"Political Inflationistas" by Paul Krugman at the NY Times
Political Inflationistas
by Paul Krugman at the NY Times
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/08/political-inflationistas/
"SNIP................................
Continuing the ongoing attempt to characterize the economists and economist wannabes who keep warning about inflation from the Feds efforts to do something about a weak economy, Noah Smith suggests that none of the inflationistas really believe what theyre saying. Instead, he writes, theyre either trying to defend economic models that defined their careers, but failed; lashing out because they personally have been made to look like fools; or playing to a lucrative audience of grumpy old rich white men, who are natural goldbugs:
So to sum up, there are three main reasons for predicting inflation, in defiance of both market expectations and recent past experience. These are 1. Commitment to a research paradigm, 2. Emotive expressions of political and personal anger, and 3. Cynical affinity manipulation.
Id go along with most of this, with two caveats.
One is that my guess is that even the worst of these guys probably arent as self-consciously cynical as Smith seems to suggest. Snidely Whiplash types, twirling their mustaches and smirking over their evilness, do exist, but theyre rare. For the most part, people have an amazing ability to rationalize their actions: objectively, theyre cynically exploiting the rubes, but in their own minds theyre honest warriors for Truth, Justice, and the Austrian Way.
..............................SNIP"