Krugman attacks!

Kyle Smith: NYPOST.com  h/t Instapundit

The nation’s most dangerous economist, Paul Krugman, releases another book with his only idea for Dems — spend more money  [ emphasis added]

excerpts:

• The Nobel committee is not infallible (the guy who invented the lobotomy and declared it “always safe” got a Nobel), but even if it was, Krugman’s award was not for political philosophy but for an arcane point of technical analysis, and even if it were for political philosophy, many economists with the opposite philosophy (Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Friedrich Hayek) have also won the Nobel.
• Krugman “writes with more vitriol than I find attractive,” writes Harvard economist and fellow Times columnist Greg Mankiw. He treats anyone who disagrees as “a mendacious idiot,” writes George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok. “Krugman should stop bullying people,” wrote columnist Michael Kinsley.
• Rugy had produced a chart showing that there haven’t been big government cutbacks in Europe. (Krugman didn’t link to it). To call the chart a blockbuster is to understate the case. It showed that France, Italy, Spain, the UK and Greece are all spending about the same as they were a couple of years ago and far more than they were spending five years ago.
• Rugy’s whole point — European austerity has consisted mainly of tax hikes, not spending cuts).
• For Krugman to be wrong about such a prominent subject matters: He not only has a lot of readers; some of them actually hold positions in government. They assume that King Krug can’t be wrong about anything.[emphasis added]
• Krugman’s problem, as he reminds us in “End This Depression Now!” is that he is a fanatic in the grip of a religion called “Keynesianism” which says you should borrow and spend your way out of a recession.  [emphasis added]
• When Harvard Professor Mankiw doubted the Obama administration’s projection of 15.6% real growth between 2008 and 2013, Krugman accused him of “deliberate obtuseness” in a post titled “Roots of Evil.” Mankiw offered to wager on the matter but got no response. That was smart: The economy will have to catch fire and grow at about 7% between now and the end of 2013 for the Obama projection to come true.

Comment:

What makes Krugman dangerous?  You'd have to watch The Ascent of Man series mentioned in the previous post to really get a sense of what's going wrong with Krugman.  It is this "push button" certainty of his that is so dangerous.  People crave certainty, but such is an illusion, as Bronowski points out.  As I have observed and pointed out on this blog, ideology can make you stupid.