I have been really hard on Joe Scarborough. See this and this. On his show, Morning Joe, he sounds quite reasonable, but when he sits down to write his Politico column, he seems compelled to hitch a ride on the crazy train express.
The latest, and I think most egregious, example is today's column discussing the appearance of Paul Krugman this morning on Morning Joe. To begin, Joe Scarborough evaluating Paul Krugman's views on economics is eerily similar to an amoebae calculating Pi to its final digit: overambitious as it is pointless. Second, I know Krugman's thinking quite well. I have read most of his books--including the one discussed on Morning Joe--and I read his NY Times column and his blog every day. I am not alone. According to Technorati, Krugman writes the most popular individual blog on the Internet. Scarborough's characterization of Krugman's views are alien to me. Third, Scarborough's column isn't just mistaken in its usual witless, exquisitely clueless fashion. This one also includes a kind of meta-witlessness in which he not only writes that which isn't true, but the falsehoods he writes don't even address the comments made by the person who appeared on his show. Think about this for a minute. Scarborough can't even accurately describe the contents of his own show. . . . . Words fail.
You can read the column yourself, but this is its essence.
- Krugman's views run contrary to almost all mainstream economists. False.
- Krugman believes that we should ignore our long-term debt. False.
Krugman's view is quite easy to state, and he stated it very clearly on Morning Joe. It isn't that long-term deficits don't matter. It is just that they are, by definition, long term. There are other short-term problems--primarily ruinously high unemployment--that are both more pressing and more critical to the nation in the short run. It is a question of immediate priorities. Krugman would be happy to endorse stimulus that addressed our short-term economic shortfall now coupled with long-term policies that addressed our debt in the out years. His only concern is that the political system is not capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.
Scarborough ends the column with a particularly pointless pair of charts laying out the debt-to-GDP ratio, as though there was some factual dispute between Krugman and, well, whomever about the level of debt. The charts show that debt has exploded since the 2008 crash, which is exactly what you would expect. Part of that is because of higher spending on automatic safety net programs (food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc.) and part of it is because of a depressed economy. The ratio looks bad because the denominator is artificially low. Rattner's charts also show that the public debt-to-GDP ratio was much higher than it is now during WWII and fell like a stone once the war spending ended and the domestic economy recovered.
Anyway, you should watch the Morning Joe segment. If all you knew about it was Scarborough's column, I think you'd be surprised.
Update: Krugman responds to the Scarborough column.
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