Paul Krugman

This conclusion was immediately obvious to anyone in 2009 who had ever picked up a basic macroeconomics textbook. The funny thing to me is not how Germany continues to lead the charge for more austerity -- it's in their banks' best interests. Rather, it's funny how this 'new' argument of austerity-driven recovery seems to be taken as somehow valid or relevant for macroeconomic analysis in other countries.

For instance, the Debt Ceiling crisis of 2011 [1] is a perfect example of how these kind of psuedoscientific ideas can cause real harm to a country. Especially given how readily certain groups (coughrepublicanscough) are willing to accept these ideas with virtually zero backing or acceptance from established economists.

See also: Everything Paul Krugman has ever written.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_debt-ceiling_crisis

[2] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Any discussion of interstellar trade deserves a mention of the fantastic Charles Stross book "Neptune's Brood". I went into it expecting more or less a sequel to "Saturn's Children" but what I got was a treatise on monetary policy for economies that span multiple star systems. The concept of slow and fast money and its implications is utterly fascinating and the book is worth reading just for its explorations of the topic (the plot isn't too bad either).

A quick Google search brought me to this post by Krugman[0]:

I’m reading an advance copy of Charlie Stross’s Neptune’s Brood. (Hey, I have connections!)
And it is the best thing by far written on the subject to date, partly because it is, as far
as I know, the only thing written on the subject to date.

0: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/the-theory-of-interstellar-finance/

I claim that comments are integral to the activity of blogging. In fact, most bloggers are chomping at the bit to get more comments, often they will do anything to get more comments, and not necessarily because there's a financial incentive.

If you look at the best blogs, I mean top blogs in their niche such as

http://www.thesartorialist.com/

http://girishshambu.blogspot.com/

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

http://terrytao.wordpress.com/

you will see that they are comment heavy. In fact there are very interesting discussions in the comments.

You may think comments are "unimportant" for most blogs, but that is not up to you, it is up to the blogger, and I guarantee that blogger would rather have some comments. And it might help to have a half-decent comment system.

He did many things that were part of the conventional wisdom - 'light touch" financial regulation, which were wrong, but then did some things that are excellent in retrospect - preventing the UK from joining the Eurozone and his crisis response.

It is unfair to say that he caused the crisis and in hindsight he could do more to prevent and mitigate it. However he did much better than most of his peers abroad and better than his successor.

He is generally much more warmly received by economists (Paul Krugman) and economic historians (Skidelsky) and journalists (Martin Wolf).

Here is Martin Wolf on the end of his term:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3074d7ba-5ec0-11df-af86-00144feab49a.html

Krugman: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/hints-of-spring/ - "Gordon Brown may have saved the world, after all"

These are great points you're making. And I think the way you are making them is very intuitive. It is impossible to default on a currency you control. You just print some more space-credits. I think you sum up why you should always be printing space-credits nicely.

Reminds me a bit of what Paul Krugman has been saying over on his NYTimes blog: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

> Why don't more people understand this? Partly it's because the growth of the economy is a historically new phenomenon, dating back only about 150 years.

I personally think the reason people don't understand this is because they think that a government should be run the way a family should: save and don't live off credit.

Maybe 39% (from 1975-2005) isn't enough for you. That's your call. To me, it's a far cry from "stagnation".

As for growth in worker productivity, I seriously doubt it occurred due to actions of minimum wage workers. Are you asserting that a burger flipper flips more burgers now than in 1975?

If we follow Paul Krugman's logic [1], this is not the case. Workers tend to be paid their marginal product. This suggests that if wage gains were distributed more to the top than the bottom, this is because the productivity of high earners increased more than the productivity of low earners.

[1] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/taxing-job-creators/