No Pandering From Krugman
At this point we need an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of how many blog posts Paul Krugman has written, regarding the lessons we are to draw from the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco. But this one really amused me, when Krugman explained:
Notice, however, that the problem with the original wasn’t that it failed to convey the nuances. The problem was that it was just plain wrong — wrong about America after the war, wrong about what a debt-growth correlation means. (It turns out that there was other wrongness too, but that was enough).
So the moral of the story should not be, “Don’t take strong positions”. It should instead be “Don’t take a strong position that some people want to hear if the position isn’t supported by theory and evidence”. Or maybe, even more briefly, “Don’t pander”.
And the trouble with where I think [Tyler] Cowen, at least, is going is the apparent suggestion that everyone who develops a prominent public profile in economics has to do it by pandering. No, they don’t — and specifically, I don’t think that’s what I do. I’ve taken very strong positions over the years; I’ve been wrong on some occasions; but I can’t think of any cases where I took a stronger position than my actual beliefs warranted.
Yes, I imagine the following remarks (just off the top of my head) all flow straight from an IS-LM model:
==> November 2012: “The truth is that the modern GOP is deeply anti-intellectual, and has as its fundamental goal not just a rollback of the welfare state but a rollback of the Enlightenment.”
==> May 2010: “A funny thing has been happening on Capitol Hill: lately, the Democrats have started exceeding expectations. Health reform, pronounced dead by all the usual suspects, happened (all hail Nancy Pelosi, arguably the greatest Speaker ever.)”
==> August 2009: “That said, Ben Bernanke’s performance over the past year deserves praise, and there’s nobody I’d rather have in his position. Congratulations, Ben.”
You are endlessly confusing, Bob.
So am I correct to understand:
1. Krugman can’t post on anything not specifically modeled in an IS-LM model. Say, his politics or views on a colleague?
2. Having a political viewpoint and expressing it is “pandering”?
You try way too hard with Krugman. It would be pandering, I would have thought, if an analytic result is presented not because it comes from his model/theory but for pandering purposes. “I think the Republicans are jerks” has nothing at all to do with any kind of economic model so how could he be possibly pandering for feeling that way, and sharing his feelings?
Surely you don’t consider yourself as “pandering” when you express your religious or political views on here, even though you can’t derive those from the ERE or a dynamic equilibrium model of natural interest rates or an OLG? You’re just expressing political views.
Daniel –
Surely you jest.
Read those Krugman quotes again. How are you going to convince anyone that those are the words of an intellectual offering a serious political view / analysis as opposed to getting a rise out of the political left through an emotional appeal?
And yet, he has the gall to insinuate that Reinhart-Rogoff must be pandering when drawing conclusions from faulty data, but data nonetheless. Not every serious analysis/perspective needs to be derived from a model (I don’t think that was Bob’s point), but it sure seems that Krugman has a juvenile habit of dragging serious discussion through the mud of silly appeals to emotion. Those Krugman quotes and his pandering charge against R&R as exhibits A-D.
Well, I just read those Krugman quotes and I have to scratch my head about how those are pandering OR beyond rational defense. I’ll take a stab:
1. GOP = anti-intellectual: Hans Hoppe urges Austrians to “debate” as “simpletons”, repeatedly asking questions as a child would, as a way of somehow undermining “intellectualism”. Noah Smith did a nice critique on how simpleton questions can be used to make absurd positions sound almost credible. Meanwhile, anyone remember that Republican front-runner comment about how Obama’s wanting more college educated people makes him a, “snob”? And then there’s always the RR paper’s inept use of statistics, or how about the Paul Ryan budget whose self-scored plan was based on bringing unemployment to 3.5% (which you may or may not know would be incredibly inflationary on wages)….
2. By greatest Speaker ever, Krugman expects the reader to grasp that the job of the speaker is to pass their party’s agenda, and any monkey can get things passed with a 60% majority – what is hard is getting things passed with a slim majority, and then also producing something that can get through the senate, too. Being a “great Speaker” obviously would not be dependent on you *agreeing* with the person’s policies – but can anyone even think of a “great Republican Speaker” within the past 100 years? Newt Gingrich is the only one I can even think of, and you would be strained to make that case since the party turned on him for being unproductive.
3. If you think the FED should be eliminated it’s hard to imagine you have a credible position for judging whether or not Bernanke deserves praise or not, but if you are willing to at least be agnostic about the FED, one would think that Bernanke’s taking unprecedented initiative in the face of an unprecedented crisis to do what he had written a central bank ought in such a situation – is at least a little commendable….?
