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Awaiting Mr. Krugman’s Insights…
On the day Donald Trump was elected president three years ago, Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, wrote this in his New York Times column:
It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?
Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.
Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
Golly. Donald Trump is elected, and the stock market will never recover. That’s quite a prediction, but then again, he is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. And this is his specialty. So there you go.
Ok. Fast-forward three years. I have not yet seen Mr. Krugman’s column discussing today’s stock market:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 28,332.74 on Monday, meaning it has rallied 10,000 points, or more than 54 percent, since Trump’s election victory on November 8, 2016. The benchmark S&P 500 has gained more than 46 percent.
As a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, I would value Mr. Krugman’s insight into this development. After all, as he says, “this is my specialty.” I suspect he’ll point to Trump’s success in international trade agreements, success in deregulation, and his success in getting the Fed to lower interest rates. Mr. Krugman will probably also comment on the remarkable gains in jobs, and reduction in unemployment (particularly among blacks and other minorities) during Trump’s time in office. I suspect Krugman will also discuss how optimistic the forecasts are for next year’s economy, under Trump’s leadership.
Of course, I didn’t win the Nobel Prize in economics, so I know little of such things.
So I very much look forward to reading Mr. Krugman’s column discussing all this. It’s not in the New York Times today.
Perhaps tomorrow.
I’ll be watching.
Published in Economics
He’d just say it’s due to Obama, don’t ya know?
One other thing, come to think of it…
I wonder about the “disaster for America and the world” Mr. Krugman describes, which has so many aspects. I wonder if he would explain for us what exactly he meant by that. What disasters, exactly? And how have those disasters turned out so far?
It looks like the Nobel Prize Committee for Economics also knows little of such things . . .
There is less love and respect for the ruling class. That is a disaster.
I’ve seen little evidence to suggest that Paul Krugman is an expert of anything.
Exactly – “Fortunately, I underestimated the strength of the foundation for national economic resurgence built under President Obama, a foundation that has proved so sturdy that even the maniacal reign of President Trump could not destroy .“
See, it’s easy!
I suspect the Nobel Prize PR team preemptively give a few awards to people who will return the favor to the status of the esteemed Nobel Prize. A life-long reporter of the New York Times, the first African American President of the US…
Its like what Rolling Stone does with films. Peter Travers gives glowing blurbs to films that other critics pan, these movies put the clip on their movie posters and other ads and trailers: Heartstopping action! – Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone gets free advertising.
I have read from people whose judgment I trust that many, many years ago Mr. Krugman actually did serious work in economics, and that there was a rational basis for a Nobel Prize in Economics. But, nothing he has said since the beginning of the George W. Bush administration has had any basis in serious economics.
Presumably being one of the ranting Knuckleheads on what @andrewklavan calls “Knucklehead Row” at the New York Times has given him for almost 20 years a better payoff on what he values than does doing serious economics.
Coincidentally . . .
Pound SURGES to its highest level against the euro since 2016 just after the Brexit referendum and hits $1.35 as Boris Johnson sweeps to victory.
Krugman’s repudiated some of his own past economic positions from 20-25 years ago in order to take on new positions that are liked by the woke SJW crowd. He’s addicted to online positive feedback and social media adulation from the progressives, and that takes precedent over any long-term ideological consistency. Present him with his own post-Election Day statement from 2016, and he’d simply find some way to double down on it, because he’d lose his fawning audience if he apologized and said he was wrong and Trump was, if not right, at least not the harbinger of the collapse of the American economy.
Well, I certainly hope Mr. Krugman withdrew all his investments in the stock market after Trump’s election and didn’t make any eeeevil profits on The Surge!
Unexpectedly!
Oh, absolutely. Since the market was dropping, and was never going to come back up, he would obviously withdraw all his money from the market.
Right.
To the credit of the Nobel Committee, though not much… the Nobel Prize in Economics is not technically a Nobel Prize.
That’s true. Doc’s mentioning Krugman’s Nobel Prize was obviously respectfully deferential, but you might be surprised to find out that some people don’t think much of him as an economist.
