Paul Krugman asks why pundits that get things wrong still get asked for comment. Alex Tabarrok offers an answer that has a lot of merit. But there's another reason that partly explains it, which is that all pundits have made some fantastic bloomers in their time. Paul Krugman has been predicting imminent recession with . . . er . . . depressing regularity since George Bush got elected; I doubt he thinks he should have had his column pulled the first time his prediction didn't pan out.
That said the National Association of Realtors employed the wrongest economist ever, David Lereah, to say things about the housing market that an eight year old child who didn't speak English could have seen through. They are now running ads saying that housing is an awesome investment. Someone should sue them for fraud.
I'm having a hard time posting this, as the Hypocrisy Express just ran me over as it tears across the country to Krugman's driveway. I'm honestly blown away that not only does Krugman figure he can get away with this sort of complaint, but that his readership won't notice or take him to task on it.
Teh Krugmeister did get some stuff right:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/five-years-later/
The same ol' pundits get asked back because it's a feedback loop. They're Serious Pundits, and must be because they were on TV before, so why not put them on again. Kind of like, say, Bert Convey going on all those game shows. He was famous for being famous. Or suggesting so over and over that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with 9-11 until a clear majority of Americans believes it. Or giving John McCain a pass for repeating dangerously unprovable and unlikely statements about Iran. He gets a pass because he's Serious. And he's Serious because he's Serious. Get it?
Dude, William Kristol.
Paul Krugman has been predicting imminent recession with . . . er . . . depressing regularity since George Bush got elected
Not to mention deflation in 2002 and stagflation in 2005.
But, hey, you keep on making predictions and eventually one of them will turn out correct. Stopped clocks and all that.
"They are now running ads saying that housing is an awesome investment. Someone should sue them for fraud."
It can be a great investment. Like anything else, it depends on what you pay for it. The conventional wisdom pendulum has swung way far in the other direction.
My theory is that in professional punditry, there's a two-hit cover charge. If you've had a minimum of two good hits in your past -- major theoretical predictions that proved correct, successful books, etc. -- your credibility as an Authority Figure is established. At that point it generally takes a career-wrecking move of abject stupidity, such as drinking heavily on the job or making a series of unwelcome passes at your senior editor, to get you thrown out the front door.
This also applies to financial analysts. My favorite is Ashok Kumar (not the Baliwood star), who has forever predicted the imminent doom of technology company AMD while gleefully buttering up AMD's primary rival, Intel. After at least fifteen years of this tripe, some of which was spectacularly wrong, he's now a senior VP research analyst at a capital holdings company.
Then is there any reason to listen to Krugman?
My head is hurting- paradoxes cause brain damage.
Well, one problem is that apparently there are various consensual realities out there that people can subscribe to, like the one where Iran isn't supporting Shia and Sunni militias in Iraq and really wants peace and stability in the region. Theres the one where Saddam did not provide any assistance to Al Qaeda. There are serveral that involve Bush... there's the one where he's dumber than a trained monkey and the other one where he's a conniving evil genius bent on world domination.
So "wrong" becomes relative...
"Then is there any reason to listen to Krugman?"
Well, Yancey, to repeat, there's this:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/five-years-later/
If only more people had listened then.
Imagine a cheerleader at a high school pep rally.
Nobody ever asks "You were so wrong when you said we were going to beat Rival High last week. Why should we believe you now?"
"Imagine a cheerleader at a high school pep rally."
Done and done:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushcheerleader.htm
Imagine a cheerleader at a high school pep rally. Nobody ever asks "You were so wrong when you said we were going to beat Rival High last week. Why should we believe you now?"
True, but the primary audience for high school cheerleaders are young adult males who are half drunk on hormone cocktails alternately signaling "beat the snot out of Rival High" and "make out with that cheerleader ASAP". By the time people are old enough to read, appreciate, and critique someone like Krugman, you would hope that the brain between their ears had resumed nominal control of things.
Although Krugman as a high school cheerleader would explain an awful lot. He had to take swipes at Obama before his groupie clique finally turned and started listening to what he's actually saying.
