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Krugman: The Stimulus Debate, Revisited
The Stimulus Debate, Revisited
Brad DeLong finds Clive Crook making some easily refuted claims about the nature of the stimulus debate in the winter of 2008-2009, and my role in particular.
Look, this isn’t hard. You can start here and use the “newer entries” link to see everything I wrote on this blog during those months. There are political pieces; but nowhere in the stimulus discussion, and I mean nowhere, do I demand that stimulus be contingent on repealing the Bush tax cuts, or that it be used as a way to lock in bigger government, or any of the things that Crook for some reason is sure I did.
What’s going on here? The stimulus debate was indeed political — but almost entirely on the other side, where conservatives railed against any notion that positive government action might do good, and reached for any argument, no matter how bad, against such action.
And all I can see here is that Crook’s pathological centrism — his intense desire to see that the truth is in the middle, never mind actual facts — requires that he invent a history in which Keynesians were just as guilty of politicization as the other side. Unfortunately, those actual facts — with their well-known liberal bias — do exist, and are right there in the public record.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/the-stimulus-debate-revisited/
Brad DeLong finds Clive Crook making some easily refuted claims about the nature of the stimulus debate in the winter of 2008-2009, and my role in particular.
Look, this isn’t hard. You can start here and use the “newer entries” link to see everything I wrote on this blog during those months. There are political pieces; but nowhere in the stimulus discussion, and I mean nowhere, do I demand that stimulus be contingent on repealing the Bush tax cuts, or that it be used as a way to lock in bigger government, or any of the things that Crook for some reason is sure I did.
What’s going on here? The stimulus debate was indeed political — but almost entirely on the other side, where conservatives railed against any notion that positive government action might do good, and reached for any argument, no matter how bad, against such action.
And all I can see here is that Crook’s pathological centrism — his intense desire to see that the truth is in the middle, never mind actual facts — requires that he invent a history in which Keynesians were just as guilty of politicization as the other side. Unfortunately, those actual facts — with their well-known liberal bias — do exist, and are right there in the public record.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/the-stimulus-debate-revisited/
Clearly, Crook and his ilk are having a hard time dealing with the fact that their arguments were/are bullshit.
The Economic Argument Is Over — Paul Krugman Has Won
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022751886
Krugman: Baltic Brouhaha
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022780980