Austerity

Archive for Austerity

Developing Story: Leading Market Monetarist Rebukes Christian

Recently Scott Sumner focused his attention on 1946 (here and here), which (he claimed) was quite embarrassing for Keynesians. This is the opening of his second post, which gives a flavor of his analysis: Over at Econlog I did a post discussing the austerity of 1946. The Federal deficit swung from over 20% of GDP […]

Believing Is Seeing: Noah Smith Reagan Record Edition

Besides my contributions to the rehabilitation of the fine art of karaoke, one of my favorite contributions to humanity is the phrase, “Believing Is Seeing.” (It is self-affirming since many of you probably initially read the post title as, “Seeing Is Believing.”) Today’s example comes from a recent Noah Smith blog post, where Noah wrote: […]

I Call Krugman’s Bluff on European Austerity

I realize the novelty of this is wearing thin, but every once in a while I like to go look up the actual numbers when I know Krugman is full of it. This time, it concerns his offhand remarks concerning Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Daniel Drezner Invents the Most Bogus Austerity “Fact” in American History

Paul Krugman approvingly quotes from Daniel Drezner, who writes: One of the Beltway tribe’s greatest strengths is also one of its greatest weaknesses: groupthink. As I noted before, a Beltway consensus actually counts for something in the world of international policymaking. That does not mean that this consensus emerges from any solid analysis, however. For […]

Krugman: Austerity Is Bad, Unless It’s Taxing Rich People

Krugman is up in arms over the faux austerians: All along they’ve been worrying about the budget deficits in Europe, but when France goes and raises taxes on rich people, they complain about that too! The nerve of these people. Yet as usual, Krugman doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. In his zeal […]

Two Obvious Facts on the Debt Ceiling Showdown

Big “showdowns” in Washington are always hype, with both sides distorting the facts so that the hapless citizen–whether he watches Fox or CNN–focuses on irrelevant details and misses the big picture. When it comes to the recurring conflict over raising the debt ceiling, here are two obvious facts that explode just about everything that the […]

Landsburg Calls Out Latest Krugman Smear

I was starting to get mildly annoyed at Steve Landsburg, because he’s been very infrequently posting on his blog lately, and when he does, it’s math riddles, rather than economic analysis. But all is forgiven because in his latest two posts (here and here) Steve defends Heritage Foundation scholar Salim Furth–whom Steve apparently knew at […]