So Krugman shouldn't have had his column pulled the first time, but what about the third or fourth?
I have an idea, why not respond to what Krugman was actually saying, instead of making an ad hominem argument?
I'll spell out what he was saying and maybe we could get an honest response, ok?
What Krugman was saying is that of the numerous people who get interviewed, essentially *all* are those who got the big picture wrong, and essentially *none* are those who got the big picture right about the war or the economy.
Would you mind addressing the point, please? Or do you really think the fact that all pundits sometimes make errors is an explanation?
What bobv said. Also, a coupla links would be OK instead of just saying, "Kruggs was totally wrong about X and Y" (although, even if true, he did get the Iraq War right, relatively rare amongst public figures, even if painfully easy).
I had a post that got held up (links?) so I'll try another with a shorter answer to bobv's question.
Megan made this same claims months ago, and provided a link. Her evidence was of poor quality and she got thoroughly rebutted. What's the response? Make the same claim without evidence this time.
Tom
The question assumes that pundits are supposed to get things right. No, they're supposed to sell advertising. Dick Morris is the perfect pundit -- "Always interesting, always wrong." The first part makes him perfect, the second part is irrelevant.
Yes, being off by a degree of years on Bush Recession II is equivalent to being wrong about a war that has killed 40,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi's.
Good call.
Yes, being off by a degree of years on Bush Recession II is equivalent to being wrong about a war that has killed 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi's.
Good call.
I've been reading Krugman twice a week since he began writing for the NYT. I never, ever remember him "predicting an imminent recession."
Megan, correct me if I'm mistaken. On what date did Krugman predict a recession? What were his words?
Please, stop being such a hack.
Rule No. 1: Research.
Rule No. 2: Cite.
It's that easy. Otherwise shut up.
Blake
Recession:
2003: http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/RollingStone052903.html
2004: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/051404.html
2005: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/082905.html
2006: http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
2006: http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion/01krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Stagflation:
2005: http://www.pkarchive.org/column/041805.html
Here he is ignoring the Clinton recession:
2001 http://www.pkarchive.org/column/22101.html
I believe there are more, but that was a 5 minute google search/
Skullberg,
Don't link to articles about Krugamn. I don't have time to read them. Show me the actual words where Krugman predicted a recession. It is very, very simple. All I want is words. His words. Predicting a recession.
I think Megan is wrong when she says:
"Paul Krugman has been predicting imminent recession with . . . er . . . depressing regularity since George Bush got elected; I doubt he thinks he should have had his column pulled the first time his prediction didn't pan out."
Show me the words of one column where Krugman "predicts" imminent recession.
Be honest. Or shut the front door. By the way, the first post you cite is from 2003, three years after Bush got elected--and during (or slightly after) what every one agrees was actually a recession.
If that's you're evidence on how wrong he has been then you better get cracking on more google links.
He turned out to be right about the bond market, housing bubble and rising inflation. And he is the first to say that you can't say with any certainty when a recession will start but there are signs to watch for and worry about.
Skullass,
Tell me--in real words--what Krugman got wrong in this post (from December 2006), one of the seven op-eds you cite to for the proposition that Krugman hates America:
"Since last summer, when the housing bust became unmistakable, interest rates on long-term bonds have fallen sharply. They’re now yielding much less than short-term bonds. The fact that investors are willing to buy those long-term bonds anyway tells us that these investors expect interest rates to fall. And that will happen only if the economy weakens, forcing the Federal Reserve to cut rates. So bond buyers are, in effect, betting on a future economic slowdown."
Remember, I want actual words--that make sense. Did interest rates fall? Answer me that.
Megan,
If Krugman is/was wrong about his prediction re: the economy, what's the consequence?
If Kagan, Hiatt, Kristol, (fill in the blank), are/were wrong about the Iraq invasion, what's the consequence?
Do you see the point?
Megan,
If Krugman is/was wrong about his prediction re: the economy, what's the consequence?
If Kagan, Hiatt, Kristol, (fill in the blank), are/were wrong about the Iraq invasion, what's the consequence?
Do you see the point?
Megan,
If Krugman is/was wrong about his prediction re: the economy, what's the consequence?
