Monday, December 30, 2013

Paul Krugman, "Fiscal Fever Breaks": Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better!

Remember how Paul Krugman once wrote concerning Occupy Wall Street (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html):

"Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

. . . .

It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details."

And then there was Krugman's trillion dollar coin proposal, which even Jon Stewart labeled a "stupid f#cking idea" (see: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/15/jon_stewart_responds_to_krugman_platinum_coin_is_still_a_stupid_fcking_idea/).

Well today, in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Fiscal Fever Breaks" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/opinion/krugman-fiscal-fever-breaks.html?ref=opinion&_r=0), Krugman would have us know that the US has been "suffering from fiscal fever: the insistence by virtually the entire political and media establishment that budget deficits were our most important and urgent economic problem, even though the federal government could borrow at incredibly low interest rates." Krugman concludes by informing us:

"But while policy remains terrible, we’re finally starting to talk about real issues like inequality, not a fake fiscal crisis. And that has to be a move in the right direction."

Got it: The $17.3 trillion of debt owed by the US federal government can now be ignored, because the US can borrow at low interest rates. Who cares if this debt will never be paid back?

And who cares that the US owes much of this money to China, which just happens to lead the world in capital punishment. Capital punishment? Oh yes, that's the thing the New York Times editorial board just by chance is also denouncing today (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/opinion/the-slow-demise-of-capital-punishment.html?ref=opinion). Who cares if the US is in hock to a nation where anything remotely approaching "equality" does not exist.

Fiscal fever has broken? Yeah, right. Let's see what happens when the true cost of Obamacare becomes known. Ultimately, in the name of equality, someone is going to have to pay for this fiasco.

We're finally talking again about "inequality"? Does this mean that Krugman is again ready to endorse the tenets, including anti-Semitism, of Occupy Wall Street?

Which brings to mind George Orwell's "Animal Farm," where we learned that even in would-be utopian societies, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

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