Lost In The Cuckoo’s Nest
September 1, 2005
Let’s get this straight – I would much rather be writing an article about weenie war protesters and the politically correct warfare our brave troops must endure instead of another piece on Paul Krugman, but we must all make sacrifices. Pulling Krugman’s panties down one more time might actually help our troops by showing how liberals (especially “expert” liberals) just keep twisting facts to fit dogma.
With Maureen Dowd hoping for a decisive American defeat at the hands of bin Sheehan, Krugman is praying for an economic collapse. It has nothing to do with truth or your welfare...it is all centered on an on-going campaign of disinformation to smear the President. It is a high stakes schoolyard game.
Don’t think for a minute that these liberals wouldn’t sacrifice the safety and comfort of the average American for a shot at sticking their tongues out at the President...and they will lie to do it.
Making the usual liberal assumption that Americans can’t think for themselves, Krugman enters the void to let us know that all American families think that, “We're not doing very well (economically).” Krugman is a not too clever dissembler of the nation’s positive economic data. I bet that this guy was so Machiavellian that he got dates in high school by making a bet: “If you can guess the value of pi (hint -- 3.14159265) I’ll take you on a date. If you can’t, you have to take me on a date.” Krugman is soooo clever.
In spite of the fact that: new home sales hit a record high in July; the highways are jammed with luxury SUV’s; the lines for a table at vacation destination restaurants are unbearable and middle class mothers complain about their children’s’ nannies...Krugman maintains that “Americans are unhappy about the economy”. I am also certain that some people are unhappy about the top speed of their Ferraris.
Krugman whines that “employment grew more slowly during the best two years of the Bush administration than in any two years during the Clinton administration.” He fails to mention that the job growth under Clinton was fueled by the eventual loss of almost an entire year’s GDP when the Tech Bubble burst. During the Clinton years, investors lost their pants in companies that made no products and for jobs that had no purpose.
If Krugman had mentioned that, he would have also had to mention that the crazy Tech Bubble could have been avoided had Clinton not pressed for lowering interest rates in the face of “irrational exuberance” during his impeachment scandal. Did Clinton really trade trillions in investor assets for his neck? Duh!
As an example of his manufactured job shortage, Krugman cites the example of “When Wal-Mart announced that it was hiring at a new store in Northern California, where the unemployment rate is close to the national average, about 11,000 people showed up to apply for 400 jobs.” Somehow he forgot to mention the 3 million plus illegal immigrants who annually sneak into America. Why do liberals hate Wal-Mart so much if so many people want to work there?
Just to throw in the kitchen sink, Krugman also implies that gasoline prices are something the President is responsible for when he notes that, “Americans bought cars and made decisions about where to live when gas was $1.50 or less per gallon, and now suddenly find themselves paying $2.60 or more.”
In an effort to prove that he is not a real economist, Krugman fails to note that Americans made decisions to buy gas guzzlers when the price was $1.50 per gallon and the subsequent increase in demand created by a wave of housewives in monster trucks drove demand based pricing to its present level. Or is the President also responsible for equilibrium pricing on the supply and demand curves?
Krugman’s pièce de résistance comes when he asks “where economic growth is going, if it isn't showing up in wages”. With knee-jerk glibness, he answers his own question “it's going to corporate profits, to rising health care costs and to a surge in the salaries and other compensation of executives.” My God, this sounds more like a yellow-press “journalist” than an economist.
With a $12 trillion economy, executive compensation for America’s top 500 companies amounted to $5.1 billion last year or 0.0425% of GDP. Congressional pork barrel spending amounted $27.3 billion or 0.2275% of GDP. Can you believe that this economy spent more than 5 times more money studying bovine flatulence than it did paying people like Warren Buffet?
While beating up on the President and corporate executives, Krugman failed to note that his own boss, Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr., the Chairman of the New York Times Company and publisher of the New York Times, regularly gets paid around $2.5 million and...with restricted stock, stock options, and "long-term incentives" has pushed this amount to more than $6 million in some years.
In a prior article, Krugman admitted that “It has always been good to have a rich or powerful father.” And “Pinch” Sulzberger knows that as well as anybody. It’s amazing how Krugman will regularly distort the truth and take pot-shots at the President but goes catatonic at the thought of criticizing the prodigal son in his own backyard. But, then again, this was never about an honest economic analysis...it was just another excuse to Blame Bush.
I guess if Krugman has a “good reason to feel unhappy” as he asserts that most Americans do, it’s because he has a boss that can run a company into the ground faster than a banana republic and get away with it. But, I guess as long as “Pinch” is signing his paychecks, Krugman might as well call him “Daddy”.
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