Keynesians Winning in Explaining Economies in Deleveraging Shock: Krugman has the Story in Money for Nothing at the New York Times

We read Paul Krugman not because he is always right,
and indeed he admittedly does not always claim to be,

but Krugman stands out in the ranks of the world's top economists in rejecting voodoo economics, gullible wishful thinking and unproven politically-colored economic dogmas and pet theories, preferring to subject his own ideas to the actual empirical evidence. Krugman prefers an economics that is "evidence-based" rather than one based on some economic "school".

Read how the Keynesians are winning in explaining economies in "deleveraging shock", as Krugman has the story in Money for Nothing at the New York Times. One need not be a Keynesian. One needs to look at the facts to see that Keynes was right in major essentials, while others were wrong.

Compare the sensible things that Krugman writes to the abysmal theoretical economics written at Krugman-in Wonderland by a proponent of the largely reality-removed Austrian School of Economics, a theoretical school of economics somewhat comparable in its inflexible dogmatism to modern American "voodoo economics" of the American extreme right wing.

As noted at the Wikipedia about the theories of "Austrian School" classicist Friedrich Hayek:

"Jeffrey Sachs argues that among developed countries, those with high rates of taxation and high social welfare spending perform better on most measures of economic performance compared to countries with low rates of taxation and low social outlays. He concludes that Friedrich Hayek was wrong to argue that high levels of government spending harms an economy, and "a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness."

It is in fact rather astounding that such muddled economic thinking as can be found in the Austrian School is "made in Europe", a Europe whose modern astounding progress since WWII can be thanked to exactly the opposite kinds of economics as proposed by Hayek or compatriot Ludwig von Mises, who wrote dreamfully and in error that:

"The captain is the consumer…the consumers determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities…They are merciless egoistic bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction…In their capacity as buyers and consumers they are hard-hearted and callous, without consideration for other people…Capitalists…can only preserve and increase their wealth by filling best the orders of the consumers… In the conduct of their business affairs they must be unfeeling and stony-hearted because the consumers, their bosses, are themselves unfeeling and stony-hearted."

In contrast, Steve Jobs, who made Apple the most profitable high-tech product-selling company in the United States is famously quoted as saying that "It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want."

Jobs was apparently very right and von Mises very wrong. Consumers are the suckers in the system, not "the captains".

Similarly and currently in the patent wars, what can be bought or not in retail shops is being decided by the patent laws and how these are being interpreted by the courts and the legal system. The consumers are not the ones deciding what they will be able to buy in the future.

So much for the so-called "Austrian School of Economics".
There is a good German saying for that school and it is "weltfremd".

Paul Krugman Calls it Europe’s Great Illusion: Are Inflation and Monetary Devaluation via Increased Spending the Only Real Solutions?

Paul Krugman's most recent piece at the New York Times is Europe’s Great Illusion, writing inter alia in the aftermath of the recent -- in our eyes "relatively successful" -- Eurozone summit meeting:

"Over the past few months I’ve read a number of optimistic assessments of the prospects for Europe. Oddly, however, none of these assessments argue that Europe’s German-dictated formula of redemption through suffering has any chance of working. Instead, the case for optimism is that failure — in particular, a breakup of the euro — would be a disaster for everyone, including the Germans, and that in the end this prospect will induce European leaders to do whatever it takes to save the situation."

We agree with Paul Krugman on much of his basic macroeconomics, but are recently somewhat more concerned about why he continues to pounce on the economy of Europe rather than on the economic situation in the United States.

We presume that the reason is because the USA and the EU are the biggest bilateral trading and investment partners in the world (with China soon overtaking) whose fortunes are inextricably entwined.

The transatlantic economy has traditionally been the world's motor, as can be seen from these figures from the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU):

"Trade in goods

• EU good exports to the US in 2010: €242.1 billion
• EU goods imports from the US in 2010: €169.5 billion

Trade in services

• EU services exports to the US 2010: €125.2 billion
• EU services imports from the US in 2010: €131.0 billion

Foreign Direct Investment

• EU investment flows to the US in 2009: €79.2 billion
• US investment flows to the EU in 2009: €97.3 billion
• Investment stocks inward in 2009: €1044 billion
• Investment stocks outward in 2009: €1134 billion

More statistics on USA"

What would be useful to see from Krugman is an analysis of the people and institutions to whom the money of the debt crisis is OWED and why (or not) they should be saved from their bad investments viz. loans and why money speculators, banks looking for absurd returns from sovereign nations -- and failing, hedge funds, and their ilk, etc. should be rewarded for what is nothing other than monetary gambling. That is a far more important question than all this theoretical economic bantering.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

EU Eurozone Bank Bailout: Understanding the Current Debt Crisis as a Financial World in Deleverage : Bill Gross, Founder and Manager of PIMCO, World's Biggest Bond Fund, Gives Us the Nuts and Bolts

William H. Gross ("Bill"), founder and manager of Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO), the world's biggest bond fund, has said that Europe is in a Debt Trap, Even After the Bank Bailout.

Bill Gross is a very bright guy, be sure about that, so his opinion carries weight with this author, and it is advisable to read what he writes.

We do think that Europe is stronger than Americans can imagine and we think that the USA by contrast has serious economic, political and social problems to solve down the road, so we are not necessarily in agreement with Gross on his conclusions that America is currently a better investment than Europe. But then again, we are not managing a $250 billion fund, and Gross does.

What Gross has been writing recently at his Investment Outlook page at PIMCO is outstanding in delivering basic economic knowledge (from an investment standpoint) about a world that is "delevering".

If you really want to get a nuts and bolts view of the current world debt situation, the PIMCO writings of Bill Gross are an absolute reading must.

Below are links to some of his writings at Investment Outlook at PIMCO together with excerpts we have chosen to give an idea about the content:

The Great Escape: Delivering in a Delevering World by William H. Gross:

"[T]he Great Leveraging of the past 30 years .... was a world not of yield, but of total return, where price and yield formed the returns that exceeded the ability of global economies to consistently replicate them. Financial assets relative to real assets outperform in such a world as wealth is brought forward and stolen from future years if real growth cannot replicate historical total returns."

Wall Street Food Chain by William H. Gross:

"The whales of our current economic society swim mainly in financial market oceans. Innovators such as Jobs and Gates are as rare within the privileged 1% as giant squid are to sharks, because the 1% feed primarily off of money, not invention. They would have you believe that stocks, bonds and real estate move higher because of their wisdom, when in fact, prices float on an ocean of credit, a sea in which all fish and mammals are now increasingly at risk because of high debt and its delevering consequences. Still, as the system delevers, there are winners and losers, a Wall Street food chain in effect."

What's in A Name by William H. Gross:

"An authentic debt crisis – which the world is now experiencing – can only be ultimately cured in two ways: 1) default on it, or 2) print more money in order to inflate it away."

See links to all of the articles by Gross at Investment Outlook Overview.

Crossposted at LawPundit.

European Union and Eurozone Deficits and the USA's Romney: What Does Mitt Romney Know About Europe? or about Public Debt and GDP? Find Out Here.

At ABC News, Shushannah Walshe has an article titled
Romney Says That Without Him, US Will Become ‘Like Europe’.

How much does Romney know about Europe? and what about his views on the European "financial crisis"?

Do the facts support what Romney is preaching in the USA, or is this just another example of domestic election campaigning hype with no support in the actual facts?

Romney is quoted as saying that:

"If I were not to … get elected, we would instead in my view become more like Europe with higher deficits, with a debt that could put us in a Greece or Spain or Italy-like circumstance...."

Oh, really?

We took a look at current IMF and CIA/Eurostat stats on national debt via the Wikipedia. A country's debt is usually calculated as the amount of public debt it has taken as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).

Here is that data to which we have added an EU "label" to the EU Member States, FOUR (4) of which have a higher public debt as a Percentage (%) of GDP than the USA and TWENTY-THREE (23) of which have a lower public debt as a Percentage (%) of GDP when compared to the United States.

So which Europe is Romney talking about?

Not the one that we live in.

List of Public Debt of the
World's Countries (States)
as % of GDP

(adapted from Wikipedia)
Public debt, International Monetary Fund,
April 2012 World Economic Outlook Database.
** marks data from The World Factbook, (est = estimated).
_____
USA debt here does not include state debt issued
by individual US states and intra-government debt
(amounts owed to Medicare & Social Security funds
are  the largest portion of "intra-government" debt)^[4].
 

We have added the (EU) label to the 27 EU Member States, 4 of which
have greater public debt as a % of GDP than the USA and 23 of which have less.

