Paul v. Paul – Paul Krugman Loses A Round To GOP Fiscal Conservative Paul Ryan

David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog ^ | Joseph Klein

[Michael van der Galien]

Paul Krugman claimed in his New York Times op -ed article today that Republicans have mischaracterized what has happened in Europe to justify their own austerity program of significant budget cuts to reduce the national debt rather than monetizing it. He complained that Congressman Paul Ryan, who delivered the Republicans’ response to President Obama’s spend-by-another-name State of the Union Address, had appropriated Europe’s debt problems on behalf of their own agenda, “never mind the fact that events in Europe actually point the other way.”

Krugman started losing the argument by the third paragraph of his column when he conceded that the Republicans were right about Greece, where dithering on dealing with their significant deficit problem led to their economic crisis. So score one for Paul Ryan and the GOP.

Krugman skipped entirely over Portugal, evidently because its economic plight also supports the Republicans’ thesis. Portugal has been in deficit since at least 1992, reaching a pre-housing bust high in 2005 of net borrowing by the government as a percentage of its gross domestic product – 6.1 percent. That was even more than Greece’s 5.2 percent for the same year. So score another point for Paul Ryan and the GOP.

And to spare Krugman further embarrassment, we won’t even get into other European countries such as France.

Suffice it to say that economist Robert Samuelson was much closer to the mark than Krugman in his Washington Post column:

Most European economies suffer from the ill effects of some combination of easy money, unsustainable social spending and big budget deficits.

[WOBBLY BOB]

http://www.cafepress.com/+today_i_feel_austere_bumper_sticker,101777712

[mo]

“Most European economies suffer from the ill effects of some combination of easy money, unsustainable social spending and big budget deficits.”

WRONGO!!

they suffer from the adolescent decision-making of the liberal mind.

basically one-step removed from the 3yr old functioning of the Islamo-fascist mind