Monday, April 22, 2013

You ain't just whistlin' Dixie, Bro

Paul Krugman decries Very Sensitive People, with something like a complete lack of self awareness;
When it comes to inflicting pain on the citizens of debtor nations, austerians are all steely determination – hey, it’s a tough world, and hard choices have to be made. But when they or their friends come under criticism, suddenly it’s all empathy and hurt feelings.
Later comes;
This is a curious thing for him [Anders Aslund] to say, because it’s an outright lie; as anyone who has been reading me, Martin Wolf, Brad DeLong, Simon Wren-Lewis, etc. knows, our case has always been that fiscal stimulus is justified only when you’re up against the zero lower bound on interest rates. I can’t believe that Aslund doesn’t know this; why, then, would he discredit himself by repeating an easily refuted falsehood?
Not that our feelings are hurt, mind you.
But then, why would he describe Herndon et al as “vicious”? Their paper was a calm, reasoned analysis of how R-R came up with the famous 90 percent threshold; it came as a body blow only because of the contrast between the acclaim R-R received and the indefensible nature of their analysis.
Maybe he's been reading Conscience of a Liberal (especially the comments section)!


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