Paul Krugman

Inflation = quantity x velocity

Velocity is low/zero, and so the product will be small/zero.

People have been going on about inflation for literally a decade, since QE1 started under Bernanke:

> We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment.

* https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html

Meanwhile Keynesian folks like Krugman have been saying we're in a liquidity trap because of the ZLB on rates:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_lower_bound

Japan has been in this situation for decades, and Krugman has been writing about it for just as long (1998):

* https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/japans_trap.pdf

So we have a testable hypothesis: the inflationistas have been yelling about this for over a decade, and the (e.g.) Keynesians have been saying 'we'll be fine given the conditions'.

Given the (empirical) results, I'll continue to follow the Keynesians. If at some point they end up being wrong, then I'll re-consider (assuming they don't self-correct and figure out why their models got it wrong).

> The theory of interstellar trade is a well-understood topic, with an extensive literature consisting of one paper (pdf) I wrote in 1978. Interstellar finance, however, is less well covered.

> That’s all about to change, however. 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.

> It’s also a fantastic novel.

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

> This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are derived.

https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf

I guess it's a matter of definitions. The kind of linguistics Chomsky worked on were rather mathematical, for example, see the Chomsky Hierarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy) which is used extensively in Computer Science.

And Krugman's actual papers are basically pure math. I'm having trouble finding many of his papers that aren't behind a pay wall, but see http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/scale_econ.pdf or http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/geography.pdf. And if memory serves, didn't he also write a paper on the effects of special relativity on the time value of capital? (I can't seem to find a copy ...). I know econ is only a 'dismal science,' but don't be too hard on it ;-)

This thread is not complete without a link to Paul Krugman's paper, "The Theory of Interstellar Trade". Abstract:

This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf

Another:

* They tie big names into the firm to get credibility. Hire them into the board, or pay them good money for short term consulting gigs.

Examples:

1) Gen. James Mattis was in Theranos board. So was Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

2) Enron paid Paul Krugman $50,000 to attend at least two times in advisory board meetings, nothing related to Enron business. What Enron really bought was the ability to say Paul Krugman was in the advisory board. https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/enron.html

Up until 1800, Malthus was spot-on -- any advance in technology that was greeted by population increase would snap back to an equilibrium, with war|disease|hunger inflicting the correction. Gregory Clarke goes into great detail, with statistics on caloric consumption, lifestyle, etc.. that show that the average person at the pre-dawn of the industrial revolution did not experience conditions much more favorable than those of Roman times.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/malthusian.png