For those of you confused why this is a top item, Krugman wrote a bitcoin piece today: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/opinion/krugman-the-antiso...
> The practical misconception here — and it’s a big one — is the notion that we live in an era of wildly irresponsible money printing, with runaway inflation just around the corner. It’s true that the Federal Reserve and other central banks have greatly expanded their balance sheets — but they’ve done that explicitly as a temporary measure in response to economic crisis... We have huge economic problems, but green pieces of paper are doing fine — and we should let them alone.
Some say love and passion are two sides of the same coin, and the only separate sentiment is indifference.
He sure seems to hate bitcoin with a passion now. Today's article is at least not as bad as his last piece from only 3 days before, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/ that was discussed here.
At least this time in the article he properly acknowledged bitcoin as the "ultimate fiat currency", that's an evolution.
Yet he still sees nothing wrong with quantitative easing and the greenback, and compare that situation to the goldbugs. Poeple who are too optimistic about gold do not necessarily have to be right to make a good investment - if the fiat currencies are doing down, that alone would make gold an interesting investment (I for one would not place a single cent in a heavy precious metal the US government has already confiscated in the past following executive orders)
Just notice how sentimentally charged his article are - look at the keywords in the titles, "hate" or "antisocial". It would be interesting to grab them all and feed them into a sentiment analysis software, to see how he positionned himself on other topics in the past, and if these position evolves over time.
Still, it's weird and funny. Does he intend to write a bitcoin article a day when the $300 cap is reached? He should post them on bitcoin related sites and rename his blog.
The feelings he seems to have for bitcoin are much worse than hate - it's bemused indifference, which must be what drives bitbugs so mad.
(My favorite example of this is the post apocalyptic scenario -- I fill my bunker with guns and food, you fill yours with krugerands: who wins?)
This is the problem with the bitcoin crowd -- they're trying to replace "gold" with something "even better" not realizing that this is a blind alley.
Anyway, fiat is not just social: It's inherently valuable because of the government's requirement for tax payment in it, and for the massive existing short positions. People like Krugman don't say this because it's unpleasant.
They lack the fanatical/evangelistic zeal, I don't see them as equivalents.
Edit: Krugman actually has written about the deflationary nature of Bitcoin previously. Quote: In effect, Bitcoin has created its own private gold standard world, in which the money supply is fixed rather than subject to increase via the printing press. [0]
Krugman's arch nemesis' - economonists from the Austrian and Chicago schools - dispute whether deflationary spiral occur, whereas Keynesian like Krugman consider them a real risk.
(Note that this is also the reason why goldbugs generally agree with the Austrian and Chicago schools of thought regarding economics, whilst Keynesian regard gold merely as a safe value store - the "flight to safety" school of thought).
[0] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/golden-cyberfett...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Deflationary_spiral
Or maybe it's just a dumb idea. Let's see, I buy enough computing hardware and I can create money! I think it's a glorified pyramid scheme.