If Kagan, Hiatt, Kristol, (fill in the blank), are/were wrong about the Iraq invasion, what's the consequence?
Do you see the point?
1. "Right now it looks as if the economy is stalling..." — Paul Krugman, September 2002
2. "We have a sluggish economy, which is, for all practical purposes, in recession..." — Paul Krugman, May 2003
3. "An oil-driven recession does not look at all far-fetched." — Paul Krugman, May 2004
4. "A mild form of stagflation - rising inflation in an economy still well short of full employment - has already arrived." — Paul Krugman, April 2005
5. "If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at an economy pushed right back into recession. That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market ... is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble." — Paul Krugman, May 2005
6. "In fact, a growing number of economists are using the "R" word [i.e., "recession"] for 2006." - Paul Krugman, August 2005
7. "But based on what we know now, there’s an economic slowdown coming." - Paul Krugman, August 2006
8. "This kind of confusion about what’s going on is what typically happens when the economy is at a turning point, when an economic expansion is about to turn into a recession" - Paul Krugman, December 2006
9. "Right now, statistical models ... give roughly even odds that we’re about to experience a formal recession. ... The odds are very good — maybe 2 to 1 — that 2007 will be a very tough year." - Paul Krugman, December 2006
Good grief, Blake, are you really that lazy?
"Don't link to articles about Krugamn. I don't have time to read them. Show me the actual words where Krugman predicted a recession. It is very, very simple. All I want is words. His words. Predicting a recession."
Uh, they're not articles about Krugman, they're articles -by- Krugman.
Let me guess, the real reason you want us to find the specific quote isn't because you "don't have time to read them", it's because you need us to actually cite a specific sentence so that you can then claim we chopped the quote "out of context", right?
Heh.
Well, let's put that to the test. In the very first link, we find this:
"PAUL KRUGMAN: We have a sluggish economy, which is, for all practical purposes, in recession — whatever they say officially — and the budget's just gone out of control. And so what they're proposing is a tax cut that will lock in long-run tax cuts that will help push the budget further into the red zone and do very, very little to actually pump up the economy right now."
This is in 2003. This is even funnier than screwing up a prediction about the future, he couldn't even get a prediction about the present right.
Nothing funnier than watching obsessive Krugman defenders strapping rocket boosters on every goalpost.
But please, now that you've insisted that someone quote a specific line from the article, feel free to now find plenty of time to read the whole article and disingenuously claim that we, by your demand, "ripped it out of context". I wouldn't expect Krugman to be defended by anything less than Krugman-perfected tactics in their full glory.
Qwinn
"Yes, being off by a degree of years on Bush Recession II is equivalent to being wrong about a war that has killed 40,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi's.
Good call.
Posted by Steam Powered | March 25, 2008 10:10 PM
Yes, being off by a degree of years on Bush Recession II is equivalent to being wrong about a war that has killed 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi's.
Good call.
Posted by Steam Powered | March 25, 2008 10:10 PM "
See, if you left it at 40,000 like in the first post, you too can have a NYT column.
And Blake, WTF? You ask for proof, receive it, and then whine that you actually have to read it?
ed, you keep repeating yourself that Krugs was right about Iraq, but he actually wasn't. You don't get to count predicting that world opinion will be against Bush when a)it already was, before this president, b)you strain every nerve to make it so with your own columns, and c)there are notable exceptions to that opinion (think: a billion people in India, for example).
It's just tired, ed. The Arts & Humanities Tribe, which is 20% of the American population and 30% of the Western European, have loyalty mostly to their own tribe. They deeply resent that their tribe isn't running America, as is their birthright. They congratulate each other across the ocean how right they are, and always have been, if only those stupid others would listen.
I know it's gratifying to think that world opinion is against George Bush and the American-led GWOT, but the argument behind that campaign poster has been pretty well shredded. Repeatedly.
International polls are mildly interesting. What is more interesting is who those other nations keep electing for themselves.
Blake: "Show me proof that Krugman said such-and-such!"
*someone posts links*
Blake: "That doesn't count! Copy and paste the individual quotes here for me. If I don't read them, it's not proof!"
