The Likely Result of Krugmanian Economics: bartering cuckoo clocks for bread
Krugman is advocating a new stimulus package of some $600 billion. Since his number was derived using current conditions and "back-of-the-envelope calculations," expect the amount to grow as the economy worsens. According to my you-have-got-to-be-kidding calculations, $600 billion is $2,000 per capita, $16,000 for my family of eight, and a whole lot of paper nothing.
Question: When should my wife plan to begin loading wheelbarrows of newly-printed paper each morning in a desperate race to obtain real wealth?
Comments (17)
theblob
It's funny that he mentions the 1991 and 2001 recessions, both of which were "solved" by low interest rates. But unfortunately this time the interest rate is already near zero. Could there be a connection? Who knows...
Published: November 16, 2008 3:13 PM
Mikhail
Good. I hope it's $3000 per person. Hell, lets make it $4000.
The more it is, the quicker this stupid economy collapses and we can hopefully wake some more people up.
What am I going to do with my stimulus check? Why buy more gold of course.
Published: November 16, 2008 4:02 PM
Robert Brager
But this man is a Nobel Prize recipient!
Therefore the man and his words are above reproach!
Shame on the Mises Institute. Don't you have better things to be doing, like catching up on your Silvio Gesell and your Friedrich List, than tearing down this great man and his great works?
If Nobel laureate Prof. Krugman had formulated his calculations with an orange hi-liter on a pair of white panties, it ought to be enshrined in a glass case at the entrance to the Economists Hall of Fame, and all of you haters - as the kids say - should kneel prostrate before it, in fervent prayer that you might one day capture such greatness.
Obama 2016!
Published: November 16, 2008 4:21 PM
Book 'em Danno
You would have your wife load the wheelbarrow? And she would do it?
Published: November 16, 2008 4:43 PM
Curt Howland
What? Prostate before the man?
Published: November 16, 2008 6:15 PM
William Rader
Isn't this the same great thinker who recently stated, "My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little." Better invest in a second wheelbarrow!
Published: November 16, 2008 6:40 PM
Don
Because Keynesianism has worked so well in the past!
Published: November 16, 2008 6:44 PM
Mike Gogulski
Your wife? Load them bricks'o'cash yourself, you lazy git.
Published: November 16, 2008 6:48 PM
Jim Fedako
Funny, I know it's dangerous, so to speak, to use sarcasm in writing. The reason: the reader may not recognize the voice being used. To that maxim I will add that it is dangerous, so to speak, to use historical references that are not explicit.
Published: November 16, 2008 7:01 PM
William Rader
In a November 10 New York Times Op-Ed article titled "Franklin Delano Obama?" Nobel Laureate and Princeton professor of economics Paul Krugman states, "My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little." Better invest in a second wheelbarrow!
Published: November 16, 2008 7:17 PM
Bruce Koerber
Krugman flippantly says that 'red ink' is a vice but yet a virtue when there is economic malaise.
Paul Krugman is the most vulgar of the neo-Keynesians and he has no understanding of the concept of disequilibrium therefore he has no understanding of reality.
His award - Nobel Laureate in Wackonomics - is as much a symbol to the world that pseudoscience is rampant in these Dark Ages of economics as is the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore for his political extortion and pseudoscience in the field of environmental studies.
It is painful and disgusting to simply laugh at these imbeciles and their fantasies but until our fellow human beings awaken their entrepreneurial spirit such nonsense will be force-fed continuously to the intellectually dead by the ego-driven interpreters and the ego-driven interventionists.
Published: November 16, 2008 7:26 PM
Nasikabatrachus
Look at it this way, Jim: you're not going to have to buy toilet paper anymore.
Published: November 16, 2008 7:26 PM
Scott Frost
Hyperinflation is so much more convenient today than in the past -- we have debit cards. Who needs wheelbarrows? :)
Published: November 16, 2008 7:45 PM
Walt D.
Mikhail
Why be stingy? :-) Lets just send everybody a check for $500,000. Everyone could pay off their mortgages an credit cards. The mortgage crisis would go away.
Oh, I forgot, we need another check for $50,000 so we can buy a GM car. That way we wouldn't have to bailout GM. $25 billion - that only 500,000 cars at $50k. Everyone should have one!
Published: November 16, 2008 11:46 PM
Maturin
Scott Frost,
As Nasikabatrachus points out, the paper will continue to have more usefulness than a plastic card.
Pay me in cash, please.
Besides the coprologic uses, it can be burned as an alternative fuel.
Published: November 17, 2008 9:23 AM
GreenLeaf
I've more money in my pocket right now than the US govt & Fed put together....
10 trillion in debt, 2 billion interest everyday, & 60 trillion worth of obligations in the near future... Where is all this money going to come from?
Oh... you got printing press right.... damn it!!
Published: November 17, 2008 12:03 PM
Kenneth David Hall
Don't they just tip the paper into the gutter, keep the wheelbarrow, and give you the bread anyway?
Published: November 17, 2008 3:07 PM