Jeg ved godt, at nedenstående er blevet et langt citat-helvede, men jeg synes bestemt det er værd at læse – jeg tillader mig at vurdere, da jeg ikke selv har skrevet det.

Mankiw – Bernanke on Happiness:

I am reminded of a story about Abraham Lincoln. According to the story, Lincoln was riding with a friend in a carriage on a rainy evening. As they rode, Lincoln told the friend that he believed in what economists would call the utility-maximizing theory of behavior, that people always act so as to maximize their own happiness, and for no other reason. Just then, the carriage crossed a bridge, and Lincoln saw a pig stuck in the muddy riverbank. Telling the carriage driver to stop, Lincoln struggled through the rain and mud, picked up the pig, and carried it to safety. When the muddy Lincoln returned to the carriage, his friend naturally pointed out that he had just disproved his own hypothesis by putting himself to great trouble and discomfort to save a pig. “Not at all,” said Lincoln. “What I did is perfectly consistent with my theory. If I hadn’t saved that pig, I would have felt terrible.”

Æren burde strengt taget tilfalde Bernanke, men jeg læste det hos Mankiw.

Tyler Cowen – Sentences to Ponder:

“There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics.”

Paul Krugman – Ignoring The Elephant In the EURO:

[N]ote that if you pretend that it’s all about fiscal profligacy, the problem seems solvable with a bit more discipline, but if you admit that the original optimum currency area issues are key to the situation, you wonder whether the common currency really makes sense.

Tyler Cowen – Social welfare expenditures in the United States and the Nordic Countries:

Per capita net public social expenditures in the U.S. rank behind only Sweden. Add in the private spending, and per capita spending in the U.S. is higher than in all of the Nordic countries.

James Hamilton – Inflation, taxation, and the underground economy:

Even though much of economic activity is outside of the government’s control, the government can still tax that activity by choosing a higher inflation rate

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Aruoba’s interpretation is that the weaker a country’s institutions, the greater the attractiveness of the informal sector, and the more the government is likely to rely on inflation rather than standard taxes to raise revenue.

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Tyler Cowen thinks those bars look unsettlingly like dominoes.

Martin Feldstein – For a solution to the euro crisis, look to the states:

The structure of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that created the euro actually encourages members to run large deficits. A country with its own currency would see that currency deteriorate and its interest rates rise if it sold large amounts of debt to global investors. But because EMU countries share a currency, there has been no market feedback to warn when a country’s deficit is getting dangerously high.

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Here there may be something to learn from United States. (…) The basic reason for these small deficits is that each state’s constitution prohibits borrowing for operating purposes. States can issue debt to finance infrastructure but not salaries, services, transfer payments or other operating expenses.

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The European Central Bank could accelerate this process by restricting collateral to bonds issued by governments with satisfactory constitutional limits on their deficits.

Jeg har villet dele dette indlæg længe, men har af uransagelige årsager ikke fået det gjort. Overskriften er The Augustine Economy over Krugman skriver:

The good news from the consumer spending release is that consumers are, in fact, spending. The bad news is that they’re not saving: personal savings are now back down to 2.7 percent of income.

This can’t go on; American households have to bring their debt levels down. And yet …

We’re still in a liquidity trap, with Fed policy constrained by the zero lower bound. And a liquidity trap world is a paradox-of-thrift world, in which the virtuous individual decision to save more is a vice from the point of view of the economy as a whole. For now, it’s actually a good thing that consumers are behaving irresponsibly.

So my wish is that we be made chaste, continent, and thrifty — but not yet.

For overskuelighedens skyld, vil jeg dele mine kommentarer op i punkter, startende med tre resummerende punkter:

1. Krugman anerkender, at opsparing af et vist omfang er nødvendigt. Det antydes at være for at nedbringe eksisterende gæld – en væsentlig årsag til Finanskrisens udspring som følge af teknisk insolvens.
2. Krugman problematiserer, at verden er i en likviditetskrise, dvs. at den korte rente er så lav, at central banken har meget svært ved at påvirke den gennem såkaldte ‘open market operations’ – likviditetskrise, fordi det er et Keynesiansk skrækscenarie, at man har sværere ved at pumpe penge ud i økonomien og stimulere NGDP.
3. Krugman mener altså, at øget forbrug er godt, fordi det kan mere med til at nedsætte de skadelige effekter af likviditetskrisen. Men på den lange bane, skal der spares mere. Individdets dyd er samfundets synd, skriver han.

