26
Apr
2013
Krugman vs. Murphy: The Animated Series
So Noah Smith has a pretty funny post, casting Krugman as Voltron versus me (and a bunch of others) as the monotonous grab-bag of robot monsters.
On Facebook some people were offering cartoonish rejoinders. Joshua Ammons showed what a two face Krugman is:
while Naomi Jeys dug up her caricature of me from a few months ago:
And yes, I am mixing DC and Marvel in this post. No rulers!
Lulz! Nice. 🙂
Not to nag, but when is the great Austrian-MMT debate going down???
The wheels are in motion, Noah, don’t worry your Keynesian little head. We are on the cusp of announcing the details.
@Bob Murphy,
At least you should have enough respect for Noah Smith to get the order of words right: it’s “your little Keynesian head.”
@David: No, I think he got it right. Only my little head is Keynesian.
My big head thinks all of macro is a sham… 😉
@Bob: Excellent.
🙂
Heh you’re right David, it doesn’t sound right the way I wrote it…
And fully to nag, when is the great Austrian-MM debate going down? They miss me over at Sumner’s blog.
I miss your Austrian little head over at Sumner’s blog.
I was recently made aware of a poster on Sumner’s blog who, apparently, a lot of people there believe to be me in disguise.
Maybe one Austrian little head is enough for each non-Austrian econ blog.
I’ll bet you miss his Austrian little head.
Major Freedom you’re kidding right? You don’t have to hold your fire until Scott and I start our exchange.
Again, it’s my fault. I’m really swamped with work.
I believe his silence was part of Sumner’s price. Or at least a sweetener MF tossed in.
Yup, that’s it, it was a sweetener.
Since the original plan was for me to be silent starting January, as the debate was to be from January to March, once March came and went, I thought it would breaking the rules, then after more time passed, it got to a point where it would be arbitrary no matter when I posted again, so I just kept it up with not posting.
Oh well, no big deal.
MF, don’t you think Sumner has a fair and open mind? Isn’t it clear that he always incorporated the basic Austrian analysis that you so unselfishly provided to him into his analysis?
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=17692&cpage=1#comment-205619
No, the deal was, MF would not comment on Scott’s blog for the period of our exchanges. But since we didn’t start yet, MF is still free to comment over there.
Everyone knows Austrians don’t have heads. DeLong told me so.
You forgot KrugTron vs. KrugTron:
Debt in a Time of Zero
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/debt-in-a-time-of-zero/
Krugman sees inflation coming, too. Except he thinks the Fed can keep it from happening:
Ask an Austrian Economist
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/ask-an-austrian-economist/
Funny Schiff Radio: The Roach Motel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIOfbZX70k0
[Length: 1:10]
The Fed can’t keep inflation from coming unless they’re planning on fomenting wars to void debts to the dead, on defaulting, or on choosing to take the losses for themselves.
Anti-“austerity”/anti-“neoliberal” Brett Fiebiger says the system does not work like the MMTers say it does:
On page six the authors (Fullwiler, Kelton, Wray) comment on the constraint prohibiting the US Federal Reserve from buying Treasury bonds directly at auction that: “this is anything but ‘natural’ and cannot be useful for describing a general case for government debt operations.” There is no debate that all of the policy constraints imposed on the Treasury’s activities are arbitrary and should be abolished; however, it is no minor issue that the existence of these constraints invalidates the MMT description of how the State spends. @ page 28
For most economists the US federal government finances it spending primarily by acquiring bank money from agents outside of the domestic banking system. When one turns to Modern Money Theory (MMT), also known as neo-Chartalism, they find that the world is upside-down. Fiscal policy is said to be ‘really’ monetary policy. In most instances we are told that Treasury spending is financed by net/new money creation; with the receipts from taxes and bond sales unable to be spent, but instead ‘destroyed’. This claim defines MMT and is defective. While the federal government’s alleged
ability to print money via fiscal expenditures is said to occur without the “complicity of the central bank” as a financing agent (e.g. Wray; 2006b) this argument is often forwarded with the term ‘government’ used ambiguously and deceptively to denote both the Treasury and the central bank. Everyone accepts that the Federal Reserve finances its activities by issuing money ex nihilio (i.e. ‘out of nothing’) but the Treasury finances its spending by depleting deposit balances (ceteris paribus). That Treasury spending results in a credit to the accounts of private banks (a reserve) is taken as evidence of ‘the State’ emitting ‘money’. That the central bank also debits the Treasury’s account entails that the transaction is not money creation but a transfer of an existing deposit. The maths is one credit to private accounts plus one debit to the Treasury’s account equals zero money creation (not < 0). Money creation does not shift deposits from one account to another but creates them. MMT gets fiscal policy back-to-front by supposing that the Treasury expends funds without first procuring funds. The Treasury is not a bank and if it does not collect fiscal receipts it cannot spend because it has no ‘money’. @ page 2
http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_251-300/WP279.pdf
This page dealing with the issue of crony capitalism causing the healthcare mess addresses the issue of the public being duped by “economists” peddling nonsense regarding healthcare economics. It has this attack on Krugman (obviously him despite his name not being used), trying to explain why despite his nobel his views can be off base:
http://www.politicsdebunked.com/article-list/healthcare
“It can be difficult for the public to assess who to trust if they don’t know much about economics and business since even a subset of those with credentials like Nobel Prizes can sometimes be off target when they are writing on topics outside their niche. The Skeptics Dictionary says “The Nobel disease has been defined as ‘an affliction of certain Nobel Prize recipients which causes them to embrace strange or scientifically unsound ideas, usually later in life.'”. Some of them are creative and have many ideas, and a fraction of those ideas matched reality and led to a major contribution to their field. Those creative ideas may however only sometimes turn out to match reality and at other times lead them astray in other niches even within their general field. A trade economist may or may not do well writing about other areas of economics, and may or may not be biased towards pushing for favors for special interest groups he likes.
It is useful for the public to learn to be skeptical whether an “expert” may be pushing a favor for a special interest niche, or be pushing outdated concepts for emotional reasons like that “competition is always wasteful”. A nobel laureate economist recently suggested that some nobel prize winners are idiots.. a comment some suspect was driven by the fact that many view him that way for comments outside his niche. Some Nobel laureates have generalist mindsets (many won prizes for broad contributions to the field) and can apply their intellectual ability productively to many niches, while others are specialists whose recognized contributions are limited to a fairly narrow niche and they have trouble “seeing the forest for the trees” when confronting big picture issues. “