Paul Krugman on Newsnight, 30 May 2012

[Pete]

Paul Krugman on Newsnight, 30 May 2012

He makes sense to me - anyone disagree with him?

[k4blades]

Do you post these videos just to provoke debate?

I only ask because he's saying the complete opposite to the the 12 year old girl who you posted the other day.
She said that the world is being crippled by debt, therefor lets deal with that issue.
He is saying, we shouldn't worry about the debt.
There are several errors in what he says, for example, he is assuming that Govt austerity leads to national austerity, not true, look at Germany. He also says early on that private businesses aren't investing because of their debt. Not true. Many of the FTSE100 companies are sitting on billions of cash revenues, banks, BT, etc, etc. They aren't investing because they think any day now, the Euro will collapse, leading to banks collapsing and major cash shortages, nothing to do with our domestic economy and they don't have debt problems.

Paxman seemed to give credit to him because he has a Nobel prize. They gave Al Gore a noble prize for making a silly and very inaccurate film about global warming! They gave Obama a Nobel prize because he managed to convince America to vote for a blackman.
I think the 12 year old girl made more sense.

[k4blades]

oh I almost forgot.....

What austerity anyway.
As the lady in red touched on at the beginning....very few of the Govts planned cuts, or tax raising measures have been implemented. Any austerity we have is down to lack of confidence because everyone keeps going on about how bad the world is.....we're doomed, I tell ya.
Now I'm off to spend my next million.

[Pete]

>> Do you post these videos just to provoke debate?

Yes - to a degree.

One of a mod's duties is to try and keep fresh content on a forum so when members call in, there is something new to read.

Also, I am not an intellectual and am aware that different folks have different levels of intelligence, so I sometimes post about a subject that I am interested in, even if I don't fully understand the subject.

[Pete]

I'm liking what krugman is saying more and more.

"The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” So declared John Maynard Keynes 75 years ago, and he was right. Even if you have a long-run deficit problem — and who doesn’t? — slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression."

Bit of of a long read, but well worth it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-agenda.html?_r=1