Ridiculed By Americans Everywhere, Krugman Now Threatens, Gives Unsolicited Advice To Germany, Pisses Entire Nation Off
“These days it’s hard being a religious fanatic, also known as a Keynesian. It is even harder when you are Paul Krugman (sadly, the cornerstone of NYT’s entire paywall strategy), and everyone in your own country is already sick and tired of, and openly ignores your constant appeals to drown the world in new and record amounts of debt, thus ignoring your appeals with impunity. So what do you do when nobody takes you seriously for thousands of miles around? Why you go even further - to the core of Europe in fact… where you proceed to threaten, badger, insult and give your unsolicited advice to anyone that listens. That “unlucky soul” in this case happens to be Germany daily Handeslbatt, which ran an interview with the “economist” in which Krugman stick not a foot, but an entire SS-20nuclear warhead armed ICBM, in his mouth. And since Krugman is unaware, preaching the benefits of record deficit spending in Germany, ever since that little experiment in hyperinflation known as the Weimar Republic, tends to generate adverse reactions. Which is precisely what happened in this case. Luckily, now Krugman is a persona non grata in at least one country. Unfortunately, it is not the one in which his trite platitudes and melancholic remembrances of the golden days of Greenspan’s credit bubble are still published on a daily basis.”
Follow the link above for the full article, well worth the read.
The Germans must think that all individuals associated with the US govenrment and central bank (With the usual exception of Ron Paul) are a bunch of fricken idiots. Otherwise telling them stupidity like not stimulating the economy and less government spending will cause the rise of totalitarian fascism when every German knows that the exact opposite is true. Of course Merkel and her ilk are trained politicians who understand not to laugh at the insanity of the rest of the world, but the German media does not have to do the same constraint.
From all indications, Germany has been growing very anti-Keynesian, and is returning to the pro-market roots of various German economists.
Arguably it may always have been so - West Germany was on the gold standard during years when US saw an outflow of gold to the other countries. They don’t trust the garbage of modern Anglo-American economics.
Heh, its funny how the intelligensia in the US will often say that “Europe is so far ahead of the US [referring to Social programs and such]”. I guess they were right; Europe is finally coming out of the valley of Social Democracy just as we are plunging into it.
No way. The fact that the European governments have decided to manage the economy in a better way (or under a more longer term outlook) than the USA government does not mean that things are getting any better here.
The EU is a monster and grows in size an power every year. Nobody talks about closing the ECB, and because it has been somewhat more responsable it will be praised and respected. Last week the EU aproved a law that allowed the police to detain anyone with “radical opinions” (literally) and even send him to some rehabilitation system.
It’s not that Europe is moving out of social democracy.
It’s just that European governments are not trying to run businesses like third-party owners like American bureaucrats do - at least in Germany and Scandinavia.
France and Britain are much worse regulatory nightmares than US, of course.
Germany, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden understand that they need their businesses earning fat money for the taxes they earn for their social democracy, which is why they increasingly leave businesses alone. Denmark itself is one of the most free market nations in the world, while still having high taxes.
On a historical perspective, this sort of third-party calling-the-shots on businesses through industrial policy has been a much more notorious aspect of American government than most European ones.
Here’s another article, why isn’t anyone making a big deal out of this? It seems like a pretty messed up initiative to me as the government of course gets to define “radical” so it amounts to giving the state the power to police ideas…
I can see defenders of this program stating that it is targeting ‘violent radicals’ only, under the all-encompassing veil of anti-terrorism. Yet in this same document (P. 6) they explicity include: