Paul Krugman: Thanks to Government, we've averted the Great Depression II

seterwind

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You don't care that Trillions is unaccounted for

When people tend to argue exaggerations and dodge the point a thread becomes pointless. Yes he didn't receive a "Nobel Prize" he won a different award that Economists like to receive, but those prizes are meaningless because they all suck. No they aren't they mean something because people covet them. No they suck... (on and on).

This thread has become pointless, and it's only point to begin with was to state, that the government spending of money, unlike 1930's, did more to avert the crisis then harm it. If you don't agree with it, go talk to 2-10 economists and get their opinion. See what they say then report back.
 

Elmer Gantry

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Guess what? Humanity is unsustainable. There isn't a sane scientist in the world that thinks the planet isn't doomed. The whole world is fucked. The worldwide extinction rate is at historic proportions.

That's true, if you only bother speaking to the transhumanist scientists/eugenicists/rabid environmentalists.
 

MovingForward

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You fools bought the big lie. You dance, dance dance to your economic graves, as the people at AIG and Goldman Sachs walk away with the money you will pay them for the rest of your lives, in inflation and taxes. You don't care that Trillions is unaccounted for, and suddenly these banks on the verge of collapsing suddenly could pay every single of their 29,000 employees $700,000. No, as long as they "paid back" the TARP, with interest, it's all good.

Dance on fools. This is the long predicted sucker's rally. It will last as long as the money printed up, and laundered by the Fed retains its value. And the people spending it haven't slowed down one bit. Thet still are getting the 400,000 spa holidays.

Sooner than you think, you will wonder how it all crashed so hard, and you will want to blame somebody. You'll pick the team you are not on, Red or Blue, as the culprit, when indeed, ti was playing the game that caused it in the first place. It is now only a matter of time.

And I know you want to tell me I am wrong, and the experts are right, but I am still looking at the numbers, not the hype.

Krugman pointing to 1 million new government jobs is laughable. That does not make our dollar more valuable... and that is what we are going to so desperately want.

You forget to mention they have found new ways to make money off of us.

I just got a letter from american express that due to the economic environment they have to raise their APR. They would have applied it to an existing balance. If that is not bait and switch, then what is.
 
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deleted15807

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That's true, if you only bother...........rabid environmentalists.

This ain't rocket science. The earth has limited resources yet the genital friction that produces more humans can't stop. Everyone rooted in reality knows this is all temporary. Enjoy it while it lasts.
 

AllHazzardi

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This ain't rocket science. The earth has limited resources yet the genital friction that produces more humans can't stop. Everyone rooted in reality knows this is all temporary. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Temporary outside of if we actually get our act together and start exploring again.
 

B_New End

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If you don't agree with it, go talk to 2-10 economists and get their opinion. See what they say then report back.

I don't care what most economists think. That is why I mentioned their "nobel" prize is a fraud, using a name to give them more prestige than they deserve.

MOST economists said there would be no real estate collapse.

Time and time and time and time again, you fools continue to cling to the label "experts". No matter how wrong they have been, you continue to listen to them. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the fed, in 2005, said he saw no reason why the real estate market could collapse, when Peter Schiff and Ron Paul were trying to sound the alarm.

YET

Those who accurately predicted this SHIT, and explained why, you ignore. Even if they are economists like Peter Schiff, or Ron Paul, NO, they aren't real economists, because your media overlords scoff at them, so you scoff too. Follow the media, they know the truth!


Now, you are going to sit there, and listen to an imbecile (who also was wrong about the real estate collapse) blather on about how he saved the economy, and say, yeah, whew... everything is OK. thank God we handed trillions to the bankers!

BUT LOOK AROUND YOU!!!! EVERYTHING IS NOT OK. WAKE UP!!! WAKE UP!!!! WAKE UP!!! LOOK AT THE NUMBERS!! LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE THAT PREDICTED THIS MESS, NOT THE ONES THAT MADE IT!!!

We are not OK! The bailouts made things worse! It was a double down on a terrible investment. At best, it delayed for perhaps 6 months to 4 years an even WORSE catastrophe.


