24 Sep 2019

Bloomberg Piece on the Contra Cruise

Contra Krugman 5 Comments

Here it is.

5 Responses to “Bloomberg Piece on the Contra Cruise”

  1. skylien says:

    Well at least they got one Nazi accusation in.. But aside from that it was remarkably neutral. I would guess this was largely thanks to Tom taking the wind out of her sails by telling her that he expects a hit piece coming from this. She couldn’t do that now anymore, could she?

  2. Rory says:

    “Episode 170 dissects a 2018 column in which Krugman argues that partisanship overrides even the most die-hard monetary hawk and that Republicans who objected to prime rate cuts by the Federal Reserve under President Obama were hypocritically changing their stripes under Trump. In response, Murphy rattles off Krugman’s reversals on debt and deficits over the years. In the George W. Bush years, he says, they mattered so much that Krugman changed his mortgage. In the Obama years, decidedly less so. Come Trump, deficits matter again. ‘So clearly,’ Murphy says, ‘he was a hypocrite there.’ (It’s worth noting that macroeconomic conditions have also varied significantly.) ”

    Lol, “worth noting”

    • Tel says:

      Macroeconomic conditions (by total coincidence) changed the moment Trump was elected.

      https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=p0Lw

      Purple line is when Obama was elected … Green line is when Trump was elected … Red line is slope of interest rates after the Fed began to hike.

      Now I happen to believe the Fed did the right thing because rates needed to come up, and we could go one step further and suggest that a few small rate hikes back around 2014 and 2015 would have made sense. It does leave the observer perhaps a touch suspicious that they might have done the right thing for the wrong reasons. You could forgive Trump for feeling like it all lines up surprisingly neatly.

      As for the debt, the debt-to-GDP ratio has been high, but flat (neither significantly increasing nor decreasing) for about the last 6 or 7 years. People should blame Obama (and Bush) for the debt, because that’s who contributed the most. Some might argue that Trump hasn’t fixed anything … fair enough, call me back when Krugman has finished fixing up the Japanese economy.

  3. Harold says:

    Good publicity for the cruise – sounds quite fun for nerdy types like myself, but probably not quite my theme.

    • skylien says:

      It for sure is. Though I guess a real hard hitting Hit Piece might have been better publicity.

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