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Paul Krugman is probably the most consistently wrong popular economist I can think of.

by spaceman_2020 4y ago

currenciessfe 4y ago
They are all wrong. You just never heard of them. Taleb loves making fun of economists. One of his jokes: Trader comes to manager and told him he lost 10 mil because he bought treasuries since the bank economist said they would go up. Manager fires him. Trader asks why, is he required to always win? Manager says no, I didn't fire you because you lost money, I fired you because you listened to the bank economist.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Neoclassical economics can't be correct, the obvious problem is the lack of liquidity costs/taxes as a way to balance out liquidity benefits. The system breaks down if you do the right thing, so you must do the wrong thing all the time.
- notacoward 4y ago
  Taleb is in a poor position to be making fun of others' predictions.
fulafel 4y ago
Do you mean as a columnist/tweeter or in his work as a profesisonal economist in academia, textbooks etc? Judged by peers he's still quite valued eg by this ranking: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html (rank 36/3255) - but of course in academic research you don't necessarily aim to be right as often as possible, it's a search and exploration of ideas and testing what works.
- candybar 4y ago
  You're being far too charitable here - the idea that Krugman has a history of being wrong has nothing to do with anyone trying to evaluate his track record in an objective manner, but everything to do with those who disagree with his political viewpoints trying to take him down a notch, especially to counter his stellar academic career. This is of course silly - Krugman is obviously highly knowledgeable about economics and his understanding of and ability to explain sophisticated economic phenomena are rivaled by few, but the nature of economy is such that anyone that makes lots of predictions publicly is going to have a long track record of being wrong.
  - fulafel 4y ago
    Clearly we need a predictions tracker for benchmarking popular forecasters. I wonder if there are any already in existence. There's things like https://www.focus-economics.com/about-us/best-economic-forecasters-awards https://www.focus-economics.com/about-us/best-economic-forec... but they don't count talking heads type stuff.
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    If Krugman doesn’t want people to judge him by his forecasts and predictions, maybe he should stop making them, especially on a widely read public platform? That seems only fair to me. If he doesn’t want his predictions to be judged by lay people, he can do what most academics do and stick to writing for their peers.
    - candybar 4y ago
      This is a complete non-sequitur - Krugman isn't here complaining about him being judged. And this is a strange reply given that you do not seem to have the ability to correctly judge Krugman. As I had mentioned, GBP/USD has hardly moved since Krugman's tweets, yet you came here to talk about how Krugman is consistently wrong.

Paul Krugman is probably the most consistently wrong popular economist I can think of.

They are all wrong. You just never heard of them. Taleb loves making fun of economists. One of his jokes: Trader comes to manager and told him he lost 10 mil because he bought treasuries since the bank economist said they would go up. Manager fires him. Trader asks why, is he required to always win? Manager says no, I didn't fire you because you lost money, I fired you because you listened to the bank economist.

imtringued 4y ago
Neoclassical economics can't be correct, the obvious problem is the lack of liquidity costs/taxes as a way to balance out liquidity benefits. The system breaks down if you do the right thing, so you must do the wrong thing all the time.
notacoward 4y ago
Taleb is in a poor position to be making fun of others' predictions.

fulafel 4y ago

Do you mean as a columnist/tweeter or in his work as a profesisonal economist in academia, textbooks etc? Judged by peers he's still quite valued eg by this ranking: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html (rank 36/3255) - but of course in academic research you don't necessarily aim to be right as often as possible, it's a search and exploration of ideas and testing what works.

candybar 4y ago
You're being far too charitable here - the idea that Krugman has a history of being wrong has nothing to do with anyone trying to evaluate his track record in an objective manner, but everything to do with those who disagree with his political viewpoints trying to take him down a notch, especially to counter his stellar academic career. This is of course silly - Krugman is obviously highly knowledgeable about economics and his understanding of and ability to explain sophisticated economic phenomena are rivaled by few, but the nature of economy is such that anyone that makes lots of predictions publicly is going to have a long track record of being wrong.
- fulafel 4y ago
  Clearly we need a predictions tracker for benchmarking popular forecasters. I wonder if there are any already in existence. There's things like https://www.focus-economics.com/about-us/best-economic-forecasters-awards https://www.focus-economics.com/about-us/best-economic-forec... but they don't count talking heads type stuff.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  If Krugman doesn’t want people to judge him by his forecasts and predictions, maybe he should stop making them, especially on a widely read public platform? That seems only fair to me. If he doesn’t want his predictions to be judged by lay people, he can do what most academics do and stick to writing for their peers.
  - candybar 4y ago
    This is a complete non-sequitur - Krugman isn't here complaining about him being judged. And this is a strange reply given that you do not seem to have the ability to correctly judge Krugman. As I had mentioned, GBP/USD has hardly moved since Krugman's tweets, yet you came here to talk about how Krugman is consistently wrong.