http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/opinion/money-for-nothing.html?_r=2&ref=opinion
Money for Nothing
By tovarichpeter Follow Fri, 27 Jul 2012, 10:37am 421 views 4 comments
In South San Francisco CA 94080
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Minneapolis, MN
From the story:
Obligatory caveat: yes, we have a long-run budget problem, and we should be taking steps to address that problem, mainly by reining in health care costs. But it’s simply crazy to be laying off schoolteachers and canceling infrastructure projects at a time when investors are offering zero- or negative-interest financing.
You don’t even have to make a Keynesian argument about jobs to see that. All you have to do is note that when money is cheap, that’s a good time to invest. And both education and infrastructure are investments in America’s future; we’ll eventually pay a large and completely gratuitous price for the way they’re being savaged.
That said, you should be a Keynesian, too. The experience of the past few years — above all, the spectacular failure of austerity policies in Europe — has been a dramatic demonstration of Keynes’s basic point: slashing spending in a depressed economy depresses that economy further.
So it’s time to stop paying attention to the alleged wise men who hijacked our policy discussion and made the deficit the center of conversation. They’ve been wrong about everything — and these days even the financial markets are telling us that we should be focused on jobs and growth.
Me:
Paul Krugman's is a voice of sanity in a crazy world...
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Krugman is a stupid populistic douche who gets money for nothing. Anybody who advocates for more deficit spending is debasing the $ even more and defrauding the country. There are no simple solutions at this point and austerity is inevitable. If you think you can just go ahead and pillage the rich, be my guest - not sympathizing with them. However you will find out that you will fall short significantly (they already spent a lot, luxury lifestyle ain't cheap, and a lot is in offshore tax shelters) even then and general austerity and much smaller government is needed. You cannot spend more than you have, math just IS and cannot be argued with. Let's start with collecting Krugman's salary.
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Let's start prosecuting the fraud, reinstate the rule of law and put people who are currently above the law to jail, claw-back what you can get and then make needed cuts.
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Baltimore, MD
Obligatory: