I gotta rant comin' on..

[grampster]

So, I read Paul Krugman's column today.  Now Krugman has won a Nobel prize and has written books about economics.  In his column today, he compares the economic situation today with 1937 and Roosevelt's plans to government tax and spend America out of depression.  Krugman says Roosevelt was stymied by polls that Americans were as fed up with his leftist policies as we are today with Obama and the Democrats.

First, let me say that I don't much agree with anything Krugman believes and the fact that he's won a Nobel prize and gets his books published doesn't change that I think he's a bit nuts and proves how far the literati and intelligentia has descended into the Hell of sociopathy and self aggrandizement to give this guy awards.  But his column today, removed all doubt.  The man is insane.

Somehow, he equates the fact that about the time Roosevelt's plans for the New Deal were being stymied, the world descended into war and America's debt in todays dollars rose to about 30 trillion dollars as a resut. He has a notion that Obama has a long way to go before he ruins our country with debt.  Krugman believes we can tax and spend our way out of economic troubles; and we're fools if we don't.  Roosevelt would have done so, Krugman believes, if WWII had not intruded.  But, that's the point.  WWII did intrude.

Krugman does not recognize the significance of WWII.   After we piled up the debt he cavalierly dismisses to fight the war, he fails to understand that after the war, America was the only civilized nation on the globe that was not destroyed. America paid off it's debt and grew to be the greatest world power and richest nation on earth because we had no competition.  Now that is not to say that we are not a nation that was able to not only wage a war like no other nation ever has done, but also is able to rebuild the rest of the world while creating for ourselves a great and prosperous nation.  We did that.  What Krugman further does not recognize is that circumstance creates opportunity.

Now if we want to declare war on Germany and Japan again, and maybe throw in Russia and China, maybe we'll be able to tax and spend our way out of this morass we're in.  No thank you.

So, I guess what he is saying in his deranged mind, is that no amount of debt really matters, our debt was 30 times our GDP back then, so who cares about the pittance we now have.  Sigh....

End of Rant. 

[Monkeyleg]

Yes, and he fails to realize how badly the war also affected the economy here at home. Not every soldier came home to a job. In fact millions did not.

WWII happened because the American public was rejecting FDR's spending plans? That's like saying that the BP spill was caused by the Afghanistan troop surge.

[TommyGunn]

After eight years of tax & spend, FDR himself believed his economic policies were a failure.  FDR's own mother had chastised him for raising taxes, and FDR spent a lot of time complaining that the "industrialists" were "conspiring" against him, preventing his policies from helping the country.  This seems parallel to Obama's contemporary whining about republicans being the "party of no," and his attacks against Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh.
In 1940 FDR came within a gnat's whisker of deciding not to run again, so affected by his acknowledgement of his own policies failures.  The reason why he did run was, well, heck; he was a politician and that's what he knew how to do.  Thankfully he glommed onto a new campaign strategy; isolationism.  Many people at the time had living memory of WW1 and the disaster it had been, and had no desire at all to bail europe out one more time.  FDR promised he wouldn't send their kids over there.
Of course, at the time he hardly guessed what was going to happen on December 7th, 1941.

The tax and spend (Kanesian model) stuff is interesting.   Many people think Herbert Hoover (FDR's predecessor) didn't lift a finger to help the country out of the depression.  In 1932 (the year of FDR's election) the depression was three years long (we're almost approaching that) and in fact, Hoover had done quite a bit.  FDR's argument was that Hoover had the right idea, just not the right size.  More needed to be done, and the voters bought it.  And in fact, FDR greatly expanded governments role, establishing "alphabet agencies" and "cramming down" other laws and programs, and when one of his darlings, the National Industrial Recovery Act, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, he threatened to stuff more justices on the court, and thus made SCOTUS his lap dog.

Today our vaunted leaders are discussing a second stimulus.  While many Americans recoil at this idea some think this is the way out ... claiming Obama had the right idea, he just didn't do enough (like Krugman, apparantly).  These people who are in favor of Stimulus, Part Two, should read history.  It's been done before.
It didn't work for Franklin Delano Roosevelt .... and it won't work for Franklin Delano Obama.

"Those who forget history are forever doomed to repeat it's mistakes."  ~~ George Santayana.

[HankB]

First, let me say that I don't much agree with anything Krugman believes and the fact that he's won a Nobel prize and gets his books published doesn't change that I think he's a bit nuts and proves how far the literati and intelligentia has descended into the Hell of sociopathy and self aggrandizement to give this guy awards.  But his column today, removed all doubt.  The man is insane.

And from reading his columns, I thought he was only bughouse nuts.

As for Nobel Prizes, it looks like the "Economics" prize is being handed out based on support for leftist politics in the same manner as the Peace Prize . . . which is really a shame.

[grampster]

"WWII happened because the American public was rejecting FDR's spending plans? That's like saying that the BP spill was caused by the Afghanistan troop surge."

Nope.  My rant is about how Krugman puts then and now into the same context vis a vis, the economy.  There is no comparison to an economy in shambles, moving left, but then being propped up by world war and then having that infrastructure in place post war in a world that was shattered.  Many of the men who came home displaced much of the females who had been working in the American labor force.  Also, a lot of men did not come home.  My point is that if the war hadn't occured, FDR would have ruined our country beyond the problems at hand then, and today we'd not have what freedoms we manage to have.
In a perverse, horrible sort of way, WWII saved America.

I'm not a smart guy, but Krugman is supposed to be.  He's not only a fraud, but one who is so caught up in his leftist kant, he can't see the forest for the trees.  I think he's nuts.

[Viking]

And from reading his columns, I thought he was only bughouse nuts.

As for Nobel Prizes, it looks like the "Economics" prize is being handed out based on support for leftist politics in the same manner as the Peace Prize . . . which is really a shame.

Same with the Prize in Literature...supporting Communist dictators is perfectly fine, supporting Pinochet sure isn't...

[longeyes]

The currency of the Upper West Side is abstraction.  Krugman is lionized by others like himself.   It's all part of the Bubble Culture we've created for the elites.

[grampster]

Putting that shoe black in his beard for the photo used in his newspaper column ain't helpin any either.