Look into the market crash of 1920. Yes, in 1920, things were worse than the first year of the great depression. Harding (one of the supposed worst presidents ever :rolleyes: ) cut government spending in half.. and a year later the country rebounded into the roaring 20's.

Fuck your fucking economists. They had everything wrong, I dont give a fuck about their opinions. I'll keep listening to the ones that told the fucking truth, thanks.


movingforward said:
I just got a letter from american express that due to the economic environment they have to raise their APR. They would have applied it to an existing balance. If that is not bait and switch, then what is.

This is how inflation is coming to us right now. My cable bill just went up 40%. Certain things are leaping and bounding. They might not for a year or two, but then, bam, big jump. And CPI hardly is even worth looking at anymore. If you think inflation is under control, ask yourself, why is my gas the same price it was 2 years ago, and almost triple what it was 6 years ago? why is a gallon of milk almost $3 when sometimes you could get it for $1. Has my health insurance premiums gone down... have they only grown by 3% a year? what about car insurance, or any other bill I have?

Fuck the skewed government numbers. I don't know anybody who can honestly say that living expense for them have only increased about 20% since 2000. The supposed 2 -3% a year we have been having. It's more like 50 - 100% That's 7 - 10% inflation.
 
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lucky8

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M1 has increased by what, 16%? Yea, there's inflation coming people...Keynesians won't admit it because it's their own policies that cause it...Keynesian theory has proven time and time again that it only fixes the problem in the short term, this is documented, and if I had the abiltity to draw graphs on LPSG to demonstrate how it works, I would. Stop being so god damn selfish is all I can say to anyone who supports Keynesian theory...we don't need to wait for some douchebag self-claimed "expert" to draw conslusions for us. Use your goddamn brains, they're there for a reason
 

AllHazzardi

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Inflation is easily controlled. In fact deflation is the worry.

Pray for Inflation

Completely ignoring the fact that over-inflation is what put us on the precipice of this last economic cliff-hanger, inflation is not so easily controlled as one might think. Inflation comes from so many sources that capitalist governments hold as high marks; measuring productivity in money, focusing on the "more jobs" mentality, unequal pay- "Getting ahead faster than everyone else" aka the "Jones Complex", and the unwise expenditure ripple aka the "Keeping up with the Jones' Complex".

Consumerism and Capitalism is a very precarious system if your perspectives are wrong. The focus of a company on money results in quality being put on the back burner right next to regional investment(aka, jobs provided/charity/public investments). With more companies wanting to use crappier material to save a dime in costs, it raises the demand on the crappier material, pushing up prices(inflation), which is now out of proportion with its actual rarity compared to other materials. Companies want to save a buck so they can pay themselves fifty these days, every dollar they take out is a dollar that isn't paying for things it could potentially be spent on; benefits, higher pay for lower level workers, reinvestment into updating the company's technology.

And it works, because a crappy product has a lower price tag, and given people are paid so disproportionately low compared to the top end, every dime counts, perpetuating the inflationary loop. So not only do we run into inflation, but we run into inflation which actually feeds back into and strengthens itself.

Inflation is really easy to control. In fact, it's easy to eliminate entirely. Normalize every wage for every individual to the same value. The effect of this is that regardless of resource cost, if an item takes 4 hours to make, even if between 4 individuals, it costs 4 hours of pay for any individual.

With an unbalanced system(eg, wages ranging from $10/h to $50/h) the time it takes to get the same item, given the same time requirements to produce it, ranges from not quite half the time for the highest paid($50/h would be able to buy the 4 hours worth of pay item in 2.5 hours of work), to nearly double for the lowest($10/h would be able to buy the 4 hours worth of pay item in 7.5 hours of work).

The only thing that unequal pay does is unbalance and skew the system, creating flow of money from one group to another which results in poverty and wasteful usage. It also violates the basic fundamental rights of equality because regardless of education or experience, no individual should be worth more money than another individual- else they would be unequal. The only thing that differs between them is what they do for their job; does what they do require 2 years of education/experience, or does it require 6?

