Krugman: How Economists Blew It

Paul Krugman: Mitt's strongest commitment is to 'insincerity'

(NEWSER) - Mitt Romney pretends to subscribe to the right's economic orthodoxy, but his real beliefs are apparently very different, writes Paul Krugman in the New York Times . He let them slip the other day, saying that "if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy." It's evidence that Romney is "a closet Keynesian," which would be no surprise: Romney "is not a stupid man" and can't have missed the havoc that austerity has caused in Ireland and Greece. More»

Slumping profits are 'payback' from Main Street whipped by bad practices

(NEWSER) - Those concerned about the nation’s banks should forget about the “softly, softly policy” of the Obama administration that has allowed Goldman Sachs to go back to business as usual in spectacular fashion. The real problem, Paul Krugman writes, is banks like Citi and Bank of America that are still floundering despite taxpayer largess. And the calculus remains the same: “Heads they win, tails the rest of us lose.” More»

But Wall Street bailout has made it a dirty word, writes economist

(NEWSER) - Pundits can't help but ask whether the winter's fiscal stimulus has failed, and for Joseph Stiglitz it has—because the Obama administration made "political compromises that caused it to be less effective than it could have been." For the Nobel Prize-winning economist, there is no option but a second stimulus to stand in for dampened customer demand. "Not preparing for a second stimulus now risks a weaker economy," he writes: "more bankruptcies and home foreclosures and higher unemployment." More»

(NEWSER) - President Obama has big plans for the economy, and that’s too bad because he knows nothing about it, Fred Barnes writes in the Weekly Standard. All of his proposals and angry jabs at Wall Street are counter to his professed interest in growth and job creation. “Obamanomics pays lip service to a free market economy,” Barnes writes. “But Obama hasn't a clue what makes it work.” More»

...don't give up on economics

(NEWSER) - Economists have made some disastrous calls recently, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on economics, opines an editorial in the Economist. True, too few economists predicted the financial crisis, but the current backlash, which assumes that the dismal science is basically useless, has gone too far. “Economics is less a slavish creed than a prism through which to understand the world,” write the magazine's editors. Here’s how it all went wrong: More»