For Ricter http://dailycurrant.com/2013/03/06/paul-krugman-declares-personal-bankruptcy/ Economist and columnist Paul Krugman declared personal bankruptcy today following a failed attempt to spend his way out of debt. In a Chapter 13 filing to the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, lawyers for Krugman listed $7,346,000 in debts versus $33,000 in assets. The majority of his debts are related to mortgage financing on a $8.7 million apartment in lower Manhattan, but the list also includes $621,537 in credit card debt and $33,642 in store financing at famed jeweler Tiffanys and Co. The filing says that Krugman got into credit card trouble in 2004 after racking up $84,000 in a single month on his American Express black card in pursuit of rare Portuguese wines and 19th century English cloth Rather than tighten his belt and pay the sums back, the pseudo-Keynesian economist decided to "stimulate" his way to a personal recovery by investing in expenses he hoped would one day boost his income. Cockroaches and Creditors Between 2004 and 2007 Krugman splurged on expensive cars, clothes, and travel in hopes that the new lifestyle would convince his bosses at the New York Times to give him a giant raise. "They say always dress for the job you want," Krugman explains. "So I thought maybe if I showed up in $70,000 Alexander Amosu suits they would give me ownership of part of the company. If I had only been granted a sliver of the New York Times Co., I could have paid everything back." Even after he realized an equity stake was not going to happen, Krugman continued to spend wildly hoping his bling and media appearances would increase demand for his personal brand and lift his book sales. His biggest mistake came in 2007, when at the height of the financial bubble he decided to invest in high-end real estate in New York City. His multi-million dollar apartment lost 40 percent of its value just months after its purchase, and has been underwater ever since. "You'd think a Nobel Prize winning economist could recognize a housing bubble," says Herman Minsky, a retired television executive who purchased Krugman's home at a huge discount. "But hey, I'm not complaining." Conscience of a Fraud Krugman, a renowned trade economist, joined the New York Times as a columnist in 2000. Since the start of the financial crisis he as used the platform to argue vociferously for what he terms Keynesian deficit spending. However, Keynes did not advocate using debt financing to stimulate the economy. Rather, he argued that government should save in the good times and spend in the bad. Through his lawyer, Bertil Ohlin, Krugman explains that despite his travails with spending and debt in his personal finances, he stands by his pseudo-Keynesian policies. "I still defend my analysis that on the macroeconomic level sovereign debt crises can be fixed by increasing government borrowing to lift aggregate demand. I admit, however, that on the microeconomic level this strategy has failed spectacularly."
He's being uncivil and still posing as an expert of course... oh wait, he's a Democrat, that's his job... http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/paul-krugman-attacked-as-uncivil-91904.html
Paul Krugman Arrested For Urinating on Teddy Bear http://dailycurrant.com/2013/05/29/paul-krugman-arrested-for-urinating-on-teddy-bear-2/ Economist Paul Krugman was arrested today for urinating on a teddy bear belonging to the 6-year-old daughter of rival economist Kenneth Rogoff. According to police in Cambridge, Mass., Krugman stole the bear from a window sill at the Rogoff family home and was relieving himself on it when a passing police officer caught him. Krugman had intended to return the pee-soaked bear to the window sill as part of a long running feud with Rogoff and his collaborator Carmen Reinhart over the merits of austerity. According to witnesses the Nobel Prize winning trade economist resisted arrest and was shouting pro-Keynesian slogans to the officer and the onlookers. "This motherf****r said output growth slowed when public debt rose above 90 percent of GDP, but he was f*****g wrong," Krugman told the police officer, "and you're arresting me? This little bitch falsifies his data, and somehow I'm the f*****g criminal?" Behavioral Economics Krugman has a long running feud with Rogoff and Reinhart, who in 2010 co-authored a paper which argued that excessive government debt slowed economic growth. That paper has since been found to contain numerous factual and methodological errors, and Krugman has not missed an opportunity to publicly blast his rivals' mistakes. The disagreement took a new turn last weekend when the Harvard duo called Krugman out for his highly negative and personal attacks, deeming it "spectacularly uncivil behavior." Rather than back down, however, Krugman escalated the dispute by flying to Boston and bringing the fight to Rogoff's doorstep. "This isn't sociology, this is economics," Krugman explained in an exclusive interview from the Middlesex County jail. "Economics is a motherf*****g war, and I'm a motherf*****g soldier. "If this little coward didn't want his daughter's teddy bear involved in this s**t, then maybe he should have thought twice before he published a study that called into question my own personal beliefs about the relationship between public debt and growth." Krugman is expected to be charged with public urination for the bear incident and defacement of private property for spray-painting the equation "AD = C + I + G + (X-M)" on Rogoff's garage door. For her part, young Lindsey Rogoff says it will be hard to find a replacement for the teddy bear she called Samantha. "It was my most favorite stuffed animal," she says. "Daddy said he was sorry. I don't know why Mr. Krugman has to be so mean."
What does Paul Krugman think he gains from his rudeness? There is much to debate about liberal economist and New York Times writer Paul Krugman, but here are two facts that seem hard to argue with: * Krugman is a very smart economist. * Krugmanâs debate style is uncivil and uncharitable. When Krugman disagrees with people, he calls them names. If Krugman dislikes your policy proposals, and you make a mistake in your work, he is utterly unforgiving, uncharitable, and dismissive. And if you broadly align against Krugman on ideology, heâll suggest your side is responsible for murder, he wonât read you, and then, in his trademark move of projection, heâll call your side close-minded. Hereâs what baffles me about Krugmanâs apparent antipathy towards those who disagree: Krugman himself is open-minded enough to change his mind on many issues (i.e., Krugman in 2003, âIâm terrified about what will happen to interest rates once financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficitsâ). A guy who can hold two different positions over the course of time ought to realize that those holding differing opinions might not all be fools or liars. But hereâs the thing â I bet Krugman does realize heâs not simply arguing against fools and liars. After all, heâs smart. I suspect Krugmanâs incivility is a deliberate strategy. And this passage from an old Krugman post is why I think so [emphasis Krugman's]: "Iâm not saying to turn the other cheek and always say something polite as a general principle; by all means lash out at your critics, if you have something to gain by doing so. Rudeness at the proper moment can serve a purpose â as I hope Iâve demonstrated over the years. But if you vent for the sake of venting; if you alienate people youâre going to need; then youâre just being stupid." So, when you see Krugman pinning murder on Tea Partiers, or getting nasty, donât ask yourself, âWhy canât he argue like an adult?â Ask yourself, âWhy is he choosing not to argue like an adult?â http://washingtonexaminer.com/what-does-krugman-think-he-gains-from-his-rudeness/article/2530813
Yeah, but I disagree with the political implications of his economic analysis, therefore he is a vewy, vewy bad man..
Reinhart And Rogoff's Pro-Austerity Research Now Even More Thoroughly Debunked By Studies "The debunking of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff continues. "The Harvard economists have argued that mistakes and omissions in their influential research on debt and economic growth don't change their ultimate austerity-justifying conclusion: That too much debt hurts growth. "But even this claim has now been disproved by two new studies, which suggest the opposite might in fact be true: Slow growth leads to higher debt, not the other way around. "In a post at Quartz, University of Michigan economics professor Miles Kimball and University of Michigan undergraduate student Yichuan Wang write that they have crunched Reinhart and Rogoff's data and found "not even a shred of evidence" that high debt levels lead to slower economic growth. "And a new paper by University of Massachusetts professor Arindrajit Dube finds evidence that Reinhart and Rogoff had the relationship between growth and debt backwards: Slow growth appears to cause higher debt, if anything. "As you can see from the chart from Dube's paper below, growth tends to be slower in the five years before countries have high debt levels. In the five years after they have high debt levels, there is no noticeable difference in growth at all, certainly not at the 90 percent debt-to-GDP level that Reinhart and Rogoff's 2010 paper made infamous. Kimball and Wang present similar findings in their Quartz piece. (Story continues below chart.) <img src="http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1165290/original.jpg"> "This contradicts the conclusion of Reinhart and Rogoff's 2010 paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt," which has been used to justify austerity programs around the world. In that paper, and in many other papers, op-ed pieces and congressional testimony over the years, Reinhart And Rogoff have warned that high debt slows down growth, making it a huge problem to be dealt with immediately. The human costs of this error have been enormous. "Even after University of Massachusetts graduate student Thomas Herndon found Reinhart and Rogoff's work included errors and that their 2010 paper was missing important data, the researchers stood by their ultimate conclusion: that growth dropped off significantly after debt hit 90 percent of GDP. They claimed that austerity opponents like Paul Krugman have been so so rude to them for no good reason. "At the same time, they have tried to distance themselves a bit from the chicken-and-egg problem of whether debt causes slow growth, or vice-versa. "The frontier question for research is the issue of causality," they said in their lengthy New York Times piece responding to Herndon. "It looks like they should have thought a little harder about that frontier question three years ago."
What's fucked up stupid about this is that we have overeducated pinheads arguing that this isn't true. The utter stupidity of experts on display, and they wonder why those of us who live in the real world laugh at their silly asses.