|
Media Infiltrations: Deadly Rescue  National Review November 17, 2008 Krugman’s Posthumous Nobel National Review Online October 14, 2008
"What has been your worst blogging experience? "That's a guy who actually stalks me on the Web and once stalked me personally." "I'm saying this...guy's a jerk."
 A Bound Man Shelby Steele What I'm listening to:  Langley Schools Music Project What I'm watching:  There Will Be Blood What I'm playing:  Speed Racer Order these from Amazon.com at Amazon's normal low prices... and a fraction of your order goes to help support this site. Thanks!
Thanks to Irwin Chusid, public editor. Some of the sites
|
Chronicle of the Conspiracy
Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back!
Friday, April 04, 2003
|
Get new major postings to this weblog via email -- free. Click here to sign up! |
EAGLEBURGER: ...there are some who want this administration to look bad. ...If you'll give me 30 seconds, I can give you a specific example. About 10 days ago I was approached by "The New York Times" to write an op-ed piece. To make it very short, when I talked to them about it, I was told what we want is criticism of the administration.
HANNITY: They told you that?
EAGLEBURGER: Right out. Flat out. He told me we want criticism of the administration. Needless to say, I did not write the op-ed piece.
Thanks to a reader who pointed this out.
Update... On our letters page, an interesting note from a newspaper editorial writer on the practice of shopping for op-eds.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:09 PM | link
|
Get new major postings to this weblog via email -- free. Click here to sign up! |
It's just a dull economic forecasting column -- the kind of blather that creates padding between the ads in rags like Business Week, the columns that seem so painfully dated when read them three months later in the dentist's office. In fact the only thing that's even particularly Krugmanesque about it is that it's about yet another crisis. This time the crisis is SARS.
Making yet another play on words with "shock and awe," Krugman warns that, thanks to the risk that SARS could become a global pandemic and depress business activity worldwide, "...you shouldn't be shocked if the economic news turns awful." But in perhaps the most optimistic statement I've ever seen him write, Krugman concedes that at least SARS "doesn't look like a civilization-killer."
Actually the best part is the little teaser that leads you into the column from the Opinion homepage on the Times web site (perhaps you see this somewhere in the print edition too):
"The war has monopolized everyone's attention, but what seems to be even more fatal to an ailing economy is a crippling virus."
Who but the prophets of doom at the Times could conceive of one thing being "more fatal" than other? If war is already "fatal" for the economy, then what's SARS going to do? Can you kill again an economy that's already been killed once? And how is it exactly that it "seems" to be "more fatal"? Great Caesar's ghost... get me rewrite!
>>Update... Wow! This is how it's done! Robert Musil grabs Krugman by the throat and squeezes -- showing that beneath the surface of this seeming critique of pure economics there lurks Krugman's the usual Bush-bashing.
>>Update 2... John Weidner weighs in, noting that this is just Krugman's usual gloom-and-doom template -- including the usual tip-of-the-Krugmanian-hat to gloom-and-doom soulmate Steve Roach.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:55 AM | link
Thursday, April 03, 2003
|
Get new major postings to this weblog via email -- free. Click here to sign up! |
Well, what was I -- a libertarian... an apolitical cynic -- supposed to do? I was invited to a meeting with President Bush, Treasury Secretary Snow, and National Economic Council chair Stephen Friedman -- along with eleven other economists (not including Paul Krugman), to discuss the prospects for Bush's tax-cuts. So I said yes. Why not? What was there to be afraid of -- a vast West Wing conspiracy?
Well, I'm really glad I went. I'm a pretty jaded guy, and I've written some very critical things about all these people. But I have to tell you that I was impressed -- especially by George W. Bush. I was expecting the self-conscious, sometimes painfully tongue-tied man I'd seen television. But the man I spent an hour across the table from was entirely different. In an informal give-and-take format, Bush spoke with passion, clarity, depth and insight. He was surprisingly real, and the environment around him was surprisingly casual and comfortable. Sure, he had his entourage around him -- but I remember being in a meeting with Jack Welch a couple years back where the pomp was a lot more pompous, and the hangers on were a lot more obsequious.
Of course he spoke about Iraq. But more to the point of this meeting, he spoke about the policy revolution initiated by his proposed elimination of the double taxation of dividends and retained earnings, and all that will be required to "forever change this country into 'entrepreneurial heaven.'"
And he knows what he's up against. As though taking a page right off this blog, in talking about the barriers that some politicians and the media put up against wealth creation, he said "sometimes I think some of these guys just don't like capitalism."
I don't have a lot of illusions about government or major party politics -- if you read this blog, you know that for sure. But despite all the ways that my libertarian heart of hearts disagrees with the Bush administration, and despite all the compromises that I know any politician has to make, I left this meeting with a strong sense of confidence that capitalism has in the White House right now about the best friend it's likely to get nowadays.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:48 AM | link
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
|
Get new major postings to this weblog via email -- free. Click here to sign up! |
On the spending thing, wasn't it Krugman who was complaining in his column less than two months ago that Bush was spending too much -- and, in doing so, drawing the especially unkind image of Bush as a reformed alcoholic falling off the wagon?
And then Krugman claims that Bush is spending disproportionately on homeland defense in the smaller, less populated states that voted for him in the 2000 election. But shouldn't an economics professor be ashamed to offer evidence like this?
"...the department [of Homeland Defense] makes no attempt to assess needs. Instead, each state receives a base of 0.75 percent of the total, regardless of its population; the rest is then allocated in proportion to population. This is a very good deal for states with small populations, like Wyoming or Montana. It's a very bad deal for states like California or New York, which receives only 4.7 percent of the money."
Okay, let's see here. New York is 2% of the states, right? And it gets 4.7% of the money?
And your point is... what exactly?
>> Update... RealClearPolitics shows that the allocation is not Bush's idea especially: Bevan points to a Washington Post story documenting how the DHS state-by-state formula got determined in the first place by the USA Patriot Act, passed by the Senate (which, of coure, is itself organized to enhance the power of less populous states).
>> Update 2... John Weidner makes a great point on his blog: "the great income leveler" Krugman ought to be delighted to see the rich states subsidize the poor states in homeland defense!
>> Update 3... David Hogberg shows why this latest Krugman fantasy of a Bush/Rove plot is really all about congressional politics.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:28 AM | link
Monday, March 31, 2003
|
Get new major postings to this weblog via email -- free. Click here to sign up! |
"Putting things together, annual containment costs of $19 billion can be converted to expected present value by discounting future expenditures at an appropriate rate, which we take to be 2 percent per year, and by the 3 percent annual probability that the Iraqi regime changes character. The resulting estimate for the cost of containment is $380 billion. This dwarfs any reasonable estimate of U.S. war costs."
Thanks to Bruce Bartlett at the National Center for Policy Analysis for pointing this out.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:02 AM | link
Sunday, March 30, 2003
|
Get new major postings to this weblog via email -- free. Click here to sign up! |
On the front page of the Sunday Arts and Leisure section, theatre critic cum geopolitical strategist Frank Rich has a commentary headlined "Iraq Around the Clock" (the tread on that pun's getting a little thin-- a Google search on it got 263 hits). Rich's point is that TV news is frantically over-doing its coverage of the war. So then why is every above-the-fold inch in today's Arts and Leisure section -- the Arts and Leisure section, Mandrake! -- devoted to it? Why was Rich's commentary in the Arts and Leisure section last week devoted to it, too?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:45 PM | link