Paul Krugman on His Incompetence in Debates

A bit of meta on my “debate” with Ron Paul; I think it’s a perfect illustration of a point I’ve thought about a lot, the uselessness of face-to-face debates.


Think about it: you approach what is, in the end, a somewhat technical subject in a format in which no data can be presented, in which there’s no opportunity to check facts (everything Paul said about growth after World War II was wrong, but who will ever call him on it?). So people react based on their prejudices. If Ron Paul got on TV and said “Gah gah goo goo debasement! theft!” — which is a rough summary of what he actually did say — his supporters would say that he won the debate hands down; I don’t think my supporters are quite the same, but opinions may differ.


Tales of historical debates in which one side supposedly won big — like the Huxley-Wilberforce debate on evolution — are, in general, after-the-fact storytelling; the reality is that that kind of smackdown, like Perry Mason-type confessions in court, almost never happens.


So why did I do it? Because I’m trying to publicize my book, which does have lots of data and facts — but those data and facts don’t matter unless I get enough people to read it.

On the Uselessness of Debates - NYTimes.com


I figured this needed a 206, so here it is. Paul Krugman criticizes public debate after being smacked down on all points by Dr. Ron Paul. Rather than taking the opportunity to review the debate and offer counterpoints after the fact, Krugman simply plays the victim card, resorting to calling names.


Wow. This comes from a grown-up? I think that Krugman has finally proven his own irrelevance. Even my children do not act that poorly. The statist economist is unraveling.

I am also posting some of the comments, since so many of his supporters are criticizing him for not dealing with it like a grown-up.

Debating is a format that's proven popular and indeed successful over the last several thousand years. Leave it to Paul Krugman to pretend he knows better. Especially rich coming directly after his performance against Ron Paul.

I haven't watched the debate. I am an admirer of Paul Krugman. However, I am disappointed that such an intelligent person would write such a childish blog post. I think Ron Paul is the only serious candidate worth discussing these issues with. Rather than make fun of someone who disagrees with him, Mr. Krugman should have shown some maturity and calmly explained his point and/or illustrate why the other point of view is incorrect and leave it at that.
Name calling anyone who follows Ron Paul is childish and makes Mr. Krugman look like the one who has nothing meaningful to share.
I am disappointed because I thought Mr. Krugman was one of the few intelligent sounding economists during this whole discussion. This blog post makes me view his past comments through a different lens. This is not helpful to Mr. Krugman's reputation.

Well, Dr. Krugman, if writing is such a better way of explaining your opinions, write them out. . Don't just assault him with libelous implications about his arguments, and pull the victim card. Explain which parts of his argument were wrong. Please, enlighten us.

1) http://principledwatchman.tumblr.com/post/22306364826/now-compare-to
2) While it is true there were many economic issues and wars prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve as we know it now, the fact of the matter is a significant portion of the economic instability we are facing can be traced back 100 years to the creation of the Federal Reserve by the clandestine schemes of big money movers (see "It Came From Jekyll Island").
3) It is shameful for someone who couldn't logically defend his philosophical platform in a debate to later come back and act this way.
4) The Keynesian school of thought has had more than enough real world experiments and results from such to show that school of thought is all talk and no true prosperity for the citizens of this nation.
5) http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/paul-krugman-the-fed-didnt-create-the-housi...

Let's pretend for a moment that the face-to-face debate was useless and didn't allow you to present the facts to prove Ron Paul wrong. You certainly didn't use the opportunity in this blog entry to dissect Ron Paul's points and present your data. The video is available for your viewing. If you wanted to you could easily use the video to take out Ron Paul's quotes and prove him wrong with dates, charts, numbers and historical facts. You did not do any of that. If it matters so much, why have you not done so?
Too many people out there trust the "experts", yet most don't realize that even the experts don't know everything. Keep in mind that we had "experts" in charge when we were heading straight for this recession. None of them applied their expert knowledge in preventing it from happening. Many of them like to pretend that they know a whole lot, but we have seen plenty of examples from history that would prove otherwise.
Sorry Mr. Krugman, but to most of us who try to pay all our bills on time, try to save money to carry us through darker days and hope to retire with a roof over our heads, we don't understand the logic behind spending more than we earn. We are over the idea of prolonging the pain of this recession and we fear that if people like you continue to wield power over our economy, we'll be dead by the time we see even a glimmer of hope of coming out of it. Ron Paul may not have won any prizes in economics, but he sure as hell predicted this mess in 2002.

Ron Paul:Why did the Federal Reserve bail out the rich, and not the mortgage holders?
Krugman: - no answer -
Krugman supporters, can you answer this question your messiah didn't?

Can someone tell me if Krugman consistently talked about the economic crash before it happened? Can someone send me several links showing how he, over and over again, warned about the incoming economic collapse? No? Maybe because Krugman is full of it.

"To fight this recession, the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that... Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble." -Paul Krugman, 2002.
"Like all artificially created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, the homeowneres will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they otherwise would have been." -Ron Paul. 2003
It's no wonder Krugman considers intellectual debate useless. He is so close minded he must reduce his opponents' ideas to “Gah gah goo goo debasement! theft!” Krugman was wrong ten years ago for stimulus and he is wrong now. He cannot learn. If we want to survive, we must.

So, if everyone is so wrong about fed spending devaluing the dollar...you should show us how confident you are, Paul, by offering to hang yourself from the closest lamp post if your wrong and the country suffers from your ego. I assume your nobel wasn't delivered in the same discount bin that Obama's was, so you'll have nothing to worry about...right?

"I’m trying to publicize my book, which does have lots of data and facts — but those data and facts don’t matter unless I get enough people to read it."
And having listened to your arguments and rebuttals, and the way you carry yourself, I can assure you that very few will.

Ron Paul did win. The truth is krugman was very wrong on a simple fact. He even started calling out names. Krugman said that cometition of currencey is not illegal. Bernard von NotHaus was arrested for trying to use his silver dollars as currency and krugman was very ignorant on that fact. The article is linked. The reason federal reserve has NO OVERSITE. Plane and simple they are taxing us with out representation. The solution is not to arrest americans who are trying to compete with federal reserve notes. Lets have competition of currencies in the USA. The truth will then be exposed on how federal reserve needs to ablolished.
http://www.duffminster.com/times/node/255

Gene Epstein, economist and economics editor at Barrons, in his book, Econospinning, and in his artlcles and lectures, devotes a lot of time exposing Mr. Krugman's countless errors and misrepresentations spanning many years. I suspect that Mr. Krugman does not like debates because in that environment he is easily exposed as a charlatan in the service of beltway (DC) power and the MSM.

On what Ron Paul said on currencies. He said give people freedom. Lets end the government monopoly on Money. Let anyone create Money. No harm no foul. If people prefer dollar bills to this private money, then private money will fail. If instead people find that this private currency which to succeed will probably have to be backed by something (like gold certificates) then so be it and the dollar will fail and go out of existence. Society must be better off because it made a VONLUNTARY decision to use this private money over the dollar.

Honestly, if the classical economist were alive today, they would be amazed how far economics has regressed. When the most influential economist has a policy prescription to spend more, print more, the economic profession has hit bottom. As J.S Mills stated in his 1841 brilliant article: Proponents of government spending will try to convince you that if they take money form you and spend it in your own store it is going to make you better off.

So poor old Paul Krugman lost the debate...so now he goes into his corner and says like a little boy, i was right, I was right, about the post war government expenditures. He does it in a place where he won't get slapped around. His home turf, the left wing NY times. Well, what Ron Paul said is exactly what Rothbard wrote (an economist ten times what you will ever be). Rothbard being one of the greatest economist of the 20 th century.

There is plenty more Krugman criticism on his own article, but I think that this sort of public backlash at the statist economist should help drive more and more regular people toward the libertarian and free market position that the Federal Reserve is bad for the overall economy, and that a fiat currency like the US dollar is manipulated not for stabilization, but as a way to skim off the top through taxation and inflation. We can do much better than that in a free market economy, but only if we can discard the Fed and people like Krugman.