I knew this guy was nuts but now he has proved it.

 

 

Paul Krugman: Fake Alien Invasion Would End Economic Slump

The Huffington Post   Jack Mirkinson   First Posted: 8/15/11 08:34 AM ET Updated: 8/15/11 01:55

Paul Krugman is so frustrated by the lack of support for another round of stimulus spending that he's now calling for a fake alien invasion of the United States to spur a World War II-style defense buildup.

Krugman was a guest on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on Sunday. Speaking with Zakaria and Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, he made the same case he has been making for years--that deficits are not the top economic concern of the day. Krugman noted that the effort of World War II helped end the Great Depression, and joked that something similar was needed today.

"If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months," he said. "And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren't any aliens, we'd be better--"

"We need Orson Welles, is what you're saying," Rogoff cut in.

"There was a 'Twilight Zone' episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace," Krugman said. "Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus."

Krugman is off his rocker.

Skippy

What's funny(scaryashell), is that most of the lefties consider this buffoon to be the "economist of record"! All the while this guy is an over-hyped idiot.

There are many who drool over the guy. He won't be happy until the entire economy is $30 trillion in debt, with a 'junk' status from the rating agencies.

"All the while this guy is an over-hyped idiot."

"There are many who drool over the guy. He won't be happy until the entire economy is $30 trillion in debt, with a 'junk' status from the rating agencies."

What are your specific disagreements with Krugman?  What are his idiotic positions?  What has he said that supports the suggestions that he desires $30 trillion in debt and junk status from rating agencies?

At least keynes made his fortune by correctly selecting individual investments. Krugman has been wrong on most everything.  Does the title Enron adviser ring a bell? 

If war, or fake wars are such a great economic boon, why isn't Obama doing better with the 2.5 wars we're fighting now! (I count Libya as the 0.5).

......................................................

Hi dole, good to see you back. This is where I got the $30 trillion from:===

There's so much in this that it's tough to know where to begin, so let's start with this being another admission by Krugman that it wasn't Franklin Delano Roosevelt's massive New Deal spending that ended the Depression.

Much as he did on ABC's "This Week" in November 2008, the Nobel laureate once again dispelled that liberal myth.

I wonder if the Keynes-loving Zakaria was paying attention.

But more importantly, let's look at the numbers involved to really get a sense of what Krugman advocated here.

The money unsuccessfully thrown at the Depression prior to World War II was staggering. From 1929 to 1939, government spending tripled from $3 billion a year to $9 billion.

And yet unemployment at the end of 1939 was still 17.2 percent.

Not a very good advertisement for Keynesian economics, is it?

Now imagine that kind of "stimulus" today. That would mean the current $3.8 trillion budget would have to rise to $11.4 trillion which would generate about $9 trillion of debt a year.

What do you think would happen to our credit rating and our dollar then? Wouldn't be pretty, would it?

Yet that didn't work in the '30s - a fact that most liberals other than Krugman still contest - so the Nobel laureate is advocating that we spend like we're being attacked by space aliens in order to get to the level of outlays during World War II.

Total federal spending in 1940 was $9.5 billion. By 1945, this had risen almost tenfold to $93 billion.

Such an increase in today's budget would create a deficit greater than $30 trillion per year making our dollar and our Treasuries totally worthless.

Did I mention Krugman once won a Nobel prize in economics?

Consider too that the lasting stimulative quality of even the World War II spending is up for debate.

The National Bureau of Economic lists a recession that began in February 1945 that lasted until October of that year. This recession happened despite the federal government spending almost tens times as much as it had only five years prior and 30 times more than in 1929.

Once again, not a very good advertisement for Keynesian economics.

But let's take this a step further, for NBER's recession numbers might be too conservative. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Gross Domestic Product shrank by 1.1 percent in 1945, a staggering 10.9 percent in 1946, and 0.9 percent in 1947.

Again, this was after the largest explosion in federal spending in our nation's history, and this is what Krugman is advocating we repeat.

Makes you wonder if space aliens have already arrived and they're residing inside this liberal Nobel laureate's head.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/n...defens#ixzz1VFufyIT0

The idea is not Krugmans, but is the brainchild of Ronald Reagan.

Here is one link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chVKSY2gT00

Reagan actually used this in a lot of his talks and speeches. Just go to youtube and search for them.

So, the question is, if Reagan says it, is it brilliant and if Krugman says it he is crazy ?

Seeweed,

Again, you're smoking the really bad stuff. Reagan was speaking of an actual outside threat that would force even the worst enemies (on Earth) to band together for their sheer survival.  Think Independence Day!  Not a Wag The Dog fake war to jump start the economy.

Seeweed -- dumber than Krugman.  Careful, you're wandering into Opie and Jimi territory. 

Krugman has run out of ideas and no one listens to him anymore.  Thankfully.

How he ever got a Nobel prize is beyond me.

A lot of things are beyond you.

I guess more a one liner is beyond you.

So, the only difference is that Reagan believed in real aliens?

Ronald Reagan's Obsession With An Alien Invasion

[Excerpted from UFO Universe, the September 1988 issue, is this article on Ronald Reagan's reputed UFO encounter, and how that encounter may serve to explain his continued interest in UFOlogy and EBEs.]

