Free Republic

As we watch the Eurozone struggle with its financial challenges Keynesians keep telling us the solution to our economic problems is to spend more money, to pile up bigger debts. A week and a half ago, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of more than half of the Eurozone's countries, and the failure of those policies should be very obvious by now. Solving the Greek debt crisis hit yet another snag on Sunday afternoon. New aid for Greece from the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank would have relied on private bondholders “voluntarily” agreeing to a 50...

How goes the state of the union? Well, the state of the economy remains terrible. Three years after President Obama’s inauguration and two and a half years since the official end of the recession, unemployment remains painfully high. But there are reasons to think that we’re finally on the (slow) road to better times. And we wouldn’t be on that road if Mr. Obama had given in to Republican demands that he slash spending, or the Federal Reserve had given in to Republican demands that it tighten money. Why am I letting a bit of optimism break through the clouds?...

Paul Krugman has told us that awful stories about government-run healthcare in Britain “are false.” I guess this means that the media must be dominated by conservative liars, since we keep getting reports about substandard care and needless deaths (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). And the Boston Globe and Associated Press must be part of this vast right-wing conspiracy, because the Globe just ran an AP report exposing more problems in England. Here is an excerpt. When David Evans needed a hernia operation, the 69-year-old farmer became so alarmed by the long wait that he used an ultrasound machine for pregnant sheep on...

At Power Line, Steve Hayward spots Paul Krugman phoning in his periodic “Keynes Was Right” column, and asks: I wonder if Krugman also credits Keynes’s views on Jews, which British blogger Damian Thompson of The Telegraph brings to our attention. From Keynes’s diary: [Jews] have in them deep-rooted instincts that are antagonistic and therefore repulsive to the European, and their presence among us is a living example of the insurmountable difficulties that exist in merging race characteristics, in making cats love dogs … It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning factcheck website PolitiFact has voted on the biggest lie of 2011, and the winner is - "Republicans voted to end Medicare." Specifically honing in on House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, Democrats and liberal media types spewed erroneous claims over House Republicans' budget plan, which essentially resulted in wacky leftist claims like, "Republicans want to leave frail old 90-year-old grandma to die on her kitchen floor." In reality, Ryan's plan would purportedly deflate the tumultuous debt mountain - that is, the feds' spendthrift hell hole - by dispersing government subsidies for, and privatizing, Medicare for those...

Benefiting from a hint from an article titled "Is Harry Potter Making You Poorer?", written by my colleague Dr. John Goodman, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, I've come up with an explanation and a way to end income inequality in America, possibly around the world.

This is the way the euro ends — not with a bang but with bunga bunga. Not long ago, European leaders were insisting that Greece could and should stay on the euro while paying its debts in full. Now, with Italy falling off a cliff, it’s hard to see how the euro can survive at all. But what’s the meaning of the eurodebacle? As always happens when disaster strikes, there’s a rush by ideologues to claim that the disaster vindicates their views. So it’s time to start debunking. First things first: The attempt to create a common European currency was...

Paul Krugman may be a Nobel Prize–winning economist, but his most recent column in the New York Times, which condemns hydraulic fracturing and praises solar energy, displays an astounding disinterest in numbers and woeful ignorance of the facts. Without providing any sources, Krugman writes, “We know that [fracturing] produces toxic (and radioactive) wastewater that contaminates drinking water; there is reason to suspect, despite industry denials, that it also contaminates groundwater.” Huh? Over the past 60 years, the process of hydraulic fracturing has been used more than 1 million times on oil and gas wells here in the U.S. If fracturing...

Late last month, as America was ignoring the 24th anniversary of the Senate's rejection of conservative jurist Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, something extraordinary happened: New York Times columnist Joe Nocera admitted the borking of Judge Bork spawned today's toxic political culture. "(R)arely has a failed nominee had the pedigree — and intellectual firepower — of Bork," Mr. Nocera wrote. Judge Bork held conservative opinions, but none could be "fairly characterized as extreme." That didn't deter then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who denounced "'Robert Bork's America' as a place 'in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks...

In a recent post I wrote: The evidence for the Keynesian worldview is very mixed. Most economists come down in favor or against it because of their prior ideological beliefs. Krugman is a Keynesian because he wants bigger government. IÂ’m an anti-Keynesian because I want smaller government. Both of us can find evidence for our worldviews. Whose evidence is better? IÂ’m not sure itÂ’s a meaningful question. My empirical points about Keynesianism wonÂ’t convince Krugman. His point donÂ’t convince me. I am not saying that we will never get any kind of decisive evidence on the question. IÂ’m saying...

Krugman should probably just keep quiet on Solyndra from now on Paul Krugman, Pet of Big Government By Institute for Energy Research Friday, September 30, 2011 The proponents of massive government subsidies to “green” energy have a huge problem on their hands. The Solyndra scandal is just so absurd, and the video footage of President Obama and Vice President Biden is just so hilarious, that only the most ideological can fail to smell a rat. The reader will not be surprised, then, to learn that Paul Krugman, from his perch at the New York Times, thinks there’s nothing to see...

The good news: After spending a year and a half talking about deficits, deficits, deficits when we should have been talking about jobs, job, jobs we’re finally back to discussing the right issue. The bad news: Republicans, aided and abetted by many conservative policy intellectuals, are fixated on a view about what’s blocking job creation that fits their prejudices and serves the interests of their wealthy backers, but bears no relationship to reality. Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you’ll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so?...

This week President Obama said the obvious: that wealthy Americans, many of whom pay remarkably little in taxes, should bear part of the cost of reducing the long-run budget deficit. And Republicans like Representative Paul Ryan responded with shrieks of “class warfare.” It was, of course, nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it’s people like Mr. Ryan, who want to exempt the very rich from bearing any of the burden of making our finances sustainable, who are waging class war. As background, it helps to know what has been happening to incomes over the past three decades. Detailed estimates...

Doctors used to believe that by draining a patient’s blood they could purge the evil “humors” that were thought to cause disease. In reality, of course, all their bloodletting did was make the patient weaker, and more likely to succumb. Fortunately, physicians no longer believe that bleeding the sick will make them healthy. Unfortunately, many of the makers of economic policy still do. And economic bloodletting isn’t just inflicting vast pain; it’s starting to undermine our long-run growth prospects. Some background: For the past year and a half, policy discourse in both Europe and the United States has been dominated...

RUSH: George Bush yesterday, the 9/11 memorials. You know, a friend of mine observed this. What did Obama do? Obama went to a soup kitchen, 9/11, a day of service, as though we've got something to apologize for, for what happened on 9/11. A friend of mine observes Obama and Bloomberg both acted like it was a natural disaster. Bush, George W. Bush, who, by the way, stands tall in retrospect. Ten years, not one attack. Great statesmanship. If somebody told me today they wanted to put Bush's face on Mount Rushmore, I'd be in there supporting it. I saw...

Princeton Professor Paul Krugman's ugly New York Times blog on the post 9/11 environment stopped short of accusing Pres. Bush of masterminding the attacks, but it did accuse Bush and his associates of cashing in on the tragedy, of being "fake heroes." If nothing else, the timing was hateful – the very week when the former President was called on to emerge from relative obscurity to lend gravity to the memorial ceremonies. Krugman's hate cannot hold a candle to retired MIT professor, and radical anti-American, Noam Chomsky's article in Al Jazeera. Chomsky goes a step further to condemn the US...

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman upset a lot of people with his Sunday blog post in which he claimed “the memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned” by the likes of George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed his outrage by canceling his subscription to the publication. “The Five” co-host and “Red Eye” host Greg Gutfeld condemned Krugman’s article on Monday’s broadcast of “The Five.” “So, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman delivered the odious piece of drivel on the attack,” Gutfeld said. “The headline is ‘Years of...

On this solemn commemorative day, we at NewsBusters have made a point of holding our rhetorical fire against liberals as a gesture of respect to those who lost their lives that day and subsequently. There is much we could say and, starting tomorrow, will say. An exception has to be made though for one Paul Krugman, who seems, earlier life, to have been a decent and civilized person. Since he began writing a column for the New York Times, however, Krugman has experienced a veritable descent into madness, principally due to Bush Derangement Syndrome. Today, Krugman decided to proudly parade...

There are a lot of curse words coming to mind having read Paul Krugman's editorial in today's (Sept. 11) NY Times. For now I'll just call him a very despicable, partisan, hypocritical, and morally bankrupt excuse for a human being. Here is just a part of this atrocity of a piece -- for which he has deliberately disallowed comments from online readers: What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a...

