5 ms·

This is by Paul Krugman??! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman That this is written by a Nobel Prize winner an

This is by Paul Krugman??! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman That this is written by a Nobel Prize winner and NYT columnist definitely makes it a bit more noteworthy.

kmfrk 12y ago
You clearly never read his blog; dude is the biggest sci-fi dork and continuously plugs Charlie Stross. :)
javert 12y ago
I think it makes it less noteworthy. Among Krugman's other "accomplishments" is this quote: "The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  Are you honestly going to drop a quote from the 100th anniversary of Time magazine in which the authors were instructed to speculate about the world in 2098 as some sort of referendum on Krugman's economic knowledge? Cherry picking a random sentence from a variety magazine isn't quite as strong of an argument as people keep insisting.
  - javert 12y ago
    You're right. I am absolutely not making the argument that Krugman is bad because of the quote. I'm asserting that Krugman is bad, because I know that to be true, without offering proof, which would be outside the scope of an HN comment. Separately, I'm also adding the quote to make fun of him. I didn't expect people to take my comment as some sort of intellectual argument. As you point out, obviously, it is not.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- gregatragenet2 12y ago
  And another Krugmanism, in the early 2000's: "To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." this guy has been on the wrong side of history so often I have no idea why anyone listens to him.
  - mikeyouse 12y ago
    I'm not sure why I feel compelled to defend Krugman again, but this specific argument is so incredibly tired and completely disingenuous. Krugman in the early 2000's was as far away from the seat of power as humanly possible, he had 0 impact on policy in the Bush administration. Just look at how the quotes are represented on HN: "To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." Compared to what was actually said: "The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation- fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning-after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." He went on to describe why he thinks Greenspan will try to create a housing bubble: Bear in mind also that government officials have a stake in accentuating the positive. The administration needs a recovery because, with deficits exploding, the only way it can justify that tax cut is by pretending that it was just what the economy needed. Mr. Greenspan needs one to avoid awkward questions about his own role in creating the stock market bubble. I'm at a loss how someone can read "Greenspan will create a housing bubble because he's in bed with the administration and they need to justify the huge tax cuts that haven't stimulated the economy and distract from the Fed's role in the stock bubble" and then think that was a policy recommendation and not a prescient critique of a bumbling economic policy.
    - 12y ago
- jkyle 12y ago
  Krugman's response in a letter to Business Insider. Business Insider was asking him about that quote and about his recent commentary on Bitcoin. Well, two things. First, look at the whole piece. It was a thing for the Times magazine's 100th anniversary, written as if by someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting; I mean, there are lines in there about St. Petersburg having more skyscrapers than New York, which was not a prediction, just a thought-provoker. But the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing. The issues about Bitcoin, however, are not technological! Everyone agrees that it's technically very sweet. But does it work as money? That's a very different kind of question. And the fact that people are throwing around my 98 quote actually shows that they don't get this point -- that they're confusing technology with monetary economics. -- Krugman, Business Insider Letter [http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-inte...]
  - javert 12y ago
    I read that before I posted the quote. I think it's worth reading, so I'm glad you posted it. I'm not trying to prove Krugman is bad with the quote; I simply added it because I find it amusing. His excuse says: "I was writing in print about something I'm not an expert in, and I wasn't being serious anyway." Fine. That is how I would interpret things even without the excuse. It still says something about Krugman, but no, the quote is not overly damning by itself. (Krugman's entire body of non-academic work, on the other hand....)
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    How can you understand and write about economics if you get something as fundamentally change-provoking as technology wrong?
    - fsloth 12y ago
      While politicians who like to defer responsibility to economists would want their electorate to believe otherwise, economists are not soothsayers. They are familiar with some ideal models for modeling economic systems of a few variables that may or may not hold up depending on the actual market conditions. Economic forecasts are a bit like really bad weather forecasts - given a few variables and that nothing changes they may hold up. But they cannot predict what will change and what effects it will have. Like the long term implications of internet. For small systems with stable technologies like markets for a limited set of products some macroeconomic rules may hold up pretty well. But for large scale economies the economic decisions are as much political as fiscal, and the soundness of the decisions can be found out only in retrospect...
- sukilot 12y ago
  That's an opinion he learned from Stross, ironically.