*someone copies and pastes individual damning quotes*
Blake: "Sorry, that won't do. You have to come to my house and read them out loud to me. If I don't hear it with my own two ears, I don't believe it."
*someone with an excess of patience goes to Blake's house, reads the Krugman quotes to him*
Blake: "Unacceptable! Krugman himself must come and say them aloud, or I'll refuse to believe he actually said them in the first place! Stop being such a hack, Megan!"
Megan,
Real estate is a good investment and as in all investments it is just a matter of knowing what you are doing. Actually it is even a better investment now as the prices are reduced....I always love buying at sale prices! Everything (stocks, real estate, commodities,etc.) goes in cycles....the house 'flippers" are the ones hurt the worse by the market, but the long term investors going for rental property, etc. are the ones finding the good bargins now.
Ben
"They are now running ads saying that housing is an awesome investment."
If one moves into a home and lives there for a number of years that home will be a very good investment as the homeowner would have ridden out the current problems and the value of said home will have increased. The only time it's a poor investment is when you buy the home as a speculator and hope to flip it in the near future - one of the prime reasons we just experienced a bubble in the market (in addition to lending institutions giving money to anyone). Saying a home is poor investment is poppycock, unless you play the market like a gambler.
It's always refreshing to see the old saw of "buy low, sell high" repeatedly getting ignored. I hate to be Captain Obvious here, but the best time to buy a home? When the prices are reduced, not when they are inflated.
Can anyone provide ONE quote where Krugman predicted a recession in the last 7 years?
Nuff said.
7. "But based on what we know now, there’s an economic slowdown coming." - Paul Krugman, August 2006
8. "This kind of confusion about what’s going on is what typically happens when the economy is at a turning point, when an economic expansion is about to turn into a recession" - Paul Krugman, December 2006
9. "Right now, statistical models ... give roughly even odds that we’re about to experience a formal recession. ... The odds are very good — maybe 2 to 1 — that 2007 will be a very tough year." - Paul Krugman, December 2006
These hardly qualify as wrong 'predictions'.
Actually in light of what has been happening during the last six months they are quite prescient.
The right used to discount the Clinton prosperity on the basis that it was a bubble. If you use the same criterion to assess the economy of the last seven years, even the statements that Krugman made about the state of the economy do not reach the level of egregiousness as the support of the Iraq fiasco by people like Megan.
Here's an even better question; why continue to buy a publication that's runs the kind of unsubstatiated rantings Krugman's best at? The same publication that runs tabloid hit pieces on it's front page and compromises national security by revealing our most top secret programs.
Krugman's in good company there.
Krugman wrote an entire book -- in the 1980s -- arguing that the American economy was in a permanent state of semi-decline (i.e., productivity and growth lagging the rest of the developed world) which he called "drift." Kinda like what happened in Europe and Japan, in other words. He wasn't even close to right then, and he isn't now. He's a perpetual pessimist; listen to him and you'll never make any money, nor will you be happy.
Krugman columns are great to read. Our office plays a game to find how many factual errors there are in each column - averages about two factual errors per column.
Krugman columns are great to read. Our office plays a game to find how many factual errors there are in each column - averages about two factual errors per column.
Correction: Krugman's lousy book was published in 1990, re-released apparently in 1997. It is called the Age of Diminished Expectations.
Blake and gregor,
WRT the Dec 2006 column, in hindsight you can say that some of his predictions came true, in that column he was 1 year a head of his time and predicting 2007 as 2-1 recession. That actually wasn't the case. And it fits his pattern: I will yell we're almost in recession, and since all economies eventually go into recession, I will be right!
The man downplayed the economic situation in 2000 and 2001, used the height of the bubble employment numbers to show how Bush lost so many jobs, announcing we're about to be in a liquidity trap, and has been calling for a recession right through record breaking growth. He's simply a partisan hack.
I wish he'd go back to econ, where he is brilliant.
Krugman in the Joe Granville of the 21st century.
They're both hacks.
I never knew former Enron advisor Paul Krugman had so many sycophants.
