Karl Denninger explodes on Paul Krugman and other establishment economists in Proof: Economists Claim 2 + 2 = 8134. Denninger attacks their vulnerability in a different fashion than I have, but reaches similar conclusions: the economic emperors have no clothes.
John Maynard Keynes has to be rolling in this grave…..
Suddenly, creating jobs is out, inflicting pain is in. Condemning deficits and refusing to help a still-struggling economy has become the new fashion everywhere, including the United States, where 52 senators voted against extending aid to the unemployed despite the highest rate of long-term joblessness since the 1930s.
Ninety-nine weeks of unemployment – that is, being paid to not work – isn’t enough? Where is the line Paul? Does it exist? More importantly: What if the jobs never come back?
Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake
If you’re an “economist” then we need to make sure we eat all of you folks first as the situation continues to deteriorate – a situation that exists, in no small part, because of your idiotic and mathematically-bankrupt pack of lies that has been sold to two administrations in this country, not to mention everywhere else.
What’s the economic logic behind the government’s moves? The answer, as far as I can tell, is that there isn’t any. Press German officials to explain why they need to impose austerity on a depressed economy, and you get rationales that don’t add up.
Really? How about this one Paul?  There isn’t enough money – actual money, not credit – in the world to do what you want to do – that is, pay half or more of the population to sit on their ass.
The key point is that while the advocates of austerity pose as hardheaded realists, doing what has to be done, they can’t and won’t justify their stance with actual numbers — because the numbers do not, in fact, support their position. Nor can they claim that markets are demanding austerity. On the contrary, the German government remains able to borrow at rock-bottom interest rates.
Today they can borrow at very low interest rates.  What is the plan to stop doing so?
You know full well that the plan is “we never will.” The history of the United States is one of ever-increasing outstanding debt. Ditto for western nations. That’s the problem with your premise and argument against austerity - it is not the interest payments now, it is that the debt will never be paid down and neither you or any of these other idiots ever put forward a plan to actually do so.
As such the issue isn’t the interest rate today, it is whether you can reasonably assure the government that for all times in the reasonably-foreseeable future rates will not spike higher due to a loss of market confidence.
History – including recent history – says you can’t do that.
Recent history also says that blowing over $4 trillion of borrowed money in the United States on “stimulus programs” does not create jobs – it certainly hasn’t created anything other than Census jobs (which were going to exist with or without the ”stimulative effects”) thus far!
The ugly reality is that we’ve blown our “stimulus” wads.
To read the rest of the article, click on the link in my first sentence.
Teetering On The Brink
Recession Over - NOT
Good Bye Welfare States and Government as We Know It
Bob Dylan as Economist
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