Additionally, the premise that if the value of the currency changes, the value of the debt changes, is flawed for one primary reason; the ability to change the rates. As far as investing and loaning is concerned, the perspective of the investor is that the debtor is a source of reliable legally obligated income above the amount put forth on the debtor's behalf. The higher the investor wishes to be paid/profit for his time, the more it will cost the debtor. Additionally, after the currency drops and the relative face value of these debts change, the next time it is sold at a low, rock-bottom price, should the value return, whoever purchases it would stand to make a huge profit.

So you'd better hope we don't try to reinflate the economy again; we should just focus on levelling it out and balancing it. If it is inflated too much more, it won't just be a "Bubble" popping the next time the deflation stress builds. You won't even need a listening device to hear the barely-back-on-their-feet wall street people all the way over in Guatemala. If we can balance the economy, then the other economies will restabilize relative to where they began, changing depending on who invested in what and where.
 

lucky8

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when it comes to inflation, the only thing we have to fear is inflation fear itself




True, once business owners start fearing inflation, inflation happens...

But pray for inflation? Please. Stop watching the news and observe what is going on around you instead of just "taking someone's word for it." The last 4-5 years our country experienced massive widescale inflation. This was due to 3 main factors: low interest rates (cheap, easy money), the quadrupling of oil prices, and rising house prices. This inflation is what brought about the recession we are in. Not the financial crisis, but the recession that we were in before the financial crisis hit...you know, the one that started in Dec. of '07...

The cost of oil is responsible for most price level increases across the board. Most food has increased in price by about 20-30% over the last 5 years, rent has gone up, electric bills have increased anywhere from 15-30% depending where you live, and pretty much every other good or service has also increased in price by these same percentages. This is a cold hard fact that news networks are avoiding. This substantial rise in price levels across the board, coupled with the raising of interest rates that the economy had become dependent upon is what brought on this recession, period.

And now that oil prices have gone down, are companies lowering their prices back to the pre $150 a barrel oil? Absolutely not. In fact, most companies are either raising their prices due to the financial crisis, or keeping prices the same and downsizing the amount of food or other goods offered in a package...for example, Ritz crackers are now about half as thick as they were a year ago.

We, the consumers, NEED price deflation. With all the layoffs and wage and benefit cuts, consumers are finding it harder and harder to afford the basics, and what they can afford they're getting less of for the same price. Here's what I think is going to happen when we start coming out of this recession, in no particular order:

1)oil prices are going to begin taking off again. It's as much about speculation as it is supply/demand...Remember, OPEC has already decreased production to try and maintain a price level above $70, this is something you probably actually would have seen on CNN

2)once oil prices go, there goes every other service and good on the market, thanks to transportation costs

3)interest rates are going to sky rocket (that's how the Fed combats inflation, they raise rates in order to decrease the money supply and spur a small recession)

4)once employers start hiring again, us, the consumers and workers, will come to find that since the labor market is so loose, employers will be able to pay us less than they were before . Too many workers + not enough jobs = cheap labor

5)workers aren't making as much, so they are spending less. Businesses begin to struggle (if they even made a recovery from this one)

6)Due to reasons (1),(2),(3),(4),and (5), we fall back into another recession

This is all a very real possibility...and I'm usually a pretty optimitic dude. I don't want this to happen, but it's going to anyways because this, my friend, is economics...this is exactly what your buddy Krugman teaches in his classes. Even Keynesians submit to this long term inevitability, they just deem the short term more important than the long term...

I guess I can call myself an economist now too :wink:
 

AllHazzardi

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when it comes to inflation, the only thing we have to fear is inflation fear itself

The Big Inflation Scare

Yeah, that's pretty much what you'd expect from Krugman. Unfortunately, the situation we're in is a lot like a pothole on a road. Every time you avoid it, it's actually ever so slightly larger because you're aiding in the breakdown, avoid it enough times and eventually it will be unavoidable or block the road until truly repaired, or replaced with a better system.



Seriously. Roads too expensive to maintain with such high traffic load? Mass produce and commercialize an electric(and possibly automated) version of the Moller Skycar. Where we'd be going, we wouldn't be needing roads. Carefully controlled air highways could handle exponentially more traffic load smoothly than the normal roads without the wear and tear and maintainence cost. This leaves the roadways all to the truckers; it would even be possible to create much larger trucks which use a wider road surface, creating less wear and tear overall.

Economic system too destablized? Rebalance it by actually giving direction to the big producers; incentivize them work on and provide services that are of the best value to the whole, as well as what is in highest demand. Figure out what new technologies would have the highest impact on repairing our economy and society and put full effort towards them in the order of their impact and desirability.

There are far better ways to stimulate the economy than dumping a lot of money out to get people to buy the "new and improved" model of an old, easily out-datable technology.
 
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deleted15807

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“When you get into a crisis like this, gradualism is not the right strategy,” said Frederic S. Mishkin, an economist at Columbia University who was a Fed governor from 2006 until 2008. “Of course, when things turn around, you have to be aggressive in the other direction.”
 

lucky8

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Not promoting gradualism, merely telling you what to expect in the coming few years...any opinions of you own there? Or are they all just lifted from the web?
 
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deleted15807

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Predictions aren't worth the breath it took to say them. Fortune telling essentially. :jester:
 

B_New End

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Predictions aren't worth the breath it took to say them. Fortune telling essentially. :jester:

Says the man who listens to those who got predictions wrong, and scoffs at those who got them right.

YouTube - Peter Schiff was right (new) - 2002 to 2009 with exact dates.

And not only did he get them right, he explained exactly why it was going to fail.


Yet you continue to post statements from people like Krugman who had it all wrong.

Sargon has no mind, and he doesn't even know shit about economics, Keynesian or otherwise, obviously. He thinks the federal reserve is part of the government because it is a .gov domain. :rolleyes:

I mean here you guys are writing very thoughtful 4 or 5 paragraph ideas, and his response is links to Krugman. I highly doubt he is reading them, and even if he was, he couldn't understand anyways, so I wouldn't waste any more time on his zombie head.
 
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deleted15807

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NewEnd you really aren't worth engaging much beyond this. Most hysterical screaming ideologues with big time anger management issues one must avoid. I suspect you spend a lot of your time at social gatherings alone if indeed you get invited to any. Maybe you should go to a Town Hall meeting and join the other screamers.

I wish you had mentioned Ron Paul earlier. I would have put you on ignore earlier. :biggrin1: We know you Ron Paulers hate the Federal Reserve and just about everything else. That comes through loud and clear.

And I suggest you brush up on the Fed and stop listening to Ron Paul talking points. :tongue:

The Federal Reserve must work within the framework of the overall objectives of economic and financial policy established by the government; therefore, the description of the System as “independent within the government” is more accurate.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_complete.pdf

Additionally you should look up exactly WHO owns the .gov domain.

The United States is the only country known to have a government-specific top level Internet domain. As this code is restricted to US governmental entities, no one else is permitted to hold .gov as their top level domain.

Domain Extensions - How to Register .gov Domain Names


So, uh, yeah, ignore me, I'm just crazy.

I knew it all along :notworthy:

Complete hysterics..........

I don't care what most economists think..........

Follow the media, they know the truth!

BUT LOOK AROUND YOU!!!! EVERYTHING IS NOT OK. WAKE UP!!! WAKE UP!!!! WAKE UP!!! LOOK AT THE NUMBERS!! LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE THAT PREDICTED THIS MESS, NOT THE ONES THAT MADE IT!!!

We are not OK! The bailouts made things worse!

Fuck your fucking economists. They had everything wrong, I dont give a fuck about their opinions. I'll keep listening to the ones that told the fucking truth, thanks.

Fuck the skewed government numbers.
 
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B_New End

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I suspect you spend a lot of your time at social gatherings alone if indeed you get invited to any.

I'm a fuck of a lot of fun when I am drunk and/or high. But when I am sober, and in reality land... I am no fun at all. At least not to most people. I have quite a few people in my life who I talk with for hours on end about the world soberly, and I am glad to have them.

Party on... dude.





BTW, Ron Paul was right. Maybe one day you can look back at his debate videos, and watch as he succinctly predicted this entire economic mess, all to be scoffed at as you are doing to me right now. We were just trying to warn those of you who are not really paying attention. Sorry if we made you uncomfortable.

I doubt you even watched the Schiff video... I am sure you are not even interested in the truth.

What about Dennis Kucinich? He was with us too. Mayeb you should look into soem of the things he was saying.
 
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