The Economy

[Jester]

While Krugman writes for the Times, in the Economy section, and has a Phd. in economics, and may very well win a Nobel prize some day, I don't really consider him an economist.

Uh, he's also a Professor of Economics at Princeton, which is maybe a notch or two dozen above just having a PhD. His column for the NYT is moonlighting. And he won the 'Nobel' last year. You can have your opinion about the correctness of his theories. But saying he isn't an economist is just absurd.

If you read his writings, he demonstrates continually that he does not believe in the laws of economics.

Yeah, if you think the "laws of economics" begin and end with Von Mises.

He is a (maybe THE most) devoted follower of Keynes. What Krugman seems to be to me is a socialist, and uses economics to shower praise upon socialist policies and he believes that all ills can be resolved through State intervention.

Those sentences are contradictory. Keynes was not a socialist. He thought socialism was a terrible idea. So, incidentally, does Krugman. But don't let their actual opinions stop you from throwing around epithets.

The hard part about looking at graphs like that, is that the line represents the results of many factors that may have been implemented 3 to 5 years before the fruits blossomed.

Good luck trying to argue the "Herbert Hoover got an unfair shake because his genius economic ideas only came to fruition under FDR". I don't think *any* side of the debate is pushing that one, but feel free to give it a whirl.

I never attributed the tech bubble burst in the fall of 2000 to the newly elected Bush, but rather the result of policies carried out by prior administrations, including Bush Sr.

I think it was mostly the result of investors going completely nuts for anything with tech attached to it, vastly overinflating the value of companies which were making no money, and had no plans to ever make money. Animal spirits, and what have you.

In a twisted way, it was Wilson who brought the US out of the Great Depression. By going back on his word and forcing Germany to sign a one sided armistice for WWI, it was actually Wilson (along with our allies) who set the stage for WWII, which brought us out of the Great Depression.

... and the years 1933-1939 just fell into a hole and were forgotten? GDP had recovered to about its previous level before the US began pumping out arms for WWII.

Of course, were we to grant your argument, in a twisted way, it wasn't really Wilson that brought you out of the Great Depression. The guy you'd want to thank would be Hitler.

Of course, FDR's socialist policies and the loss of freedom during WWII brought us the USA I rail against so often.At least Von Mises is credited with forecasting the Depression and its causes.

I'm not sure I buy his story of what caused the great depression, or the Austrian Business Cycle theory generally, but I can tell you this: the sooner a nation got the hell off gold, the sooner it recovered from the great depression. That's just empirically true. Von Mises' advice to lock the currency to gold would have been economic suicide.

http://img.skitch.com/20090418-ni25ke6b5u5...h3qs.render.png

I'm not going to make the silly claim that Von Mises is not an economist because he doesn't believe in the same economic principles that I do. But he was far too dogmatic about gold. That's just plain terrible advice. Even Milton Friedman knew that was obvious.

-Jester