Krugman vs. Krugman

[Brian Kempf]

I became disillusioned with studying economics midway through my Microeconomics 101 course during college. I had already taken a high school class which gave me a basic understanding of the dismal science, and read a lot of economic (albeit normative) articles. Economics is primarily about making and using models, but the incessant complexities of economic behavior - even moreso on a macro level - have it so that the only way you can really tell if an economic prescription is effective is through action or inaction. I have tremendous respect for economists and their field but I believe that many economists treat it as a hard science when it is anything but.

The following is an interesting article that Cathy O'Neil wrote regarding a panel with Krugman, Sachs, Soros, and Edmund Phelps discussing the financial system. I didn't watch the panel myself but she brings up some points worth noting: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/cathy-oneil-economists-dont-understand-the-financial-system-quelle-surprise.html


On Dec 12, 2012, at 6:05 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:

> I hate endless relativism, but I think, off the bat, that this isn't true.  Economics in the real world is endlessly complex and it seems that everyone, given a reasonable timespan gets it wrong.  And there's a world economy that encompasses, moment to moment, what goes on in the US and Somalia and Holland and everywhere else.  What truth can anyone utter at any given moment, other than statistics (which I really don't think are truths).
> Certain insights of economics are true or they aren't. The world is all that is the case. 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> To: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
> Cc: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, Dec 12, 2012 3:37 pm
> Subject: Re: Krugman vs. Krugman
> 
> Normative economics, Alice, sounds like some labeling that means nothing.
> 
> Certain insights of economics are true or they aren't. The world is all that is the case. 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Dec 12, 2012, at 11:43 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 12/12/2012 10:47 AM, David Morris wrote:
>>> Thanks for the normative economics definition. Seems to me its opposite isn't really positive economics, but evil economics.  The point of good economics is to encourage societal goals through carrots and sticks, regulation and oversight.  A tall order, but a good goal seeks ideals.
>> 
>> Positive economics is value-judged good, (not evil) because it provides an understanding of how economic forces tend to work.  This knowledge enables normative economics to devise methods by which society's goals can be aimed for. 
>> 
>> P.
>> 
>>> 
>>> And despite your logorrhea, you still haven't pointed out any "double talk" by Krugman.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 5:12 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In the Bots and Barons editorial Krug sunk to a new low as he put on
>>> the scarlet class war robe of normative economics, calling up Marx
>>> from his grave in the haunted yard of command economic tragedies,
>>> whilst his invisible hand, up there in the upper wings of the theater,
>>> parading a puppet show of robber barons and robots, fooled no one not
>>> taken in by shadows on the wall.
>>> 
>>> Krugman the journalist, like TRP, author of Inherent Vice--a book for
>>> beach readers, is hawking his books to a public of financial
>>> illiterates and is now at risk of making himself a puppet in his own
>>> show. A mouthpiece that spews normative political economics and
>>> ignores the facts. The facts, as Ronald Ray-Gun said, as Mr.
>>> Gradgrind, a figure form the Dickens novel Krug suggests we all go
>>> live in,  instructed, are in the numbers revised and revisited...and
>>> so....
>>> 
>>> as Ben Bernanke, who saw no inflation but the risk of deflation long
>>> before Krugman spouted out from his chair on cnbc with mad Ron Paul
>>> readying a gallows for the gentle academic of Princeton, the Chairman
>>> of the Fed, long before the idiot winds of congress and the wall
>>> street boyz with Smithian club ties turned their rhetoric and put it
>>> where the smart money has always been, in the bond market, long before
>>> the so-called bond vigilantes put their portfolios of leverage and
>>> derivatives back in their holsters, for a new sheriff of wall street,
>>> not a Spitzer with his boxers on his wing tips, a Brazilian call girl
>>> at his penis...no...only a soft spoken bearded Jewish man from the
>>> halls of that august institution that Wilson once called
>>> on...there....where Krugman sat, a young scholar under Ben, reading
>>> those famous letters to FDR...there he is, an American Hero. Just ask
>>> the European about Ben. How they would swap their German backed bonds
>>> for a backbone like the one that hold tha gentle scholar, whose voice
>>> cracks and whose hands shake when the powerful congress members spit
>>> blood in his face, but he does not back down....
>>> 
>>>  Itz book selling and envy that has set Krugman against Krugman. He
>>> makes a fine show, but Ben has the intestina fortitude, the
>>> Grace...what Jews call, well....Balls.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_economics
>>> 
>> 

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