Late this week, President Obama stunned the EPA and environmentalists by dropping plans to tighten Bush-era ozone standards. His logic? Tighter rules would increase the "regulatory burden" that Republicans blame for the crappy economy. Paul Krugman says this is yet another example of Obama wimping out in the hopes that Republicans will stop attacking him. He also argues that the move will actually hurt the economy. Why will not tightening ozone rules hurt the economy? Because tighter rules, Krugman argues, would have forced companies to spend money to improve their pollution control equipment. This spending would have boosted the revenue...

It’s a recurring fantasy for left wing academics fascinated by central planning that in cyclical downturns government should act decisively on a scale equivalent to war. Nobel Prize recipient Paul Krugman exemplifies this intellectual longing to steer our lives. Krugman effortlessly slides into a war footing espousing intervention comparable to America’s crusade against Hitler, who, take note, centrally planned an economy himself: “World War II is the great natural experiment in the effects of large increases in government spending, and as such has always served as an important positive example for those of us who favor an activist approach to...

Oh those whacky liberals. On Sunday's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," New York Times columnist - and, ahem, Nobel laureate - Paul Krugman actually advocated space aliens attack earth thereby requiring a massive defense buildup by the United States that would stimulate the economy (video follows with transcript and commentary): KENNETH ROGOFF, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Infrastructure spending, if it were well-spent, that's great. I'm all for that. I'd borrow for that, assuming we're not paying Boston Big Dig kind of prices for the infrastructure. FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: But even if you were, wouldn't John Maynard Keynes say that if you...

Paul Krugman's latest NYT column, "The President Surrenders", already has an FR thread, but I want to call attention to the last paragraph: "What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t." Paul Krugman and the NYT believe our political system, with its checks and balances, should be gutted when it produces results they disfavor. Who are the "extremists"?

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system. And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are. No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure...

The EU summit hammered out yet another temporary fix today, albeit a complicated one. The proposal involves the creation of a "European Monetary Fund" and it will require changes to the Maastricht Treaty. Paul Krugman does not like the austerity measures and ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet had to eat his words regarding defaults and acceptance of defaulted bonds as collateral. German taxpayers may potentially be screwed big time on this bailout. Can this agreement hold together? Before deciding let's look at some details. "European Monetary Fund" Created In what French President Nicolas Sarkozy likens to a "European Monetary Fund", EU...

Earlier this week, New York Times columnist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman argued that folks on the Left were better able to accurately reiterate competing (ie conservative or libertarian) economic and political positions than, say, the Right could outline the liberal position. We will leave aside issues we might have with a Nobel Prize winning economist making such sweeping statements based on absolutely no facts. To a large extent, KrugmanÂ’s conceit is just part and parcel of the liberal hubris that they are smarter, better educated, and more empathetic than their political opponents (a conceit that is actually philosophically necessary...

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...

Christiane Amanpour’s eyes darted back and forth in fear, and her mouth twisted in disgust, because she could see where this was going. A guest on her Sunday-morning political talk show, ABC’s This Week, was getting dangerously overexcited, and something very regrettable was about to happen. She could see that he was winding himself up as he talked about how a recent deficit-reduction panel hadn’t been “brave enough� — because it failed to endorse the idea of expert panels that would determine what medical services government-funded care wouldn’t pay for. When Obamacare was still being debated in Congress, Sarah Palin...

In times when there are no good alternatives, tradeoffs can become an acceptance of an increase in one bad thing in order to affect a decrease in another bad thing seen as being the greater evil.  Progressives think the central tradeoff right now is between the federal deficit and unemployment, and they believe we must accept an increase in the deficit in order to bring down unemployment.New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks the deficit is the lesser of our two evils.  In column after column he has urged that unemployment be tackled first and the deficit later.  On...

In bemoaning the pain of fiscal responsibility, says Newsweek’s Niall Ferguson, the Democrats show they still haven't learned the lessons of Europe. To judge by media coverage, President Obama's whistle-stop European tour was largely recreational. In Dublin he reenacted the time-honored tradition of discovering his Irish roots. In London he took part in what felt like Royal Wedding: The Sequel. Meanwhile, in Washington, business went on as usual. The government continued borrowing money despite having breached its legal debt ceiling. Senate Democrats voted down Paul Ryan's plan to reduce the cost of Medicare, despite having no credible plan of their...

I’ve been getting questions about what happens when the Fed wraps up QE2 — related especially to Bill Gross’s public view that interest rates will shoot up. This is related to the question of the extent to which QE2 has kept interest rates low. So a quick exposition of my theoretical position, which also happens to be more or less standard economics.So: I basically think of asset prices in a Tobin-type stock equilibrium framework (pdf). People make portfolio choices, allocating their wealth among bonds, stocks, etc.. Asset prices – including the famous “q� – rise and fall to match...

Many commentators swooned earlier this week after House Republicans, led by the Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan, unveiled their budget proposals. They lavished praise on Mr. Ryan, asserting that his plan set a new standard of fiscal seriousness. Well, they should have waited until people who know how to read budget numbers had a chance to study the proposal. For the G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless. How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways — or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in...

Paul Krugman doesn’t read anything on the “right”: Some have asked if there aren’t conservative sites I read regularly. Well, no. I will read anything I’ve been informed about that’s either interesting or revealing; but I don’t know of any economics or politics sites on that side that regularly provide analysis or information I need to take seriously. I know we’re supposed to pretend that both sides always have a point; but the truth is that most of the time they don’t. The parties are not equally irresponsible; Rachel Maddow isn’t Glenn Beck; and a conservative blog, almost by definition,...

Or so he claims: Some have asked if there arenÂ’t conservative sites I read regularly. Well, no. I will read anything IÂ’ve been informed about thatÂ’s either interesting or revealing; but I donÂ’t know of any economics or politics sites on that side that regularly provide analysis or information I need to take seriously. I know weÂ’re supposed to pretend that both sides always have a point; but the truth is that most of the time they donÂ’t. The parties are not equally irresponsible; Rachel Maddow isnÂ’t Glenn Beck; and a conservative blog, almost by definition, is a blog...

One reason liberals get so excited about the protests and teacher strikes in Wisconsin is that they see this as a battle to preserve the power of the working man -- a noble cause and one many liberals take very seriously. If you squint just right, you can see it their way: Republicans are fighting to take away collective bargaining rights from unions, who are responding with protest and solidarity. Of course, this blurs the crucial distinction between private-sector unions and government-sector unions. When it comes to stubbornly blurring economic reality so as to demonize your political rivals, you can...

For those who follow economic commentary, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is known as the most prominent advocate of big government solutions to almost any economic malady, real or perceived. Whatever bad, historically discredited economic concept exists, from "stimulus" spending to currency devaluation to tax rate increases to reduce the deficits caused by all the government spending he supports, Krugman is always there to defend each as public intellectualism's walking, talking embodiment of that which won't, and hasn't worked. The conspiratorially minded among us might say that Krugman is a Republican mole, placed inside the upper reaches of American...

For the second time in eight days, a prominent liberal has blamed the developing crisis in Egypt on global warming. Following in the footsteps of climate alarmist extraordinaire Joe Romm Monday was New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on...

Return to the Article January 29, 2011The 'Your Money Is Not Yours' CrowdBy Bill Costello Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times, recently criticized those who "see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty" and who believe "that people have a right to keep what they earn." One branch of American politics shares Krugman's view that the money you earn -- the material manifestation of your mental and physical labor -- is not yours.  It belongs to the government. This view was recently on display when some referred to the extension of the Bush tax rates...

Never to let a "good crisis go to waste" (i.e., as an excuse to transfer more power and control to federal politicians and bureaucrats), thehill.com reports (my emphasis) that mere hours since the Arizona mass murders: "Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) reportedly plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that COULD BE PERCEIVED as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress." "Perceived"? "Could be"? And who gets the arbitrary, unbridled power to "perceive" what "could be" threatening? Him? Or, some other politician, bureaucrat, or board of self-annointed...

In fact Krugman actually, if not witlessly, brings up a Department of Homeland Security Report that only points to one of the reason's for the Country's disillusionment with the Obama Administration in the first place. The Department of Homeland Security's document (which was quickly recanted) to which Krugman refers warned of right-wing extremist groups and the potential for violence--which was a bellwether event that forged a collective Conservative resolve against both Obama and the now-observed ideological excessiveness of his governance. Vitriolic rhetoric? Well, the answer to the question of continuous attacks, threats, aggressive language and "the current state of American...

