Charlie Rose and Joe Scarborough team up on Paul Krugman to no avail

[Bill USA]

JOe Scarborough appeared on the Charlie Rose show to try to 'take on' Paul Krugman. Krugman may or may not have anticipated he would be taking on both Charlie Rose and Scarborough - but that's okay.

Scarborough is a practiced bullshitter, while Krugman is an economist who is entirely focussed on understanding how the economy actually works. He is not a trained debater - and certainly not trained in dealing with a bullshitter like Scarborough. Scarborough certainly had Krugman beat on the volume of his voice. but when Scarborough pointed out that Krugman expressed concerns about the deficit during the Clinton administration - supposedly showing Krugman to be inconsistent - Krugman said (not an exact quote): That was a different circumstance then. We hadn't just been through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. ' The economy was booming and it THEN was the time to pay down the debt.'

Scarborough has been saying Krugman is out in left field saying that the Debt is a long term problem and that we should first address the unacceptably high unemployment and low economic growth - in other words - screw austerity stimulate the economy to get job creation going and bring down the unemployment rate.

If Krugman was a better debater (but then being a better debater, maybe he wouldn't have been the Nobel prize winning economist that he is. Krugman is focussed on finding out how the economy actually works - not in honing his rhetorical skills) he might have said:

[font color="#3333aa"] "If we get the economy growing at good rate and bring down unemployment we will be in a better, stronger position, that much sooner, to start bringing down the Public Debt. If we do NOT stimulate the economy NOW it will take much longer before we can really take more aggressive steps to bring down the debt. THe sooner we get back to something like full employment, Government revenues will climb and we will be in a much better position to pay down the debt."[/font]


http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/krugman-scarborough-clash-over-debt-spending-on-charlie

[hepkat]

1. Krugman failed to articulate his thoughts in some instances tho

He needs to have a better argument about why washington can't do more than 1 thing at a time.

He also needs a better narrative about why his views on debt are different now than in the 90's.

I think in the popular conciousness Krugman lost. He says himself he didn't do well. But he's right and he's one of the few voices making this argument to a popular audience and he needs to win for the sake of all of us.

Ultimately, personally, I just can't watch Joe anymore and I used to be able to tolerate him.

WTF is Jeffry Sachs doing getting in bed with Joe.