Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

Sauce for the Goose Should Be Eaten By the Gander

…or whatever that saying is.

Paul Krugman two days ago, complaining about the hoaxster: “Apparently some people can’t find enough things to attack in what I actually say, so they’re busy creating fake quotes.”

Krugman today, on Jackson Hole:

John Maynard Keynes:

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

Ben Bernanke:

These are tempestuous times, but when the storm is long past the ocean will be flat again.

OK, not a literal quote, but pretty much what he said.

Careful, Dr. Krugman. People might pick up that fake Bernanke quote. As you yourself said about the hoax incident:

Also, the gullibility on display was impressive. All these right-wing hacks knew it must be a genuine quote, because they all knew that I’m a terrible person — based on past distortions!

And I’d be willing to bet that this fake quote will continue to pop up on right-wing blogs and talk radio for years to come.

OK kids, don’t flip out in the comments. I’m making a funny Friday post. Of course there’s a world of difference between pretending to be Paul Krugman, versus inventing a quotation for Ben Bernanke in order to mock him, but admitting in the same blog post that that’s what you did. But it’s a small world, like Mercury–not Jupiter.