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."

Comments

Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha

[MagicMerlin]

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 :-).

Why do people make shit up?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Krugman called FOR the bubble

[jchandra]

To be fair you have to add Krugman's response to this accusation:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/and-i-was-on-the-grassy-knoll-too/

Guys, read it again. It wasn't a piece of policy advocacy, it was just economic analysis. What I said was that the only way the Fed could get traction would be if it could inflate a housing bubble. And that's just what happened.