Country (State)	% of GDP (IMF) [3]	Date
Japan	229.77	2011
Greece (EU)	160.81	2011
Saint Kitts and Nevis	153.41	2011
Jamaica	138.98	2011
Lebanon	136.22	2011
Eritrea	133.82	2011
Italy (EU)	120.11	2011
Barbados	117.25	2011
Portugal (EU)	106.79	2011
Ireland (EU)	104.95	2011
United States	102.94	2011
Singapore	100.79	2011
Iceland	99.19	2011
Belgium (EU)	98.51	2011
Mauritania	92.40	2011
Côte d'Ivoire	90.53	2011
Iraq	86.92	2011
Grenada	86.61	2011
France (EU)	86.26	2011
Canada	84.95	2011
Seychelles	83.02	2011
European Union** (data from World Factbook)	82.50	2011
United Kingdom (EU)	82.50	2011
Bhutan	82.00	2011
Germany (EU)	81.51	2011
Hungary (EU)	80.45	2011
Belize	80.35	2011
Sri Lanka	78.20	(est.)
Cape Verde	77.58	2011
Egypt	76.45	2011
Antigua and Barbuda	74.55	2011
São Tomé and Príncipe	74.43	2011
Israel	74.34	2011
Sudan	73.14	2011
Austria (EU)	72.20	2011
Guinea	72.19	2011
Nicaragua	72.03	2011
Saint Lucia	71.95	2011
Cyprus (EU)	71.84	2011
St. Vincent and Grenadines	71.41	2011
Malta (EU)	70.94	2011
Zimbabwe	70.33	2011
Dominica	69.88	2011
Jordan	69.78	2011
Maldives	69.10	2011
Gambia, The	68.77	2011
Spain (EU)	68.47	2011
India	68.05	2011
Netherlands (EU)	66.23	2011
Brazil	66.18	2011
Guyana	61.75	2011
Pakistan	60.12	2011
Sierra Leone	59.96	2011
Albania	58.92	2011
Laos	57.36	2011
Djibouti	55.46	2011
Poland (EU)	55.39	2011
Morocco	54.39	2011
Uruguay	54.19	2011
Fiji	53.89	2011
Malaysia	52.56	2011
Kyrgyzstan	52.44	2011
El Salvador	50.79	2011
Mauritius	50.63	2011
Belarus	50.24	2011
Norway	49.61	2011
Kenya	48.94	2011
Switzerland	48.65	2011
Bahamas	48.61	2011
Finland (EU)	48.56	2011
Serbia	47.89	2011
Slovenia (EU)	47.31	2011
Denmark (EU)	46.43	2011
Aruba**	46.30	2005
Montenegro	45.83	2011
Croatia	45.57	2011
Venezuela	45.50	2011
Guinea-Bissau	45.23	2011
Slovakia (EU)	44.63	2011
Tanzania	44.39	2011
Myanmar	44.32	2011
Argentina	44.20	2011
Mexico	43.81	2011
Ghana	43.39	2011
Yemen	42.52	2011
Malawi	42.46	2011
Tunisia	42.41	2011
Thailand	41.69	2011
Czech Republic (EU)	41.46	2011
Central African Republic	40.90	2011
Taiwan	40.80	2011
Bosnia and Herzegovina	40.63	2011
Senegal	40.62	2011
Philippines	40.47	2011
Lesotho	39.65	2011
Turkey	39.44	2011
Lithuania (EU)	38.96	2011
South Africa	38.77	2011
Vietnam	37.97	2011
Panama	37.83	2011
Latvia (EU)	37.77	2011
Sweden (EU)	37.44	2011
Ethiopia	37.26	2011
New Zealand	37.04	2011
Bangladesh**	36.70	2011 est
Ukraine	36.50	2011
Bahrain	36.46	2011
Tajikistan	35.35	2011
Burundi	35.27	2011
Armenia	35.10	2011
Cuba**	34.90	2011 est
Colombia	34.67	2011
Syria**	34.40	2011 est
Korea, South	34.14	2011
Nepal	34.07	2011
Georgia	33.88	2011
Hong Kong	33.86	2011
Mozambique	33.20	2011
Romania (EU)	32.96	2011
Bolivia	32.88	2011
Trinidad and Tobago	32.35	2011
Chad	32.15	2011
Democratic Republic of Congo	31.99	2011
Qatar	31.48	2011
Benin	31.33	2011
Angola	30.90	2011
Togo	30.84	2011
Costa Rica	30.76	2011
Mali	30.64	2011
Burkina Faso	29.44	2011
Dominican Republic	29.26	2011
Uganda	29.22	2011
Cambodia	28.60	2011
Honduras	28.12	2011
Macedonia	28.11	2011
Zambia	26.07	2011
China	25.84	2011
Indonesia	25.03	2011
Guatemala	24.06	2011
Rwanda	23.43	2011
Moldova	23.39	2011
Australia	22.86	2011
Solomon Islands	22.64	2011
Papua New Guinea**	22.30	2011 est
Republic of the Congo	22.17	2011
Namibia	21.85	2011
Peru	21.64	2011
Luxembourg (EU)	20.85	2011
Suriname	20.57	2011
Gabon	20.45	2011
Niger	18.94	2011
Ecuador	17.98	2011
Nigeria	17.86	2011
Swaziland	17.53	2011
Botswana	17.26	2011
Bulgaria (EU)	17.04	2011
United Arab Emirates	16.89	2011
Turkmenistan	15.35	2011
Liberia	13.92	2011
Paraguay	13.66	2011
Cameroon	12.87	2011
Iran	12.70	2011
Kazakhstan	10.88	2011
Haiti	10.63	2011
Azerbaijan	10.23	2011
Algeria	9.92	2011
Chile	9.91	2011
Russia	9.60	2011
Uzbekistan	9.10	2011
Equatorial Guinea	8.35	2011
Saudi Arabia	7.52	2011
Gibraltar**	7.50	2008 est
Kuwait	7.35	2011
Estonia (EU)	6.04	2011
Madagascar	5.68	2011
Wallis and Futuna**	5.60	2004
Oman	5.06	2011
North Korea**	0.40	2004 est
Brunei Darussalam	0.00	2011
Libya	0.00	2010

Hence, the government deficits that Romney is talking about in a comparison of the USA and Europe come out on the whole in favor of Europe.
See Deseret News similarly.

What Romney does not appear to realize is that the debt that is hurting some EU countries is of a different kind, and is rooted in evil practices of financial and business institutions, practices that still have to be eradicated and/or corrected, not just in Europe but also in the USA.

See the TOTAL DEBT stats (not just public debt), which point to financial and banking problems other than government deficits and government spending.

As for Europe in general, Mitt Romney can only wish that somewhere down the road America would become more like Europe, for example, in the quality of education or universality of health care.

In fact, the USA is miles behind Europe in many important parameters, including the general quality of the infrastructure as applied to roads, highways, bridges, airports, manufacturing. You name it.

Except for selected areas of high tech, America's leadership has declined steadily over past decades because much of the country has been resting on its laurels and its past greatness, rather than moving forward and doing what needs to be done.

Absolutely surreal in this context, by the way, as reported at Desert News in Mitt Romney economic adviser makes waves, provokes President Obama is the fact that last week, Glenn Hubbard, a former George W. Bush economic advisor (no more of those disastrous economics, please !), dean of the Columbia B-School and Mitt Romney's chief economic adviser (not a good sign for Romney's election chances), wrote an op-ed article for a German business publication urging Europeans "not to learn from America,"  thus drawing fire from U.S. President Obama, not only for mixing in where he has no business being, but also giving the wrong advice to Europe to boot.

Hubbard advocated the idiotic tax cuts for the wealthy that helped to put America in the financial predicament in which it currently finds itself. One always hopes that people who have committed so many harmful errors for society would fade into woodwork, but that is wishful thinking. They keep trying to get it right. Please, go play golf in central Florida.

Our advice to Mitt Romney if he really wanted to get elected President would be to educate himself about the world's finances, get savvy about Europe and find economic advisors who are not living in yesterday or in dogmatic ivory towers far removed from the economic realities.

Modern economies thrive on a credit-based economy. Look at the list above and you will see that most of the poorer countries have low ratios of public debt to the percentage of GDP, but low debt has not helped them in their poverty, nor has it helped their countries to get wealthy. A man of simple wants and desires can get by with less and simple work.

Men and women who are working to pay for overhyped and overpriced smartphones and pc tablets that they may really not be able to afford -- not to mention bubbled residential real estate priced far above true value -- drive the system. If we all settled for what we really need and for which we had cash in the bank, the world economy would crumble to dust.

Much of the debt of the industrialized Western world is nothing more than deferred taxation and calculated inflation that ultimately will find no other solution than printing more money to account for that.

When problems surface, things like money and credit have to be adjusted.
All this talk about a Eurozone crisis is just yellow journalism and stupid economics.

In the EU, a country like Spain has in fact much less public debt than the United States of America in terms of each country's GDP, so that pointing to a reduction of government deficits and spending is simply not the solution to its current economic situation.

Quite the contrary, to get those armies of unemployed off the streets, you spend money to create jobs, by borrowing or printing money as it were, as Paul Krugman and other savvy economists correctly recommend. And you start bearing down hard on banking practices.

There is no need to panic.
Down the road the matters will be solved.
People have to remember that the DEBT is owed to SOMEBODY.
To solve these financial matters, you start pushing THEM.
They know better than anyone else, what the game is, that is being played.

Crossposted at LawPundit.