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Charlie Stross, Paul Krugman Discuss the Future
Peripatetic Entrepreneur writes "At the Science Fiction World Convention in Montreal, Hugo Award winning author Charlie Stross and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman opened the show with a 75-minute, wide-ranging conversation on stage. From flying cars to decoding the genome of the Pacific Ocean to vat-grown Long Pig, it's all there. Audio is also available — video soon."
Mmmm, Long Pig! Tastes just like chicken!
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Krugman is no psychic. He didn't exactly see the financial meltdown coming in advance, so hearing him discuss the future has to be taken with a grain of salt.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
poof. gone.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Krugman theorizes that the Third World could develop by providing long term stabilized individual and group labor contracts to multinational corporations. This has the chance to restore profitability and competitiveness while incentivizing labor through different reward systems, like food and shelter, since the money supply is so irrationally tightened in the wake of the AIG mess.
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Krugman and Stross Transcript
Paul Krugman (PK). Nobel Prize winning economist and columnist for the New York Times.
Charlie Stross (CS). Hugo-winning science fiction author.
Anticipation World Con, Montreal, Quebec
August 6, 2009
Transcription by Edwin Steussy, Apogee Communications. Please send corrections to ed âoeatâ my last name âoedotâ com.
CS: Good evening, weâ(TM)re very pleased to be here and thank you very much for inviting us to talk.
PK: Yeah, this is different for me, but it should be a lot of fun. ⦠(Set up problems) ⦠What do you really think the world is going to look like, say, 30 years from now?
CS: Ummm, thereâ(TM)s a very simple answer to that and a misleading one, I think, and the simple answer is unless we are really, really unlucky the world in about 30 years time is going to look more complex. By really, really unlucky â" nuclear war, major plagues or similar â" the world in 30 years time after that is going to look a lot simpler, though not a good way.
PK: Right. Obviously what Iâ(TM)m thinking about is the technology. Given my perspective â" I was thinking about his coming up â" and thinking that â" maybe it was just my age or something, but things donâ(TM)t seem to have changed as much in the last 30 years as myself as a sci-fi reader would have expected them to. And I donâ(TM)t know if Iâ(TM)m missing something â" kinda that perspective.
CS: I think things have changed a lot in the last 30 years, but not in the direction that somebody 30 years ago would have expected. The 20th Century, and going back to the 19th Century, the real visible vector of change technologically was transportation speeds. You go back to 1809 and to get across the English Home Counties, the areas around London, you go via stagecoach and it would take you a couple of days to cross them, it would cost you probably about a monthâ(TM)s wages and cause you considerable discomfort. 2009, it costs about the same amount of money, it takes about the same time and the same amount of discomfort to get from here to New Zealand. The whole world has shrunk to the scale of the English Home Counties in 1809 over about two centuries. At the same time weâ(TM)ve gotten used to performance improvements in speed. Thereâ(TM)s this weird sort of political thing in the early 20th Century called air-mindedness. Everybody knew that flight was going to be the next really important technological revolution. They were all trying to find ways of making money from it or using it to demonstrate how important and modern and with-it they were and how on the cutting edge they were â" sort of like computers today with politicians. Who will never pass up a photo-op with a computer even if they donâ(TM)t even know how to type. Now the whole air-mindedness thing, the problem we ran into was ⦠it was sigmoid curve â" we had a slow start, a very rapid period of improvements where we went at about 20 years from biplanes to supersonic jets. And then the curve stopped going up â" it flattened off. And the reason it flattened off is all to do with energy. To go much faster, you need more and more energy inputs. Itâ(TM)s not a linear input increase but virtually an exponential one. We hit a point at which chemical propulsion wouldnâ(TM)t send us any faster. And for a variety of reasons including both engineering and politics, nuclear power wasnâ(TM)t an acceptable answer. And airliners today are slower than they were 20 years ago. However, the big difference is that everyone and his dog flies today, whereas 20 years ago, or 40 years ago more accurately, thatâ(TM)s where the term jet-set came from, its because those were the people who could afford to fly long distances.
PK: And yet, let me press on. What I kind of expected. Let me show my age here. What you came out believing if you went to the New Yorkâ(TM)s World Fair in 1964 w
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You can't honestly expect that anyone on /. is going to read this thing??? It's more than a few paragraphs. We need sound bites and information nuggets. Find me an RSS feed.
That's because the "financial meltdown" is an inherent property of the system... everyone sprints to the middle arena for the food and a bloody mess ensues when the food runs out. It doesn't need prediction because we already KNOW it is going to happen over and over and over again.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Save the slashdotting
http://cluebytwelve.net.nyud.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06-24.mp3 (13mb)
http://cluebytwelve.net.nyud.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06-lo.mp3 (8.7mb)
http://cluebytwelve.net.nyud.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06.mp3 (4.3mb)
http://cluebytwelve.net.nyud.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06hi.mp3 (52mb)
Yeah. Krugman tell also that the economic crisis is over. But it seems that this is just another bubble and when the governments spending will end, the economy will be hit hard. In the meantime, Krugman has his time of glory.
neither did anyone investing in the market that lost any money. the ability to predict market crashes has little to do with predicting things over the long term. the market recovers and people move on. the real reason why predictions of the future are more often wrong than not is because people have a tendency to expect what they think is interesting [flying cars] rather than anything of practical use. if you want an accurate prediction make one that is the result of several small practical steps away from what exists now. for example; I predict that hybrid cars [or some offshoot of them] will make up a majority of cars within 50 years. not a very exciting prediction but it's probably more accurate than expecting flying cars any time soon.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Krugman is of the opinion that the economic crisis will come back when the government spending is done. You're thinking of Jim Cramer who thinks it's over.
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10569659/1/cramers-mad-money-recap-cramer-vs-krugman-update-1.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA
Sorry, don't have the original article by Krugman, don't really follow him, but the relevant part is at the beginning.
"He [Cramer] refuted an article by noted New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who argued the economy is slowly getting worse.
According to Krugman and others skeptical of the market's recent rally, the economy is simply being propped up by government spending and will return to March lows as that spending wanes. But Cramer asked his viewers pointedly, 'Are things slowing getting worse for you?'"
It seems "experts" in economics, uh, aren't. At least not all the time.
To fight this recession the Fed needsâ¦soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html Krugman and the Keynesian economists don't predict economic downturns, they create them. They believe that "bad" money in the short term is better than "good" money and say that in the long term we are all dead. Krugman's prize wasn't for being a good economist but for his mathematical model much like John Nash. Personally after reading Krugman the past two years I believe he is also just as nuts.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
75 minutes and no discussion of the change in government? In the future, governments will be open sourced
Hubris. He has it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPd2i4Jshs
You would think an economist would have an understanding of stats and say "I'm sorry, I don't have a large enough sample for what I had in mind," and abort the experiment.
He didn't exactly see the financial meltdown coming in advance
He was pointing out back in September of 2007 (and perhaps earlier - I didn't check any further) that housing prices were far too high with respect to historical price-rent levels and that a reckoning was coming. You're right, he didn't predict the collapse - he just predicted the precursor and had been warning about the deregulation that turned it into a disaster.
That is all.
Woohoo after the bubble has started to deflate the Keynesian morons notice what they have created!
Krugman is no psychic. He didn't exactly see the financial meltdown coming in advance...
That's not fair. Krugman predicted 11 of the last 3 recessions.
The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist. He tireless argues for greater and greater interventions in the marketplace (that is, he's a statist) without taking into account the secondary effects of those interventions because that would contradict his world view. He's also very popular in Washington :-).
Science fiction goes nowhere if the government isn't an evil overlord. Deal with it.
That's not fair. Krugman predicted 11 of the last 3 recessions.
