Paul Krugman: "Thinking about Trump's attempt to bully th...

Paul Krugman: "Thinking about Trump's attempt to bully the Fed, I found myself remembering the open letter by a who's who of conservative economists (plus some 'economists') accusing Ben Bernanke of 'currency debasement' https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html. Four years later, Bloomberg went to ask signatories why they were wrong; none of them���not one���would admit having been wrong https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-02/fed-critics-say-10-letter-warning-inflation-still-right...

...My question is, why aren't we seeing an open letter from right-leaning economists calling on Trump to lay off the Fed? After all, demanding an easy money policy when unemployment is 3.7% is a lot more likely to cause inflation than easing at 9.4%. But, crickets. As @delong has been emphasizing, what we're learning is that there is a complete lack of intellectual honesty on the right side of the spectrum, even among seemingly respectable professional economists. It's all punish the economy under Obama, let's party under Trump. This goes hand in hand with denouncing deficits when the economy really needed fiscal support to being just fine with them when they result from tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, even though now would be a good time to rein in debt.

#shouldread #economicsgonewrong #monetarypolicy #fiscalpolicy