Morning Jo(k)e: Why Joe Scarborough and the Beltway austerians think Nobelist Paul Krugman is a nut
from In These Times:
Morning Jo(k)e
Why Joe Scarborough and the Beltway austerians think Nobelist Paul Krugman is a nut.
BY Chris Lehmann
Krugman, a Nobelist at Princeton who knows a thing or two about how budgets and economies work, contended that the long-term debt of the United States was of no great immediate concern and that, so long as demand remained slack and the labor market sluggish, federal deficit spending was a sensible way to promote growth.
For Scarborough, Krugman’s unexceptional explanation of basic Keynesian macroeconomics was a heretical thoughtcrime. After the show, Scarborough briskly took to his Politico column to announce that Krugman had defied “conventional wisdom across the Western world.” But that meritless claim was insufficiently sweeping for Politico’s headline writers, who titled the outburst “Paul Krugman vs. the World.”
In both instances, of course, “the world” in question is the myopic Beltway axis of media punditry, which holds that under all conditions, government must be trimmed. As Krugman pointed out in his “Morning Joe” appearance, that policy outlook makes zero sense when a nation is struggling to emerge from a recession. No ailing economy in modern history has managed to revive itself by pursuing budget austerity—as illustrated in distressingly clear detail by the worsening slumps in Britain and Spain, whose governments adopted classic neoliberal budget-slashing in response to their economic woes.
But mere empirical evidence can never penetrate the monomania of the Beltway media elite. So when Scarborough came across some richly deserved ridicule in the progressive blogosphere, he fired back with a follow-up on Politico titled “Paul Krugman economics: Deny, deny, deny!” Here our vigilant enforcer of the austerity consensus decries Krugman’s “extreme view” as fatally “at odds with liberal Keynesians” and cites as proof an Atlantic Monthly piece by Alan Blinder, a colleague of Krugman’s in Princeton’s economics department. Unfortunately, Blinder’s allegedly argument-settling thesis called not for instant and steep slashes to government spending, but said rather that the main driver of higher government costs was the out-of-control price of healthcare services. Without broadly distributed reductions in healthcare spending, Blinder said, slashing other government expenditures would make little real headway. ....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/14721/morning_joke/
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He's going to pop someday from being so puffed up over himself. Truly, he thinks he's wonderful.
I wish Mika would put him in his place on the air. Instead, she looks away, rolls her eyes, squirms in her chair, purses her mouth, sighs, etc., indicating her displeasure but rarely does she really get in his face.
I think Mika is much smarter than Joe, but it seems she's been told to just sit there and be herself (pretty), but don't try to add too much to the conversation, let Joe do it. 
That is a great morning show, but it would be better without him. The show has a second to none format and with all the quest that they have on getting rid of him would only be a benefit. Not that I would ever forget wasn't he a congressman, oh yea hear that about 2 times a day and what a great American he was for opposing Clinton. Enough about him, but I am sure he is a real nice guy.
