Free Republic

Invincible IgnoranceBy PAUL KRUGMAN December 15, 2010, 9:24 am So Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are going to issue their own report, placing primary blame on the government — because it’s always the government’s fault. And according to reporting at the Huffington Post, all four Republicans voted in favor of banning the phrases “Wall Street” and “shadow banking” and the words “interconnection” and “deregulation” from the panel’s final report, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by Brooksley E. Born, one of the six commissioners who voted against the proposal. Yep. It was all...

Nat Hentoff certainly is no conservative but he is a principled civil libertarian who has stood up for life since his days writing in the Village Voice. Unlike most liberals, Hentoff fears that the threat of rationing under the President's health care plan is not only real but imminent and he is willing to go after those who advocate rationing of care leaving no sacred cows behind. That's why Paul Krugman is now in Hentoff's sights and he is firing at will. In a recent column, Hentoff writes: Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and an influential New York...

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and an influential New York Times columnist, also has a blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal." On ABC's "This Week" (Nov. 14), during a discussion on balancing the federal budget against alarming deficits, he proclaimed the way to solve this problem is through deeply cost-effective health-care rationing. "Some years down the pike," he said, "we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes." That would mean the U.S. Debt Reduction Commission "should have endorsed the panel that was part of the (Obama)...

There Will Be BloodBy PAUL KRUGMAN Published: November 22, 2010 Former Senator Alan Simpson is a Very Serious Person. He must be — after all, President Obama appointed him as co-chairman of a special commission on deficit reduction. So here’s what the very serious Mr. Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. ... When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ’em a piece of meat, real meat,’...

The "new" spin from the White House is fresh off the presses. Of course it's nothing new, just the same ole same ole "Republicans are evil" crapola. And speaking of crapola, here is Krugman and the spin: What do the government of China, the government of Germany and the Republican Party have in common? They’re all trying to bully the Federal Reserve into calling off its efforts to create jobs. And the motives of all three are highly suspect. ~~~ So what’s really motivating the G.O.P. attack on the Fed? Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues were clearly caught by...

Health Reform: The left's favorite economist, who condemned others for saying ObamaCare would require death panels, now admits they are real and necessary. The way to control costs, he says, is death and taxes. Paul Krugman has long extolled the virtues of Britain's National Health Service and its National Institute for Clinical Excellence with the Orwellian acronym of NICE. Krugman has been anything but nice to NHS critics and those who've said that what have been called its "death panels" would be brought to America via ObamaCare. In a roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist...

The World as He Finds ItBy PAUL KRUGMAN Published: November 14, 2010 On Wednesday David Axelrod, President Obama’s top political adviser, appeared to signal that the White House was ready to cave on tax cuts — to give in to Republican demands that tax cuts be extended for the wealthy as well as the middle class. “We have to deal with the world as we find it,” he declared. The White House then tried to walk back what Mr. Axelrod had said. But it was a telling remark, in more ways than one. The obvious point is the contrast between...

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says the only way the U.S. will get its debt crisis under control is by the use of "death panels" and a national sales tax. The national sales tax, referred to as VAT (value-added tax) and widely used by governments across Europe, will help cut the U.S deficit, Krugman argues. Krugman made his comments on ABC's “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” during a roundtable discussion about the economy and the recent findings of the U.S. Debt Reduction Commission. Here's the key excerpt: "Some years down the pike, we're going to get the...

Krugman made his comments on ABC's “This Week with Christiane Amanpour” ... ... "Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now." ... "If they [the Debt Commission] were going to do reality therapy, they should have said, ‘OK, look, Medicare is going to have to decide what it's going...

Is this the last gasp from America’s liberal elites before the November mid-terms on Tuesday? This is what economist Paul Krugman has to say in The New York Times today, predicting “political chaos”, with the hysterical warning – “if the elections go as expected next week, here’s my advice: Be afraid. Be very afraid.” This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness. Krugman then goes on to blame George W. Bush for...

Public Works: A fiscally responsible governor takes on the money-is-no-object school, and the taxpayers win. And no, killing that tunnel under the Hudson is not a blow to national greatness. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made it official this week, deciding to pull his state out of a project to build a new rail tunnel between his state and Manhattan. It was about the money, he said. He could not, in good conscience, leave his state's taxpayers on the hook for potentially billions of dollars in cost overruns. When you look at how the 8.8-mile tunnel was to be financed,...

Krugman tells UK govt reducing the deficit is wrong

OBJECTIVE Paul Krugman debates Robert Murphy on Keynesian vs. Austrian biz cycle theory at Mises Innstitute. Video explaining the challenge.

21% increase in federal spending in two years and the deficit has eclipsed 1.3 trillion. The 2010 deficit is the second-highest shortfall — 2009 is the highest —since 1945, as a percentage of the economy. To the extent that spending is slightly less than in FY 2009, it is due to the spending provided during the financial crisis to the banking industry. Outlays ended the year about 2 percent below those in 2009, CBO estimates. That decline resulted primarily from a net reduction in outlays for three items related to the financial crisis: the costs of the TARP ($262...

Krugman: We Need Up To $10 Trillion In QE by: Cullen Roche October 15, 2010 Paul Krugman thinks we need more QE. Not just a little bit more. About 8-10X more than current projections! Richard Koo’s head must be spinning. No, no, we haven’t failed, it’s just that we haven’t tried hard enough! Krugman’s idea is the equivalent of a shopkeeper who thinks he can scream about the loads of new apples he is putting on the shelves while creating a stir in the marketplace that will ultimately result in higher sales. It won’t work in the long-run. Of course,...

ROFLMAO NYT's Paul Krugman's paper his economical expertise extends to extraterrestrials now you know why they alway's seem out of this world.

Krugman: The Reason Government Spending Hasn't Saved The Economy Is That There Hasn't Been Any Government Spending Henry Blodget Oct. 11, 2010, 7:29 AM Paul Krugman goes back on the attack, arguing that the reason the economy is sputtering despite the stimulus is that the stimulus didn't actually include a big surge in government spending. Ask yourself: What major new federal programs have started up since Mr. Obama took office? Health care reform, for the most part, hasn’t kicked in yet, so that can’t be it. So are there giant infrastructure projects under way? No. Are there huge new benefits...

Since Tim Geithner did not predict the economic crisis, Nassim Taleb has no interest in listening to him talk about it now. The author of The Black Swan, a book about risk and probability theory, told National Journal's Matthew Cooper that he did not listen to Geithner, who preceded him at the Washington Ideas Forum.

Krugman: We're Going To Have To Default On Our Debt One Way Or Another Joe Weisenthal Sep. 25, 2010, 8:45 AM Some dour commentary from Paul Krugman this morning on the implications of our monster debt: So what will happen? In the end, I’d argue, what must happen is an effective default on a significant part of debt, one way or another. The default could be implicit, via a period of moderate inflation that reduces the real burden of debt; that’s how World War II cured the depression. Or, if not, we could see a gradual, painful process of individual...

SocGen's Dylan Grice Explains Why He's A Bear And Takes A Nasty Shot At Paul Krugman Gregory White Sep. 24, 2010, 1:53 PM Societe Generale's Dylan Grice has attacked those who label him pessimistic and Keynesian stalwarts in his latest Popular Delusions report. He defends himself and Societe Generale's other famed bear Albert Edwards writing (emphasis ours): We have no qualms about being thought of as extreme bears ... but the truth is that being realistic isn’t the same as being pessimistic and we’d bet on the prepared realists over the blind optimists every time. Grice than jumps to everyone's...