On Wednesday, President Obama called on Americans to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.” Those were beautiful words; they spoke to our desire for reconciliation. But the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics...

The surest way to become a folk hero on the Hard Left is to kill a human being. As Mumia Abu-Jamal, Joe Hill and Huey Newton could have attested, murder trumps even treason for establishing radical credentials. You certainly don’t get invitations to deliver commencement addresses, become the subject of folk songs, or hang with the likes of Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda by protesting a traffic ticket. Taking the life of another person elevates a radical to cause celebre status like nothing else can. So why all the carping about “violent rhetoric” from people wearing “Che” T-shirts and imploring...

Fred Phelps, the crazy leader of the Westboro Baptist Church cult, has become infamous for blaming any bad event on the evils of homosexuality. Earthquake in Haiti? Blame the gays. Combat troop deaths in Iraq? Ditto. Phelps' logic works thusly: God literally hates people who engage in homosexual conduct and unless societies take the steps to ban and punish such action, God is going to destroy them. Any natural disaster or mass murder is, accordingly, the will of God being carried out on the "sinners" who refuse to listen. If that type of "logic" sounds familiar, it should be. It's...

Searching For Answers: From New York newspaper columnists to an Illinois senator, the liberal left is blaming the Tea Party and conservative stars for the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman. How about blaming the communist and Nazi-loving shooter? It didn't take long for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for the shooting outside a Tucson supermarket that seriously injured Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords and left six others, including a 9-year-old, dead. Writing Saturday, as the shooting was still fresh and little was known of the shooter or the circumstances, Krugman spoke of a...

Within hours of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, lunatic “economist” Paul Krugman raced to put up a blog post blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the attack. “For those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target,” said Krugman, “the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that ‘the whole Tea Party’ was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous ‘crosshairs’ list.” Somehow the...

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, blamed the Fox News Channel for today’s shooting spree that left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded and four others slain. He told a local New Jersey paper shortly after the incident, "There's an aura of hate and elected politicians feed it, certain people on Fox News feed it.”He continued: "I'm sitting here talking to you and my Blackberry's sending alerts that say 'take caution.' Take caution? I'm in the United States of America!" Pascrell represents the city of Paterson.  Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman blamed conservative media titans Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck...

What a disgrace. Paul Krugman immediately attacked Republicans today after the “assassination attempt” by Arizona shooter Jared Loughner.Outrageous! If The New York Times was a respectable news organization Krugman would be reprimanded or fired. Krugman blamed the GOP at his page on The New York Times: Assassination Attempt In Arizona¶A Democratic Congresswoman has been shot in the head; another dozen were also shot.¶We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able...

Markos Moulitsas, doing the “Right Wingers Are Responsible for This Violent Act!”Naturally, putting a bulls eye on someone isn’t actually violent rhetoric. Stuff like this is just invoked by soulless ghouls to make a cheap political point. If you want actual violent rhetoric, you’d have to to go . . . well, Kos himself: That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. [sic] They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them. Now that’s violent...

Paul Krugman has noticed the looming budget crisis in the state of Texas, and he's all over it.Specifically, he is pointing out that the Republican utopia of low regulation, low taxes, pro-business policies, and tough, conservative spending decisions is no panacea--either for the state's financial condition or for the state's citizens.Despite these policies, Texas is as broke as, well, New York, with a huge structural budget deficit to fill. And it already has very low education spending per pupil and a very high percentage of residents without health insurance.And now Texas's two-year budget review is coming up, so there will...

Paul Krugman has actually let forth with an unusual bout of curiosity recently, as opposed to his usual bouts of incrementally flawed certainty. In this case titled "When Zombies Win", Krugman has been musing over exactly what might puzzle historians the most about the 2008-2010 period. Our initial answer would be a large proportion of Krugman's opinion columns for starters. But Krugman seems to alternatively believe that the thing which will puzzle historians will be the "strange triumph of free-market fundamentalists" whose ideas, according to Krugman, have failed. Not only that, we free-marketers have also been, apparently to Krugman, wrong...