People have gone cah-razy!
Oh, absolutely…
My God. Those people. I swear…
My favorite Krugman moment:
Krugman would look adorable if you dressed him in an elf suit.
The Paul Krugman vs. Bill O’Reilly debate Tim Russert hosted back in 2005 is fun, not so much because of O’Reilly’s mad debating skills, but due to the look on Krugman’s face several times in the course of the debate. He really does seem to think this Fox News lunatic is going to lunge out of his chair and attack him at any moment (sort of the male version of the wife’s eyes in that Peloton exercise bike commercial….)
The Chicago Fed is projecting only 1.9% GDP growth in 2020. Thats not anything earth shattering. 2019 is alteady a big slowdown from 2017 and 2018.
Krugman should actually be a big Trump fan since Trump is running up massive debt to boost the economy…..thats exactly what Krugman always supports. He probably even loves perpetually low interest rates….just like Trump. So, maybe Trump has become more “Krugmanish” than Krugman could’ve imagined in 2016??
Really? I have to have the details on this! Are there others?
I’m still waiting for Krugman to apologize to Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh et al for blaming them for the shooting of Arizona Congresswomen Gabby Giffords by a deranged lunatic in 2011.
The left does a terrible job of policing it’s own. The New York Times should have taken him aside decades ago and said, “We have lefty red-meat political types (it’s now lefty tofu types). We need you to be the sober economic data kinda guy.” It’s a disgrace that a once serious economist has so clearly traded in his expertise for the stupidest kind of partisanship. I’m not against honest leftists being partisan anymore than I am against honest conservatives or classical liberals being partisan. But just don’t be dishonest and or stupid.
I quit paying attention to him when he wrote that John Kerry was more of a free-trader than George W. Bush in the 2004 election.
I agree with old-timey guy.
An ex-friend of mine got his PhD at Princeton in the early 2000s, and was fond of admiringly telling me about Krugman’s pronouncements regarding Bush at the time.
I’ve since read that Krugman’s wife is a pronounced Leftist and has had an outsized affect on his writing.
Oh yeah; there’s a theory that Krugman’s wife has been writing his column for years.
I dunno…
I wondered about the guy as he was so off base so often. He addressed us in Tokyo, but I can’t really remember what he said except that it had little content, and few Americans understood the Japanese economy, so it didn’t bother me, which is all I remember. So a few years later, I read the paper that seemed to get him the Prize. I found it rather uninteresting, clever as dissertations have to be, but of no interest and not a lot of content. He is where he belongs.
@drbastiat, you can watch for Krugman’s backtrack all you want, just please, PLEASE, do not hold your breath.
“Obama really hates Hillary, so he timed the economic surge so it would benefit her opponent, who would of course beat her.”
I totally agree @romanblichar. If it weren’t for Trump our country would be debt-free. DRAT! But thank goodness for the future, where at some point we can look forward to lower economic gains.
rgbact : “Krugman should actually be a big Trump fan since Trump is running up massive debt to boost the economy…..thats exactly what Krugman always supports. He probably even loves perpetually low interest rates….just like Trump. So, maybe Trump has become more “Krugmanish” than Krugman could’ve imagined in 2016?”
The biggest impediments to cutting government spending are the RINO’s in Congress. They have not even given the slightest inclination to cutting the massive increases in Welfare spending unleashed by Buraq Hussein or the incredible pork so larded regularly in the budget. Look at all these budget “continuing resolutions”- there is a built-in incentive to increase spending year to year without any attempt to rein it in, and there is no serious opposition to the present budgeting by continuing resolution track we have been on the last decade.
Trump has done a masterful job with a very difficult hand. Some key issues to cut spending are cutting the Administrative State back down to it’s authorized Constitutional size which a tiny fraction of what it is now and getting rid of the illegal Public Employee Unions which are the primary driver for the incredibly outsized government salaries and their outsized pensions which place a huge spending demand load on all government budgets across the country.