The Beclowning of Scott Bessent | Hacker News Reader

The Beclowning of Scott Bessent

paulkrugman.substack.com

35 pointsruneks21 comments

Whats most important is the bizarre amnesia regarding everything trump touches turning to shit. Press is not doing its job, the people who think anyone willing to work in the clown show wpnt be a clown is bizarre.

The smart money is dumber everyday thinking facts will win.

The media are doing the job they are bought and paid to do: promote Republicanism. Just look at all the media consolidation! Even the somewhat independent NYT is weak on this.

(The media you actually want for this case are the FT, which has ended up looking weirdly leftist by comparison to the rightward swing of everyone else, and, despite the ownership, Bloomberg. You can't feed business customers news which makes them lose money, they tend to notice when you've misled them.)

You could make a killing outsmarting them if you think that.

you can't make a killing trying to stop entropy.

I would be more willing to listen to Krugman if he hadn’t spent so much effort during the Biden administration to find reasons why inflation wasn’t bad but just a “vibecession”.

The consequence of COVID financial measures. The flipside is that growth was maintained through that period, which wasn't the case in less expansionary countries.

I am not educated enough to criticize what was done during COVID and whether inflation could have been avoided. But the way Krugman tried to explain away the effects of inflation in the NYT almost every week wasn't right. The whole "vibecession" thing was extremely condescending from a multimillionaire like Krugman towards lower incomes and probably one of the reasons why the democrats lost.

Ad hominem arguments aren't interesting.

Do you have anything to contribute to the evidence and reasoning in the article?

I didn't interpret his explanations that inflation wasn't bad, but that it wasn't linked to more structural economic issues. It was due to the shock of Covid, and then the macroeconomic policies that tried (and very much succeeded, if you take other countries as counterexamples) to limit the medium- and long-term damage.

To compare and contrast, much of the current wave of inflation can be traced to tariffs and conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, which is mostly self-inflicted and based on strongman politics. I would maybe argue even those aren't necessarily structural issues, as they could be relatively solved overnight, theoretically.

True structural economic issues are scenarios like the 2008 GFC.

tl;dr you've provided a poor reason to not be listening to Krugman, and you probably have more reasons than what you're letting on.

"and you probably have more reasons than what you're letting on."

Can you enlighten me on these reasons?

Sure, personally I think Krugman is a bit abrasive and political when he could be a bit more refined in his delivery. But, then again he probably wouldn’t get the clicks and the traction he’s gotten over his career.

But most people I know who don’t like Krugman are generally against monetary policy, as he’s one of the biggest mainstream proponents.

What concerns me more is that he generally has been a cheerleader for spend spend spend don't worry about the debt (just like the Trump administration) and all that has come home to roost as Ray Dali ohas been warning. In short it's hard not to view him as a partisan hack and hypocrite if he cheerleads when one party does it and castigates when the other does

"cheerleads when one party does it and castigates when the other does"

I always ask partisan people "what would you think about this issue if the other guys were in power". It's pretty sad how it has become normalized to find the same thing ok when one party is in power and being really angry about it when the other party is in power. Unfortunately Krugman can't resist that temptation either.

Krugman is an advocate for tax & spend, and critical of any government that increases spending while simultaneously cutting taxes. No hypocrisy there.

https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/0...

That's an article where Krugman explains when deficits aren't appropriate. He's a Keynesian, so of course he wants deficits in the middle of the financial crisis.

Good point I was thinking of some other writing by him. This piece is actually him prescient and at his best

I hear a loud knock at your door coming up soon ...

10-year Treasury yield climbs above 5.3% to a level not seen in 24 years

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49916668

You get the leadership that you deserve.

I am the house. Yeah and everyone can see the house is falling apart lol. What a clown show.

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