kmfrk 12y ago

You clearly never read his blog; dude is the biggest sci-fi dork and continuously plugs Charlie Stross. :)

javert 12y ago

I think it makes it less noteworthy. Among Krugman's other "accomplishments" is this quote: "The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

mikeyouse 12y ago
Are you honestly going to drop a quote from the 100th anniversary of Time magazine in which the authors were instructed to speculate about the world in 2098 as some sort of referendum on Krugman's economic knowledge? Cherry picking a random sentence from a variety magazine isn't quite as strong of an argument as people keep insisting.
- javert 12y ago
  You're right. I am absolutely not making the argument that Krugman is bad because of the quote. I'm asserting that Krugman is bad, because I know that to be true, without offering proof, which would be outside the scope of an HN comment. Separately, I'm also adding the quote to make fun of him. I didn't expect people to take my comment as some sort of intellectual argument. As you point out, obviously, it is not.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
gregatragenet2 12y ago
And another Krugmanism, in the early 2000's: "To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." this guy has been on the wrong side of history so often I have no idea why anyone listens to him.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  I'm not sure why I feel compelled to defend Krugman again, but this specific argument is so incredibly tired and completely disingenuous. Krugman in the early 2000's was as far away from the seat of power as humanly possible, he had 0 impact on policy in the Bush administration. Just look at how the quotes are represented on HN: "To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." Compared to what was actually said: "The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation- fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning-after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." He went on to describe why he thinks Greenspan will try to create a housing bubble: Bear in mind also that government officials have a stake in accentuating the positive. The administration needs a recovery because, with deficits exploding, the only way it can justify that tax cut is by pretending that it was just what the economy needed. Mr. Greenspan needs one to avoid awkward questions about his own role in creating the stock market bubble. I'm at a loss how someone can read "Greenspan will create a housing bubble because he's in bed with the administration and they need to justify the huge tax cuts that haven't stimulated the economy and distract from the Fed's role in the stock bubble" and then think that was a policy recommendation and not a prescient critique of a bumbling economic policy.
  - 12y ago
jkyle 12y ago
Krugman's response in a letter to Business Insider. Business Insider was asking him about that quote and about his recent commentary on Bitcoin. Well, two things. First, look at the whole piece. It was a thing for the Times magazine's 100th anniversary, written as if by someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting; I mean, there are lines in there about St. Petersburg having more skyscrapers than New York, which was not a prediction, just a thought-provoker. But the main point is that I don't claim any special expertise in technology -- I almost never make technological forecasts, and the only reason there was stuff like that in the 98 piece was because the assignment required that I do that sort of thing. The issues about Bitcoin, however, are not technological! Everyone agrees that it's technically very sweet. But does it work as money? That's a very different kind of question. And the fact that people are throwing around my 98 quote actually shows that they don't get this point -- that they're confusing technology with monetary economics. -- Krugman, Business Insider Letter [http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-inte...]
- javert 12y ago
  I read that before I posted the quote. I think it's worth reading, so I'm glad you posted it. I'm not trying to prove Krugman is bad with the quote; I simply added it because I find it amusing. His excuse says: "I was writing in print about something I'm not an expert in, and I wasn't being serious anyway." Fine. That is how I would interpret things even without the excuse. It still says something about Krugman, but no, the quote is not overly damning by itself. (Krugman's entire body of non-academic work, on the other hand....)
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  How can you understand and write about economics if you get something as fundamentally change-provoking as technology wrong?
  - fsloth 12y ago
    While politicians who like to defer responsibility to economists would want their electorate to believe otherwise, economists are not soothsayers. They are familiar with some ideal models for modeling economic systems of a few variables that may or may not hold up depending on the actual market conditions. Economic forecasts are a bit like really bad weather forecasts - given a few variables and that nothing changes they may hold up. But they cannot predict what will change and what effects it will have. Like the long term implications of internet. For small systems with stable technologies like markets for a limited set of products some macroeconomic rules may hold up pretty well. But for large scale economies the economic decisions are as much political as fiscal, and the soundness of the decisions can be found out only in retrospect...
sukilot 12y ago
That's an opinion he learned from Stross, ironically.