My initial reaction to most of DK’s statements is to scratch my head and think, “How can anyone possibly think like that?” But then I just go find something else he has written and realize that that’s just what he does.
One of the most ridiculous reactions to terrorism in Boston…
…is to point out that more people choke on chicken bones or drown in latrines or bleed out from paper cuts in a year than die in terrorist attacks.
http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2013/04/one-of-most-ridiculous-reactions-to.html
No need to put relative danger into perspective. Especially when the Keynesian State is hyping various dangers in order to induce acquiescence to a police state.
Speaking of pandering, your pandering in the form of “defend PK by default, then think about it later to see if it was is the right way to go”,
It’s not that PK “can’t” post non-IS/LM articles. It’s that he’s chastising Cowen for saying economists have to pander to get attention, whilst pandering himself.
Pander: To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses.
Is this not pandering?:
(I know, the Austrians will deny it — but it doesn’t matter what you say about their position, any comprehensible statement leads to angry claims that you don’t understand their depths). FOR SOME REASON [emphasis added], they would argue, wages are too high given the demand for labor… As regular readers know, I find this prima facie absurd — it’s essentially the claim THAT SOUP KITCHENS CAUSED THE GREAT DEPRESSION.
March 2013, Krugman said:
As I see it, the whole structural/classical/Austrian/supply-side/whatever side of this debate basically believes that the problem lies in the labor market. (I know, the Austrians will deny it — but it doesn’t matter what you say about their position, any comprehensible statement leads to angry claims that you don’t understand their depths). For some reason, they would argue, wages are too high given the demand for labor. Some of them accept the notion that it’s because of downward nominal wage rigidity; more, I think, believe that workers are being encouraged to hold out for unsustainable wages by moocher-friendly programs like food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability insurance, and whatever.
As regular readers know, I find this prima facie absurd — it’s essentially the claim that soup kitchens caused the Great Depression. But let’s stick with the economic logic for now.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/the-price-is-wrong/
The worst part of the post, I think, is this one,
Does he think that Reinhart & Rogoff took the position they did despite a lack of evidence? They took that position because that’s what they thought the evidence showed.
JFC wrote:
Does he think that Reinhart & Rogoff took the position they did despite a lack of evidence? They took that position because that’s what they thought the evidence showed.
No, Krugman is giving them the benefit of the doubt that they were evil, not that stupid.
Not to worry, Krugman is always respectful towards Rogoff.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/the-mendacity-of-dopes/
re: “Does he think that Reinhart & Rogoff took the position they did despite a lack of evidence? They took that position because that’s what they thought the evidence showed.”
I don’t think that’s quite right. In the paper, they were clear that the evidence was very up in the air as to the direction of causality. In the public eye they focused much more on the dangers of racking up debt and much less on the dangers of the recession for debt levels.
Granted, as Krugman has said numerous times at this point, that was a much bigger problem among pundits than R&R themselves.
Bob must have an excel spread sheet of Krugman quotes on his computer.
Any take on this, Bob?
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.kr/2013/04/krugtron-invincible.html
Does Krugman = Voltron?
Also, which cartoon/comic character would you call yourself?
I’m on it, John S.
Actually, he predicted the opposite, but only when President Bush was blowing out the budget, nor President Obama (fine nuance there).
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/opinion/a-fiscal-train-wreck.html
So we know what Krugman’s blazing sword is all about… pretty much just shifting ground when it suits and pretending the past never happened. Good enough to fool Noah.
Speaking of interest rates and private investors. Are there really any private investors buying US government bonds these days? I mean real private investors, not counting the Fed, not a shuffle amongst the government controlled megabanks and retirement funds. Who is actually voluntarily choosing to invest in US government bonds?
My understanding was that the debt-growth correlation was firm with or without Belgium (which was low weighted at any rate).
However, Krugman talks about “austerity” (whatever that is) but Reinhart-Rogoff was a bit more specific about discussing public debt. Does this mean Krugman has finally (implicitly) defined “austerity” as being directly linked to decreasing public debt? In which case, there has been no “austerity” in the USA, that’s for sure.
I don’t think Krugman panders. The quotes are all examples of stuff he says because he is a partisan rube not because he’s attempting to appeal to them. But neither do I think, as Krugman seems to, that his public profile hails from his freakish accuracy in predicting the astonishing economic success that Argentina is currently enjoying. For 90% of his readers he’s a famous economist because saying “See, famous liberal Paul Krugman agrees with me” doesn’t have the same effect.
Keynesian Blodget declares victory for Keynesian Krugman:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/economic-argument-over-paul-krugman-won-150247189.html?vp=1
I just read that one too. Not sure why.