. Former Federal Home Loan Bank Board chairman Richard T. Pratt testified on January 29, 1993 that the regulators knew the industry had been insolvent since 1979. Note that Jimmy Carter was president in 1979.
As Mr. Anderson concludes “Now, if a politician or an English professor were to be providing this account, that would be one thing. I expect politicians to be dishonest and self-serving, and I expect English professors to be ideological leftists incapable of coherent economic thought. But when an economist — and one as decorated as Krugman — says these things…”
Maybe Mr. Anderson should have ended there and left us with our thoughts. My conclusion is this. Some commentators on this article stated flatly that Krugman is a liar. I would not say that out loud, but I cannot honestly disagree.
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