Jeez, everyone quit taking themselves so seriously. Krugman, like any partisan pundit, is paid to write 150 words two times a weeks and go on countless talk shows to give, shock, his partisan opinion.
You want the left-wing point of view -- GWB leading us to depression, Iraq war an even bigger disaster than the Somme, we're drawing and quartering GTMO prisoners -- you go to Krugman. You want the right wing point of view -- tax cuts solve everyhing, Iraq war good, GTMO = Club Med -- you go to Larry Kudlow.
In the end, pundits mostly serve the purpose of validating and reinforcing the reader's point of view. Who cares.
This is a new style of economic argument to me: If in 2006 you predict a 2-1 chance of recession in 2007 and, at the end of Q108, pretty much every decent economist agrees the US fell into a recession in Q407, that somehow counts as wrong? That includes Feldstein at the NBER:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080314/bs_nm/usa_economy_feldstein_dc
If anything Krugman looks optimistic.
If you predict in 2005 that the Housing bubble is about to pop and most decent economists agree the bubble reached its speculative peak in 2005, then you're also wrong, I guess.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P87483.asp
And when you acknowledge deflation in 2003, that's crazy too. Or rampant inflation in 2007. Even though the Fed has carefully removed items that do show inflation from the core CPI - what Barry Ritholtz calls inflation ex inflation.
You people have been drinking Bush admin kool-aid for so long you think its champagne.
theultimate liberal economist who made a career of being wrong was John K Gailbraith, who devoted his life to predicting the socialist countries like the USSR would outstrip us because of their superior system of govt controls. Krugman is a desciple of this kind of thinking, although smarter than Gailbraith, and more clever; but cleverness in economics is partisanship in disguise.
This thread was very amusing.
Krugman has been predicting the 2008 recession every year since 2001. Being eventually correct doesn't mean your predictions are worth the paper they are printed on. If you had listened to Krugman for the last 7 years, and invested accordingly, you would have been bankrupt by 2004.
Now, to defend him a bit- lots of economics writers get it wrong on both sides of being eternally pessimistic and eternally optimistic, but the optimistic ones always look better because the economy is usually in a state of growth, not decline.
Someone above nailed it- Krugman is today's Joe Granville. The best economics writer that contributes semi-regularly to the NY Times op ed is James Grant, and even he gets it wrong sometimes.
Let me just get this straight.
Krugman wrote in 2005:
"If housing prices actually started falling, we'd be looking at an economy pushed right back into recession. That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market ... is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble."
So in this case, Krugman was exactly right, years before many other respected economists. He recognized the threat, he recognized what its consequences would be, and he warned us to watch out.
And you Republicans are citing this quote as a reason we should *ignore* Krugman?
I wish I was Daniel; so far above it all that he wouldn't waste his time commenting on a blog.
As a friend of mine said, economics seems to be the only field where two people can win nobel prizes a few years apart and say the opposite of one another.
One of the main reasons PK's "predictions" didn't pan out was because he made a fatal mistake in his assumptions: He assumed the banking industry and related government regulators (and, by extension, the public) were going to behave in a responsible, rational way during the buildup to the crisis. He obviously didn't anticipate that this delusional shellgame would go on as long as it did or that the public would have been fooled as long as they were.
THAT is one of the few things Mr. Krugman got wrong.
Tell you what, I'll personally dance the frickin merengue in a fruit hat while reading one of those Krugman columns cited above to someone who lost money shorting interest rate futures if one of Megan's genius supporters will promise to recite a William Kristol column to a mother in Ramallah who's lost every child to this war.
Lessee, the greatest strategic blunder in the last century, which has cost 4,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, thrown our national reputation into the toilet, inspired a generation of America-hating bomb-makers, strengthened the strategic position of extremists in Iran, will cost a trillion dollars before its over, and which was based on the concocted tales of guys with names like 'Curveball.
Versus an economist.
Yes, this has been said before. No, it never stops being the single salient g-d point.
Shorter djangone :
"Shut up about whatever you're talking about! Don't you know the Iraq war is bad? And it's like, totally your fault! Nyah!"
