How Keynesian Archduke Krugman Recommended A Housing Bubble As A Solution To All Of America’s Post Tech Bubble Problems
Courtesy of Tyler Durden
The year is 2002, America has just woken up with the worst post dot.com hangover ever. Paul Krugman then, just as now, writes worthless op-eds for the NYT. And then, just as now, the Keynsian acolyte recommended excess spending as the solution to all of America problems. Only this one time, at band camp, Krugman went too far. If there is one thing that everyone can agree on, it is that the Housing Bubble is arguably the worst thing to ever happen to America, bringing with it such pestilence and locusts as the credit bubble, the end of free market capitalism, and the inception of American-style crony capitalism. Those who ignored it, even though it was staring them in the face, such as Greenspan and Bernanke, now have their reputation teetering on the edge of oblivion. So what can we say of those who openly endorsed it as a solution to America’s problems?
Enter exhibit A: New York Times, August 2, 2002, "Dubya’s Double Dip?" Name the author: "The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn’t a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." If you said Krugman, you win. Indeed, the idiocy of Keynesianism knew no bounds then, as it does now. The solution then, as now, to all problems was more bubbles, more spending, more deficits. So we have the implosion tech bubble: And what does Krugman want to create, to fix it? Why, create a housing bubble… Well, at least we know now how that advice played out.
And now what? He wants another trillion in fiscal stimulus… Quadrillion? Sextillion (arguably this cool sounding number is at least 2-4 years away before the Fed brings it into the daily vernacular)? And just like the housing bubble he suggested then brought America to the biggest depression it has ever seen, so his current suggestion will be the economic cataclysm that wipes out America from the face of the earth.
So we have two simple questions:
i) how does Krugman still have a forum in which to peddle his destructive ways, and
ii) why does ANYONE still listen to this Nobel prize winner, a/k/a charlatan?
Being stupid is one thing. Being stupid and learning your lesson after seeing your idea crash and burn is another. Pushing for the same policy response time after time, layering misery upon misery, is an altogether third, and most Krugman, thing.
How many more lunatics in charge of the insane asylum do we need before we finally say "enough" to their deranged ramblings and their illusions of reality…
h/t Papa Swamp
