bailouts |

In June of 2012, left-wing economist and former Enron advisor Paul Krugman — who calls himself (and I quote) “Krugtron the Invincible” — wrote the following in his New York Times blog:

“I (and those of like mind) have been right about everything.”

Well, unfortunately, his streak of infallibility has just come to an end.

Two days ago, on March 17th (2014), Krugman wrote this:

Or we’re told that conservatives, the Tea Party in particular, oppose handouts because they believe in personal responsibility, in a society in which people must bear the consequences of their actions.Yet it’s hard to find angry Tea Party denunciations of huge Wall Street bailouts, of huge bonuses paid to executives who were saved from disaster by government backing and guarantees.

The boldface is mine. I bolded it not just because his statement is wrong. I bolded it, rather, because it’s so wildly wrong.

As it happens, I was one of the people who began the initial tea party in my town — this, mind you, was in the early days of the tea party, when it was predominantly about laissez-faire, before it was commandeered by the religious, the socially conservative, the philosophically wayward, before it lost its teeth and became a movement with which I was no longer comfortable being associated — and I can tell you and Paul Krugman, without any doubt whatsoever, that the bailouts (both by George Bush and by Barack Obama), as well as all the other forms of crony capitalism, were the predominant reason I was moved to organize the tea party where I live.

And every other tea party organizer I know felt the same way. Don’t believe me?

Here’s a little proof:

Sorry, Paul. You may be “right about everything,” but you are incontrovertibly wrong about this.

Regarding the Wall Street protests, Robert Robb, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, has a recent and fairly interesting article. Here’s an excerpt:

The protesters are massively wrong about the incompatibility of capitalism and social justice.

Social justice shouldn’t be measured on what the rich have, which is the fixation of the protesters. Instead, the focus should be on the lot of the poor. The spread of market capitalism has done more to improve living standards for more of the world’s poor than anything else in human history.

There is, however, a serious social justice problem that has developed in American market capitalism. Two of the bridges to the middle class for those without a college education — manufacturing and construction — have been eroded. Manufacturing jobs haven’t been lost mainly to free trade, as the brief against capitalism would have it, but to sharply improved productivity. And construction wages have been undermined by illegal immigrant labor.

The American economy hasn’t really developed substitutes for these bridges. While the protesters misdiagnose and exaggerate the problem, conservatives shouldn’t be so dismissive of the rising income gap based upon education.

The protesters are occupying Wall Street because they see large investment banks as the heart of American capitalism. They are also wrong about that, but their mistake is shared by the policymakers in both of the country’s major political parties.

Capital is the bloodline of commerce. Businesses produce first, then get paid by those who buy their goods or services. They need money to get from Point A to Point B.

There are an infinite number of ways that businesses get capital. Large Wall Street investment banks play a role, but a rather small one. And almost exclusively for big businesses, which isn’t where the growth in the American economy occurs.

(Read the full article here.)

In related news — and in response to the emails I keep getting from folks who insist that these protests aren’t Marxist — please check out these recent vids:

Tag: bailouts

Paul Krugman: Finally Wrong About Something?

Wall Street Protests And Their Misbegotten War On Capitalism