Krugman Tries to Scare Up More Government Spending with 'Third Depression' Rhetoric

Newsbusters ^ | 6/28/10 | Jeff Poor

[calex59]

He didn't say it couldn't be done, he said the left wing communists in charge at the moment can't do a thing to stop it because they won't admit that their marxist methods are wrong.

Granted he didn't use those words but they were implied.

[REDWOOD99]

Krugman is covering his a$$. He called for Porkulus. He knows it did more harm than good. He thinks the only way to salvage his reputation is to claim it didn’t go far enough.

[StopObama2012]

Krugman should give Al Gore a massage.

[dalereed]

Cut off the stimulus and fire 75% of the government workers.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

It's funny that one of the arguments AGAINST the idea that labor is the most important part of an economy is this: “If that were true, then I could go in my back yard and dig holes all day and become rich.”

And I hate to say it and know it is sacrilege here on FR, but the Keynesians LOVE Milton Friedman who, as a monetarist, advocated Keynesian-type economics, that is, the printing and spending of fiat currency as THE source of economic growth.

Few of them know that toward the end of his life, even Friedman (who supported FDR's New Deal for most of the 30’s), even began to doubt this theory. He stated toward the end that monetarism could only work if the amount of newly created money were restricted to a percentage of GDP through an Amendment to the US Constitution.

I'm glad that Friedman started to “get it” at the end, but he didn't get it enough. Because government spending is 1/3 the formula for calculating GDP, all the government and mega-bankers would need to do to increase money printing next year is massively increase the obligation of the government to spend this year. Voila, GDP jumps a huge percentage and they would be able to print off that.

That said, I love Friedman's writing on capitalism and freedom and the interrelationship between capitalism and democracy. It just makes my head spin that he couldn't see that monetarism is rooted in central management of the economy, which is socialistic, not free-market or democratic.

[CommieCutter]

Pass this out if your friends haven’t seen it.

It’s probably floated around quite a bit on the FR.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1STWYCn-hc