1. Krugman har naturligvis ret i, at det øgede forburg ‘offsetter’ nogle af de problemer, han ser ved manglende mulighed for pengepolitisk stimuli.
   1. Krugmans problem er, at NGDP falder, hvilket er tegnet på en krise og ved at øge forbruget pumpes NGDP altså højere op. (Hvis folk bruger relativt flere penge af en given indkomst, vil samfundet samlede omsætning være større)
2. Problemet er blot, at Krugman overser, hvad problemet i krisen er. Et fald i NGDP behøver ikke være et problem – muligvis tværtimod.
   1. Hvis f.eks. omstændigheder får folk til at spare en relativt større del af deres indkomst op, vil de naturligt have færre penge til forbrug –> fald i omsætningen.
   2. Denne ændring må vi antage skyldes en bestemt forventning til fremtidige markedsforhold i forhold til nutidige.
      1. Med andre ord vil der blive lagt større vægt på fremtidigt fremfor nutidigt forbrug, altså øgede investeringer og en afvisning af nogle af de tidligere.
   3. Hvis pengepolitisk stimuli fører til til øget forbrug, gennem udvidelser i pengemængden, vil man altså underkende folks interesse i øget opsparing, hvilket vil føre til uproduktive investeringer – investeringer som kun er muliggjort gennem pengepolitisk stimuli og dermed ikke afspejler forburgernes præferencer.

At forbrugerne er begyndt at forbruge mere, er formenlig tegn på, at de anser krisen for at være på vej til at drive over. Det er da meget rart, men hvis det ikke er tilfældet, kan det blive meget farligt for økonomien – selvom man ikke kan fortænke dem i at tro det med det væld af utroværdige udmeldinger fra politikere verden over.

Vi behøver ikke være bange for nedturen. Den vil gøre ondt, ja, men Krugman og andres fokus på NGDP gennem flere år har netop skabt en unaturligt vækst heri, og den skal ‘udrenses’, før økonomien sundt kan vokse videre. Nedturen går altså naturligt forud for sund vækst.

Krugman burde altså have holdt fast i sin første linie. Det er skidt, at forbrugerne ikke sparer mere op, fordi det er det, der er brug for nu. Den nuværende krise af unaturlig pengepolitisk stimuli og manglende opsparing.

Betyder dette så, at der ingen fordele er ved udvidelser i pengemængden? Et forsvar kan leveres, men ikke a la det Krugman baserer sit indlæg på. Jeg skal vende tilbage til det ved lejlighed.

Når Paul Krugman har en pointe, må man også hellere anerkende den – jeg har her på bloggen været god nok til at tale ham imod, når han sagde noget sludder. Med Titlen ‘How reversible is the EURO‘, skriver Krugman:

[as] Eichengreen argued, any move to leave the euro would require time and preparation, and during the transition period there would be devastating bank runs. So the idea of a euro breakup was a non-starter.

But now I’m reconsidering, for a simple reason: the Eichengreen argument is a reason not to plan on leaving the euro — but what if the bank runs and financial crisis happen anyway? In that case the marginal cost of leaving falls dramatically, and in fact the decision may effectively be taken out of policymakers’ hands.

Det betyder, at det hele ramler om ørerne på dem, der ønsker det bedste for EURO’en. Som Krugman slutteligt bemærker:

I think I’ll go hide under the table now.

Krugman skriver i dag:

Back to the housing bubble: Greenspan’s whole defense now is that nobody saw it. But there were an awful lot of nobodies — Dean Baker, Bob Shiller, Calculated Risk, and yes, yours truly.

En ting er den næsegruse egenbeundring som få er forundt på højde med Krugman. Noget helt andet er, at Krugman ikke bare så boblen komme, han opfordrede til den i 2002:

The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn’t a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. 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, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. (Min fremhævning)

Alle kan tage fejl. Alle kan skifte holdning eller opdage, at de tog fejl. Men på baggrund af ovenstående, klinger det enormt hult, når Krugman omtaler Greenspan:

(..)he’s still not a mensch, a person of integrity willing to take responsibility for his own actions.

Krugman skriver i sandhed, som titlen på hans blog siger, med ‘The Consience of a Liberal’.