You should be more careful. Mixing binary and decimal notation can really confuse some people.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPd2i4Jshs
I don't think the future of entertainment will be so different than it is today, or even 500 years ago. The medium may change, but that's really about it. Humans like to be entertained, period. Here's an interesting new development in 'moderntainment'; http://us.dubli.com/The-New-York-Spygame__3_2913?gmt=-60 which I think could really indicate how people are starting to think about their space and entertainment, and how to make the most of something that even a few years ago was pretty much the preserve of novels and OTT Hollywood shows. Food for thought, I think.
actually, everyone who was in the market knew it was a bubble. the only thing they didn't know was when it would burst. everyone stays in hoping to cash out before it bursts. anyone who was predicting that housing wasn't a bubble was either lying or he is a charlatan.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Especially considering his "solution" to the meltdown is more of what brought it on in the first place.
You, sir, are smoking crack.
Of all the economists to go after for having poor "prognostication skills" you couldn't have picked anyone worse, except for maybe Nuriel Roubini. The fact is that Krugman called the bubble in at least May 2005, warned of disastrous consequences in August of that year, and continued to do so all the way to when the shit hit the fan. From his August 8 2005 piece:
"If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at a very nasty scene, in which both construction and consumer spending would plunge, pushing the economy right back into recession. That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble."
This is when Fox, CNBC, and the Fed were rah-rahing about how everything was fine and shouting down those who'd voice otherwise.
It was worse than even he suspected, as the bubble continued to grow, he continued to point it out. For anyone who read his column and blog in the years leading up to this clusterfuck it was quite clear that Krugman had a very prescient and accurate prediction of the varied causes and effects of the chaos that would ensue along with numerous warnings not to let it happen. So the parent can shut his pie hole because he clearly hasn't read a word the man has written.
I invite anyone to Google and read Krugman's columns for yourself. Because this is insane backwards bullshit. The guy was crying his head off that this was going to happen.
Of course, Krugman actually advocated created a housing bubble in 2002.
For anyone who thinks parent might be exaggerating, it's no joke. Krugman is quite literally insane. Here's a direct quote from the linked article (emphasis added):
The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.
Here's a hint, grasshopper: almost all economists are political. Even a hands-off stance like the Chicago School is in and of itself a political position.
Now take your teenage libertarianism and your copy of Rand's complete works, and shove them where the sun doesn't shine.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
you would think that if everyone knew it all was a bubble including the FED then there would e a lot more pitchforks and torches at the white-house right now to force a change in how things are done. no.. I suspect there are more people who do not understand how the economy works than those who do- even among economists. anyway, back to the topic- along the same lines I think that anyone that really has any understanding of history and technology knows that the future is going to e practical and mundane. normally the knowledge of if or when the bubble was going to collapse wouldn't have much effect on what the future looked like [the economy recovers after all] but in this guy's case, it might bring his abilities into question now that I think about it..
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'm just glad they addressed nanotechnology, virtual reality and fusion reactors, but who cares about that stuff? Soon we'll have self piloting cars, and better kitchens!
Even the second biggest one (12mb) is only 24kbps / 8000Hz and sounds like crap. And there's 8mb and 4mb versions below that! Surely a single 64kbps 220000Hz stream would of done? :s
The large version is here - 96kpbs / 32000Hz....
http://cluebytwelve.net/anticipation/Stross-Krugman%202009-08-06hi.mp3
This UID is 7651 digits too high to subjectively infer IQ from.
The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist.
[Citation needed] on the bad trait part. There is a need for somebody who knows his stuff to stand up to the bad science in Washington.
He tireless argues for greater and greater interventions in the marketplace (that is, he's a statist) without taking into account the secondary effects of those interventions because that would contradict his world view.
[Citation Needed] again. Just because you do not agree with him does not make him wrong.
What does that have to do with flirting nazis?
Your brain is not a computer.
That is at best a mischaracterization of his position. He is saying Alan Greenspan's only option to not head into the double dip is to create a housing bubble. He is NOT advocating that option.
Yes, it couldn't have been the artificially low interest rates, which means they are increasing the monetary supply much more than they should, which caused the housing bubble (not to mention the NASDAQ bubble), its that darn "deregulation," which of course means different regulations and happened over the course of 3 decades.
Of course, Krugman actually advocated created a housing bubble in 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html
Krugman is just an organ for the Federal Reserve and the state.
I just reread that post and I don't understand how in that op-ed piece Krugman advocated creating the housing bubble.
Can you explain this to me?
thanks
It's especially unfair because not only did the troll steal that old joke about the Fed, he's not likely to know what binary notation is.
I am the Eschaton. I am not your God.
I am descended from you, and exist in your future.
Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.
Oh, and The Internet is for porn.
Where is my damn jet pack? What about my teleporter?!
Can anyone recommend a good therapist for me.. er.. my schizophrenic network card?
Exactly. These morons don't know how to read.
They'll keep spreading this "Krugman advocated the bubble" bullshit meme forever even though it makes absolutely no sense and is clearly contradicted by reading the actual article and everything else Krugman has ever written. If that isn't enough, there's this as well. But these guys are ideology first, facts and common sense... never.
but the big thing was the freight container.
He's right. There's a great book called "The Box", which is a history of modern shipping containers. Containerization reduced the cost of ocean shipping of manufactured goods by about 90%. Breakage and theft went way down, too.
A few decades ago, if you went down to the docks in New York or San Francisco, there were thousands of big guys lifting and carrying stuff. Not only did containers end that, they ended the ports of New York and San Francisco - both were replaced with new ports in New Jersey and Oakland. If you go to a container port today, you see very few people around.
The other big development that made international trade work was fax machines. With fax machines, you could send ordinary business paperwork to people far away. Even if they didn't speak your language, they could probably figure out a purchase order. So you could do the basics of commerce at a distance. This cut out many of the expensive middlemen in international trade. It used to be that to import something, you had to deal with an importer, who dealt with an exporter at the sending end, who dealt with the manufacturer, possibly with a wholesaler and a warehouse company somewhere in the chain. With fax machines and containers, you cut the deal with the manufacturer by fax, they filled a container, and the container came to you without any intermediaries who cared what was in the box.
Similar things happened for the great depression which is why to some extent this depression didn't become "great" and has slowed down (doesn't mean that it is over or that the fall will be quite slow.)
The DIFFERENCE with this re-run? the PRESS and the CONGRESS WORKED TOGETHER to expose what was going on to the public which helped create the political will necessary to make meaningful changes; however, it was not enough to undo the newly created FED which helped create the whole mess in the 1st place as they did this time. People in the know tell me FED this and FED that but forget that during the weakest moment in history the FED won.
Krugman is an OK guy. HOWEVER, he is not a Nobel Prize winner! Its a way for some bankers to promote their economic policy to the world with a fake Nobel and everybody falls for it! Think about it and do some research. Nobel is only for science and peacemaking. Economics is neither and its degrading to the Nobel Prize. Mathematical models for voodoo is not credible work-- chaos as an equation if proven possible-- fine; but until then.... Other sciences can not win the Nobel yet we allow them to hijack it for economics?!!
You want serious predictions of the future? They are not pretty. The global warming stuff-- will be worse than the predictions 10 years ago because most were going from the most positive hopeful range of the projections just so they could be easier for people to accept. Behavior trends like that not only extend into other areas but also continue with present day predictions trying to be accepted by the mainstream. The bubble economic system will continue and those who question it will remain largely silent and work within it (as Krugman did and still largely does.) Madoff wasn't a freak he was a product of the system (or attracted to it.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"Bubble" in the mouth of Krugman and other "leftist" (where "leftist" means anyone not drinking the austrian economics kool aid) economists is a very, very dirty word. He can't possibly advocate it as a policy; he's just saying that it's "the only way it can justify that tax cut", by creating the illusion of recovery through another bubble.
The keynesians haven't created anything, genius, they weren't in power in that time frame, it was Greenspan and his merry band of Chicago boys.
And doom sayer sooner or later fall right on their prediction. Many economist predicted the bubble to bust over the years. Krugman isn#t the only one, even some politics did the same, or even mathematician. A good economist will narrow it down to a few month maybe one year. But FFS he did it from 2002 and maybe even earlier, 5 to 6 years before it happened. In economical terms , it is nearly an eternity.
anyone who was predicting that housing wasn't a bubble was either lying or he is a charlatan.
Right. Also, no one in the market is a true Scotsman. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or he is a charlatan.
What? Krugman wrote "The Return of Depression Economics" in 2000. He has been saying something is fundamentally wrong with the world economy since then, while the median response by economists is that everything is fine, the free market has to take its course etc. Krugman has been throwing closer to the bullseye than most other mainstream economists.
Do you apply that to all politically outspoken economists, across the spectrum? So you would say, for example, that Milton Friedman was a bad economist?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Once he got the Times column, he began analyzing Bush's budgets and saying the numbers did not add up because they were wildly over-optimistic. This brought him into the political arena more.
Also - what mainstream economist does NOT argue for intervention in the economy? Milton Friedman who is supposed to be the free market guru supported a government/Fed run expansionary money policy. This is a capitalist economy, do the capitalists who run it and own it pay attention to any economists who don't advocate government control over at least money? The answer is no. In fact, the capitalists who run this capitalist economy were who advocated the bailout of the banks and all of this.
Every time one of these bubbles has been in the making, I hear 99% of people saying this is a "new era", or a "new economy". Internet, housing, debt, whatever. While I was not around at the time, people have sincerely believed that things are truly DIFFERENT this time! during every bubble throughout history if you care to read it. And then made up some cock and bull story about knowing it all along, all the signs being obvious etc. after the bubble bursts.
And the reason these bubbles keep forming is that the average person is a) herd following and b) of average intelligence. As a result of b), they ignore other examples in history and other countries that would serve as warnings. Even when they have a modicum of intelligence most people don't trust their own judgment. They would rather be a lemming heading over the cliff with all his compatriots than the one lemming who heads in the opposite direction and gets ridiculed.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist.
Isn't that the purpose of an economist ? To spatter some figures and graphs and theories over whatever politics ? It doesn't come out of the blue, there's always an ideology behind it. There's no such thing as a "true" economy.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Well, we arrive at a point in economical research where it can begin to be called a science. Are scientists political when they say that creationism is just bullshit ? Krugman's models say that some policies are right and some are wrong. He offers an opportunity to discuss the model itself not just to yell "socialist ! " "fascist !" in place of conversation.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Re: lemmings; if you're a rational player in this economy what's the best thing to do? Follow the bubble like everyone else and cash out early. For most of the economic cycle the smart action and dumb action are the same.
.evom ton seod gis eht
Every time one of these bubbles has been in the making, I hear 99% of people saying this is a "new era", or a "new economy".
This is how most rational people knew this was a bubble. If this is the justification given, just calmly ask yourself the question: what has changed us as a specie? If you can't figure out the answer, look for ways to profit from the new bubble and for to figure out what will signal the end.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The FED created the bubble to reduce misery until what everyone was assuming was the next emerging technology boom -- biotech. It was supposed to blossom by 2010. The boom was severely hindered by government policies (oversubsidizing of basic research, hindering of steam-cell research, complete failure to recognize that terrorism's main target is stable society and treating it as a traditional military threat, etc.). Populations don't come out with pitchforks unless a very certain demographic exists -- lots of young people who are not yet established in life. US is not there at the moment. But if the current President's policies continue, it might get there within 5-10 years (2nd baby boom happened '98-'05).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Asking Paul Krugman what the future holds is like asking a blind person to reproduce the Mona Lisa with those big fat kindergarten crayons. That is something I would actually buy because it would help someone who needs it. On the other hand there is NOTHING about Krugman that I would buy.
he also claimed on numerous occasions that there was no oil speculation. He finally reversed himself earlier this summer when he acknowledged what those who track oil shipments already knew, that oil was sitting in tankers/storage but prices were high.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/oil-speculation/
If the Nobel prize winner can't even figure out trends that basic, how exact can his future predictions be?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Woohoo after the bubble has started to deflate the Keynesian morons notice what they have created!
..and there you have the [Milton] Friedman-ite mantra in action: blame everyone else. "The market didn't collapse because of our failed policies, it just wasn't free enough." Same story, same blame-game since the Pinochet days.
The difference is that Krugman changes his recommendations based on the political party of the politician backing the economic policies. There were economic policies that he supported when the Clinton Administration proposed them and opposed when the Bush Administration proposed them. If he had said that he used to support such policies but now realized that they were wrong, it would have been one thing, but he instead wrote as if he had always opposed such policies and only an idiot would support them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That's a very fair point. I'll say this though: most libertarian economists warn about the dangers of governments using policy to direct economic matters. This criticism is very well founded; generally things start out well, but inevitably things go wrong and the perpetrators end up blaming the free market for all the problems. There are of course examples and counter examples on both sides, so things are completely black/white, but as a general trend it rings true. While libertarian economists (to use a stereotype) are political in the sense that they look at the economic problems resulting from political issues, they tend to think that economic policy should be apolitical...that is, get politicians of all striped out of the money business. Krugman is the nemesis of that line of thinking.
Asking an economist to predict the stock market is like asking your channel 7 weather man to model global climate change.
Nevertheless, if you've been following Krugman he's certainly not been an optimist about a lot of the aspects of economy leading up to the meltdown. Here's a pretty pessimistic article about housing prices from 8/2005: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=1 Of course, at the time people accused him of being a pessimist.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I'd love for you to give some specific examples.
Which "laissez faire fuckwads" want the government to set interest rates (yes, yes, the Fed isn't technically part of the government, blah-de-blah)?
Doesn't seem very "let do"...
It's pretty damn obvious that the economy collapsed due to over leverage.
Artificially low interest rates are an pretty damn obvious cause of that.
You really think the financial sector would have leveraged 40:1 and loaned money to deadbeats if interest rates were at the 20% level that the market would have set them?
Von Hayek was a commie, too.
And also, it's not "wasn't free enough".
The market would work fine if it was "completely free" - you would get booms and busts and the busts would suck for those who did stupid things in the booms.
It would also work if it was "completely" regulated - you would get booms and busts and the busts would suck for those who did't do stupid things in the booms.
What doesn't work is regulating one side and not the other. You can't regulate interest rates to low levels and regulate loans by putting the government in as a backstop AND also allow unregulated market action by the financial sector. Obviously that will implode. The only surprising thing is that the shell game went on so long.
Me too. Until then, this is part of the same right-wing smear campaign that suggested Krugman didn't see the boom or its consequences coming. Absurd bullshit that people are modding up for some reason.
It makes them feel better. Having your preconceived notions of how things work proven wrong is hard and makes your head hurt.
get politicians of all striped out of the money business.
Yes, this seems like a practical and realistic agenda to pursue. Best of luck with it.
Unfortunately the rest of us, stuck here in the real world, are trying to support and learn from people that are genuinely interested in putting out the fires of poor (de-)regulation and crass, self-interested tax-trickle-up policies.
Krugman is articulate and cogent regarding economic theory and practice, particularly for non-economists such as myself. I've been reading his articles for 8+ years, and his opinions do not seem either unreasonable or logically or philosophically inconsistent.
Politically infeasible sometimes - I cannot disagree with that - but I don't think anyone from anywhere on the political spectrum believes concrete solutions to real problems will ever be politically expedient.
The audio was interesting, and in MP3 format - so anyone that wants to can pop it on their iPod for convenient listening on the way to work (or... wherever). Highly recommended, if only for the unique overlap of worlds that it suggests. I love the image of Paul Krugman curling up with a bit of sci fi pulp.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
There were economic policies that he supported when the Clinton Administration proposed them and opposed when the Bush Administration proposed them.
Really? I haven't seen that. Can you point me to some of his work from the most recent Bush-era that contradicts work from the Clinton-era? I'd be very interested to check into this.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
The FED created the bubble to reduce misery
The fed exists to enrich its owners by inflating the currency. Any other ostensible purpose of the fed is nothing but propaganda.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And the stock market predicted 6 of the last 0 recoveries.
I unfortunately missed the Friday Stross-Krugman panel (and look forward to seeing/hearing it online) but Krugman also did a solo second panel on Saturday, from science fiction to economics, that totally rocked. I hope that will also become available on the net. A recording of the panel should be recommended viewing for every English speaker just for the short section in that panel on how the map is not the territory. One of the better panels I've seen in a number of years, which showed the guy isn't just intelligent, learned, and funny, but also has acquired a good deal of wisdom over the years.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
The labor conditions in India and China during those days were *much* worse than today (ever heard of the "Great Leap Ahead"?). And without the box containers, there is absolutely no way the US ports could cope with the amount of international shipping.
I hope you realize my two arguments above didn't even start touching the cost advantage.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
"I'll say this though: most libertarian economists warn about the dangers of governments using policy to direct economic matters."
But that's a political point of view right there. It's akin to saying that Sector X of the economy (where X in this case == banking) should be above the law. Why? Well... just because we say so! It's our axiom that GOVERNMENT == BAD and FINANCE == GOOD!
Both government and finance are means of social control - and neither come from Mars but both execute with the consent of the people, and as the means of implementing the people's will. It's also valid to say that finance should not control people's lives any more than government should.
Do libertarian economists warn against the dangers of financial speculation wasting resources and causing gross mismanagement? But they should, if they're going to be honest. Economists should be both apolitical and afinancial.
However, "libertarians" often seem to have a huge blind spot when it comes to money. They seem to think that money is a self-justifying power base which can do no wrong, unlike those evil Gubmint bureaucrats. But greed and power is greed and power no matter what the label on the suit.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
But things are getting worse, slowly. And it'll be ten years before people have the money once again like they did last year.
Anyone who hasn't realized that yet still hasn't grasped the *scope* of what just happened. Krugman doesn't have to predict anything: it's all there in black and red -- all that's needed is to read it. The banks are *all* insolvent. Consumers are insolvent. We've just poured in $11 Trillion dollars from the future, and it's barely helping. Just which direction does Cramer expect the Lone Ranger to come from?
It's OVER. No tea leaves necessary.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
then he's a keynesian.
Makes sense. Or not.
Slavery is freedom.
You've got a pretty good handle on that newspeak thing.
I'm quoting WP but it would be easy to find other sources -- I studied that in highschool, so it's not exactly rocket science:
You're saying Milton Friedman is a keynesianist. That's just fucking retarded. Or you're trolling, but since people have upvoted you, I have to assume some people are misguided enough to believe this ridiculous bullshit.
Point of fact, Krugman always expresses this type of perverse opinion. It's not restricted to the article in question. Maybe it sounded like a "troll" to a couple of uninformed moderators, because his opinions are so bizarre, but you really can't make this stuff up. Go read a few of his articles.
He didn't advocate it. He predicted that Greenspan would need a housing bubble to ease out of the dot com bubble.
ie,
IF Greenspan wants to ease the landing out of the dot com bubble and keep the economy going
THEN the obvious thing to do would be to stoke a housing bubble.
Saying this doesn't endorse the wisdom or desirability of stoking a housing bubble.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA