Is Paul Krugman Leaving Princeton In Quiet Disgrace?

I did not know this was happening.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/niall-fergusonon-the-perils-of-paul-krugman


As historians are trained to do, I based my argument on the archives. By quoting his past writings, I showed, first, that Krugman’s repeated claims to have been “right about everything” in his economic commentary are false. Although (like many others) he identified a housing bubble in 2006, he did not foresee the financial chain reaction that would fuel a global crisis. Having failed to predict the US crisis, he then incorrectly predicted the imminent disintegration of Europe’s monetary union, publishing more than 20 statements on that subject in 2011 and 2012. He has never admitted these errors; on the contrary, he has retrospectively exaggerated his own prescience.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphSecond, Krugman’s claim that a vastly larger fiscal stimulus would have generated a more rapid economic recovery in the US depends entirely on conjecture. But the macroeconomic model on which he bases his claim can hardly be called reliable, given its manifest failures to predict either the crisis or the euro’s survival. Moreover, at least one of his pre-crisis columns flatly contradicts his view today that current – or even higher – levels of federal debt carry no risk whatsoever. So he has no right to claim, as he has, “a stunning victory” in “an epic intellectual debate.”
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphFinally – and most important – even if Krugman had been “right about everything,” there would still be no justification for the numerous crude and often personal attacks he has made on those who disagree with him. Words like “cockroach,” “delusional,” “derp,” “dope,” “fool,” “knave,” “mendacious idiot,” and “zombie” have no place in civilized debate. I consider myself lucky that he has called me only a “poseur,” a “whiner,” “inane” – and, last week, a “troll.”

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/co...he-perils-of-paul-krugman#AMdbmF3Cbw2uB7X6.99
 
Wow, positively blistering article on the farce himself by Forbes. Glad he's finally being seen for the complete disaster he has always been.

In other news, Ricter was seen weeping in despair as his high priest is dumped on.
 
Tsing Tao said:
Wow, positively blistering article on the farce himself by Forbes. Glad he's finally being seen for the complete disaster he has always been.

In other news, Ricter was seen weeping in despair as his high priest is dumped on.
More...

For a long time Krugman has seemed more like a bitterly biased partisan than someone who is supposed to possess some functional knowledge of economics that is based on empirical data. I've come to regard him as a hater.
 
Hey, a thread about Krugman, almost missed it.
; )

What does he have to say today?

Jul 15 10:42 amJul 15 10:42 am 22
On the Neo-paleo-Keynesian Phillips Curve (Wonkish)

"In a previous post I mentioned, sort of in passing, that recent data actually look like an old-fashioned pre-accelerationist Phillips curve — that is, unemployment determines the inflation rate, not the rate of change of the inflation rate.

"Where did this assertion come from? There seems to be one of these funny situations right now where people who don’t work on such issues consider this a wild and crazy, or maybe just silly assertion, while those actually doing serious empirical work treat it as a matter of course.

"Here’s what you see if you look at US data:

<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/07/15/opinion/071514krugman1/071514krugman1-blog480.png">

"But is that just me? No. Consider two recent studies on unemployment and inflation.

"First, there’s Michael Kiley (pdf), who had the very good idea of adding power by estimating the relationship across a number of metropolitan areas.You need to read it carefully, but it turns out that his Phillips curve is non-accelerationist for the past 15 years:

"We estimate equation 2 over two sample periods (as in our national es- timates), 1985-2013 and 1998-2013. For the 1985-2013 sample, we proxy expected inflation with a region-specific intercept and the national measure of long-run expected inflation from the Survey of Professional forecasters used in our national regression; for the 1998-2013 sample, region fixed ef- fects are used to proxy for expected inflation (because, as in the national regressions presented earlier, the survey measure of expected inflation is es- sentially constant over the 1998-2013 period)."

"Then there’s the new post by Klitgaard and Peck at Liberty Street, which essentially does a similar exercise for eurozone countries. Their results look like this:

<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/07/15/opinion/071514krugman2/071514krugman2-blog480.png">

"That’s a relationship between the change in unemployment and the change in inflation, equivalent to a relationship between the level of unemployment and the level of inflation — i.e., an old-fashioned Phillips curve.

"I’m not saying that this is a fundamental truth. All I’m saying is that people trying to fit recent data keep finding something that looks like the old-fashioned relationship. You can offer various explanations — downward wage rigidity, anchored expectations, or maybe it just isn’t worth adjusting price-setting to match fairly small variations in expected inflation. But anyway, that’s what the data look like."

More, links>>

Crazy stuff!
 
other than needing a primer on the the difference between correlation and causation for the author of those statements... perhaps the real driving force is that gov'ts and their central banks print less when they lower taxes and people get back to work.

Ricter said:
Hey, a thread about Krugman, almost missed it.
; )

What does he have to say today?

Jul 15 10:42 amJul 15 10:42 am 22
On the Neo-paleo-Keynesian Phillips Curve (Wonkish)

"In a previous post I mentioned, sort of in passing, that recent data actually look like an old-fashioned pre-accelerationist Phillips curve — that is, unemployment determines the inflation rate, not the rate of change of the inflation rate.

"Where did this assertion come from? There seems to be one of these funny situations right now where people who don’t work on such issues consider this a wild and crazy, or maybe just silly assertion, while those actually doing serious empirical work treat it as a matter of course.

"Here’s what you see if you look at US data:

<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/07/15/opinion/071514krugman1/071514krugman1-blog480.png">

"But is that just me? No. Consider two recent studies on unemployment and inflation.

"First, there’s Michael Kiley (pdf), who had the very good idea of adding power by estimating the relationship across a number of metropolitan areas.You need to read it carefully, but it turns out that his Phillips curve is non-accelerationist for the past 15 years:

"We estimate equation 2 over two sample periods (as in our national es- timates), 1985-2013 and 1998-2013. For the 1985-2013 sample, we proxy expected inflation with a region-specific intercept and the national measure of long-run expected inflation from the Survey of Professional forecasters used in our national regression; for the 1998-2013 sample, region fixed ef- fects are used to proxy for expected inflation (because, as in the national regressions presented earlier, the survey measure of expected inflation is es- sentially constant over the 1998-2013 period)."

"Then there’s the new post by Klitgaard and Peck at Liberty Street, which essentially does a similar exercise for eurozone countries. Their results look like this:

<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/07/15/opinion/071514krugman2/071514krugman2-blog480.png">

"That’s a relationship between the change in unemployment and the change in inflation, equivalent to a relationship between the level of unemployment and the level of inflation — i.e., an old-fashioned Phillips curve.

"I’m not saying that this is a fundamental truth. All I’m saying is that people trying to fit recent data keep finding something that looks like the old-fashioned relationship. You can offer various explanations — downward wage rigidity, anchored expectations, or maybe it just isn’t worth adjusting price-setting to match fairly small variations in expected inflation. But anyway, that’s what the data look like."

More, links>>

Crazy stuff!
More...
 
jem said:
other than needing a primer on the the difference between correlation and causation for the author of those statements... perhaps the real driving force is that gov'ts and their central banks print less when they lower taxes and people get back to work.
More...

Exactly. Because Krugman thinks they don't matter, he ignores the impact of "trivial" things like debt on unemployment and inflation. That post Ricter gave us of Krugman's blog is just one more example of the High Priest's hilarity.
 
Tsing Tao said:
Exactly. Because Krugman thinks they don't matter, he ignores the impact of "trivial" things like debt on unemployment and inflation. That post Ricter gave us of Krugman's blog is just one more example of the High Priest's hilarity.
More...

Sophomoric. The impact of debt on unemployment is not "ignored", it's assumed.
 
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