Paul Krugman, hypocrite extraordinaire, and willfully ignorant to the point of making himself a danger to others. I’m not being hyperbolic. I mean that literally. He is dangerous. His ideas harm people. And I have a pet peeve against hypocrisy. He criticizes another economist:
And it turns out that you were wrong. Worse, it looks as if your whole approach to monetary economics has been wrong all along.
We all make mistakes, but some mistakes are more consequential than others. And the Great Recession and aftermath have been a sort of acid test for economists, a chance to find out whether they actually know something or whether they’ve been deluding people (themselves included) about their alleged expertise.
Again, we all make mistakes. However, my own biggest mistakes have come either on issues where my models offered no guidance, like the economic impact of information technology, or in cases where I disregarded my models and went with my gut, like my overestimation of the impact of the Bush deficit. In the Great Recession and aftermath, however, I went with the models – and they worked! So I can rest easy (aside from the catastrophic state of the world); it looks as if I haven’t been faking it, after all.
Others have not fared so well.
The truth is, it turns out that Krugman was wrong. Worse, it looks as if his whole approach to monetary economics has been wrong all along. We all make mistakes, but some mistakes are more consequential than others, and the Great Recession indeed has been a sort of acid test for economists, and has shown that Paul Krugman has been deluding himself and others about his alleged expertise.
In listing his “own biggest mistakes”, he leaves out the fact that he advocated a Fed policy of lowering interest rates to create a housing bubble that precipitated the financial crisis and ‘Great Recession’ in the first place.
Whoops. Check out my book to learn more about that.