The fact that there are so many references in important speeches, off-the-cuff remarks, and just plain conversations, means that -- for whatever reason or knowledge about deep UFO secrets that he may have as President -- Ronald Reagan does think often about the possibility of an alien invasion, and how this event could become a catalyst for world unity. Talking about these UFO secrets, there is also an unconfirmed story of a special story of a special screening in the White House of the movie "ET" at few years ago, with director Steven Spielberg and a few selected guests. Right after the movie, Reagan supposedly turned to Spielberg and whispered something to the effect, "There are only a handful of people who know the truth about this."

Indeed, more than one UFOlogist has even suggested that the real target behind "Star Wars" -- another of Reagan's cosmic obsessions -- is the projected ET invasion and not the Russians.

http://www.theforbiddenknowled...onald_reagan_ufo.htm

World War II did not end the Depression.

http://mises.org/daily/5069/Wo...the-Great-Depression

Similar to the broken window fallacy.

"How he ever got a Nobel prize is beyond me."

It was for his New Trade Theory - widely regarded as some of the best work done on international trade.

As for the Newsbusters article, I really have no desire or need to address the criticism of FDR.  The article is meaningless because it tries to tie Krugman to something Krugman had nothing to do with.  You won't find him advocating a $30 trillion dollar debt anywhere.

What irks me about the anti-Krugman sentiment is that it generally isn't based on facts or reality.  People call him an idiot and questions his Noble Prize, not because they disagree with him as an economist, but because he's "on the wrong team."  I know it's frustrating for Republicans that a well-known, well-publicized economist at the top of the field isn't writing articles favoring more tax cuts, but that doesn't qualify Krugman as some sort of dunce who stumbled backwards into a Nobel Prize.

Looks like it is contagious. Sometimes one sentence is all that is needed when responding to another stupid statement.

In Response to Jimbo's One Liner. (Get It)  Skippy

Skippy had to explain it because he thinks that everyone is as dumb as he is.

Yes, even with 2.5 wars, Obama can't get the economy started. The conclusion is either that war doesn't end economic downturns, or that Obama is extremely incompetent.  Or, a combination thereof.

A third possibility is that you are clueless.

Proof once again that Krugman is operating with a "fake brain".

Originally Posted by interventor1212:

Originally Posted by Red Baron:

World War II did not end the Depression.

http://mises.org/daily/5069/Wo...the-Great-Depression

Similar to the broken window fallacy.

Yes, even with 2.5 wars, Obama can't get the economy started. The conclusion is either that war doesn't end economic downturns, or that Obama is extremely incompetent.  Or, a combination thereof.

A third possibility is that you are clueless.

'Ventor, sometimes you have to educate the ignorant:

The broken window fallacy

excerpts from ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON  by Henry Hazlitt
Chapter II,"The Broken Window"
_________
-

   A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop.  The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone.  A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies.  After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection.  And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side.  It will make business for some glazier.  As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it.  How much does a new plate glass window cost?  Two hundred and fifty dollars?  That will be quite a sun.  After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business?  Then, of course, the thing is endless.  The glazier will have $250 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $250 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum.  The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles.  The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor. 

   Now let us take another look.   The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion.  This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier.  The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death.  But the shopkeeper will be out $250 that he was planning to spend for a new suit.  Because he has had to replace the window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury).  Instead of having a window and $250 he now has merely a window.  Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit.  If we think of him as part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer. 

   The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business.  No new “employment” has been added.  The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier.  They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor.  They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene.  They will see the new window in the next day or two.  They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made.  They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.*

http://freedomkeys.com/window.htm

Now if someone wishes to live in ignorance, the correct word to use is some synonym of "stupid".

As for wars helping the economy, war as an economic stimulus only works if it trashes the industrial capacity and infrastructure of future competitors to the point where the least damaged country is left with little to no competition. That is now unlikely with the the invention of ICBM's with nuclear bombs. Those formerly large oceans have shrunk.

Flatus,

Agreed!  However, eudcation works only upon the ignorant, but not the terminally stupid!  Stupid goes on forever! 

WWII left the US standing as the only large manufacturing nation with a mostly intact workforce.  It took Europe and Japan 12 to 15 years to rebuild their capacity and grow and educate a new workforce.

And, much of Europe did not return as nations with modern factories until the 1990s -- the eastern portion of Germany and Czech Republic.

Better listen to the duck. He needs a history book like a fishing worm needs a roller skate.

Our silly troll has complimented me, probably without his knowledge.  A worm would not need a history book because he has no need. My need is less because I've studied it.

To elucidate upon my earlier statement.  Eastern Germany was wrecked by 1945. Much of it was still in disrepair when I visited between 1977 and 1980. East Berlin still had many buildings not cleared from the bombings of 1940 to 1945. A;lthough, there were show areas like Unter den Linden.   My reference to the Czech Republlic (formerly part of Czechoslavakia) was valid.  During the interim between WWI and WWII, Czechoslovakia was an economic powerhouse.  Prior to the depression, their unemployment rate was about 1 percent and the nation was the 3rd or 4th most productive on the continent.  Most of the factories were in the Czech portion of the nation.  The famous Skoda Works produced everything from buses to airplanes and armaments.

FYI, my library contains many historical works including Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Folio edition, of course) and the Durants' History of Civilization.

Originally Posted by dolemitejb: