Krugman On the Media

     Krugman was saying that, in general, economics reporting has improved over the last decade, but he made one exception, here is a close paraphrase: that you can't be taken seriously on foreign policy unless you were wrong about Iraq, and you can't be taken seriously on the housing crisis unless you were wrong about the bubble.  He was saying that the only people who get quoted who are "sell-side" in the housing industry.

     Strangely, later he made a strange timeline mistake.  Smoot-Hawley was passed in mid-1930, but Krugman said it was passed before the Great Depression started (1929).  At least he said, following Ha Joon-Chang, that the numbers don't add up to pin any serious blame on Smoot-Hawley for worsening the depression.  They do not add up at all.

Bad Samaritans, Again

Ha-Joon Chang is turning pretty much every dearly-held Republican and American economic belief on its head.  Apparently, inflation is entirely unrelated to economic growth as long as inflation is under 40%! 

You know what I like about inflation?  Imagine two people, one has a billion dollars in the bank, the other person has nothing except a job which barely covers expenses.  If there is 20% inflation, the worker might be able to get a 20% raise.  There is absolutely nothing a billionaire can say to the banker to make their billion dollars increase by 20%.

If there is more inflation, more workers will have to try harder to get raises, and this is a burden on them.  It will, inevitably, lead to increased labor organization.