=darwin
God, every pundit who supported the Iraq War is in full-scale CYA mode. Rather than examine themselves and what they got wrong, they are a) slamming the people who point out they were wrong, and/or b) blaming someone for screwing up. All the while hoping desperately some magic ponies appear. This is utterly shameful. Whether Krugman's predictions on the economy were right or wrong (and he looks pretty damn right - all the quotes by Goggler were either true AT THE TIME or eventually became true) is irrelevant. The Iraq War is a disaster, in humanitarian terms, economic terms, and political terms and anyone who had any sense knew it was going to be a disaster but they were drowned out and accused of treason. Those who did the drowning out have a lot to answer for, but cowards that they are, they refuse to face that. And Megan is their enabler.
Wow. This blog really attracts the retards. Hey Joe in Dallas--not to single you out, for many here are your equal--but what office is that? The one behind the counter at the 7/11?
I almost spewed on my screen with the first defender of Krugman. And then more came out of the woodwork! Wow! I hope you all are trolls surfing in to defend your hero or else my opinion of Megan's readership just took a nose dive.
> He assumed the banking industry and related government regulators (and, by extension, the public) were going to behave in a responsible, rational way during the buildup to the crisis.
You can't have taken even freshman-level econ and not recognize that as a fatal assumption for an economist to make.
I'm struck that the idea of ignoring people who got the last war wrong is what got us stuck in Iraq in the first place.
You would be hard-pressed to show that the situation for America and the world was better before Desert Storm than after it. The people who opposed that war were often the same ones that opposed the current one in Iraq -- but were dismissed in 2002-3 because they were wrong about Desert Storm.
Problem is a scientist (economists think of themslves as such) being a partisan. Krugman should write about economics in an interesting way. Rather he writes about politics in a predictable way and cherry picks economic facts to make his case.
In terms of commenters that keep coming back to 4000 dead. It is an awful situation and I am in favor of withdrawing. But... If we go back intime the left was predicting far, far more than 4000 casualties.
Question is, how many of the IP addresses that the Krug disciples post from track back to his office in the New York Times building?
I don't have proof (as I don't have these addresses), but he's certainly narcissistic enough to defend himself that way, and many of the posters use the same logical fallacies upon which his arguments usually stand.
It wouldn't be the first time an insecure writer marshalled a legion of himself to defend himself (Greenwald, Hiltzik, Foer).
Personally, I sign blog comments with a handle I can remember -- my name. I tend to discount pseudonymous comments (although sometimes the facts and argument in a comment stand on their own, regardless of the writer's identity). The rest of you, well, it's a free country, do what you like. Even you insecure economists.
I'd rather be wrong about an inevitable recession than be complicit in selling a war that is killing tens of thousands. I rather explain that Bushs' economic policy is disastrous and will end in recession soon than figure how to apologize for the blood of thousands and trillions of our treasure squandered. Which would you prefer? Wash the blood off your hands before you answer.
Please do not refer to other commenters as "retards", etc. Confine your remarks to their ideas, actions, and argumentative style. This should provide enough enjoyment for everyone here.
I do not want to start deleting comments. But if people do not ratchet back the hostility, I will. There is a glimmer of an interesting debate starting to appear in other threads, which seems to show that it can be done.
Kevin, I'm writing from Los Angeles. Don't be an idiot. Right-wingers can't be trusted with personal information (see Malkin, Michelle, stalking of Graham Frost), so there's no way in hell anyone is posting under their real name.
Krugman has legions of devoted readers, many of them, like me, with advanced degrees in finance and economics. Krugman's regularly in the running for the Nobel in Economics, and if you want to deride an econ/finance pundit for being regularly foolish, you'd hardly look at Krugman but rather Samuelson or especially that gibbering fool Kudlow.
Krugman is a genuis! Look at what happened to ENRON under Krugman's watch. He brilliantly led the company into bankruptcy. Yay! And he is always wrong on the economy; as everyone here has repeatedly pointed out, he has been predicting a recession since Bush was elected and we have had years of excellent economic growth and lowest unemployment rate in decades. Election years are alway bad economicly. Poor Krugman hasn't even noticed that pattern yet.