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Re:93% of 2006 AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities... by anigbrowl on Wednesday April 28, 2010 @04:14PM (#1302556)
I'm not a big fan of Krugman, but let's also not forget that we were in a recession at the time of those remarks; when Krugman was saying the Fed should raise interest rates a few years later, and taht the US was addicted to Chinese treasury purchases, libertarians scoffed and called him an alarmist.

This 2005 example of libertarian economic thought is particularly ironic, arguing that measures of inflation like CPI give too much weight to housing and car prices while an adjacent advert promotes a book explaining how the crisis was caused by too much easy money: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3752

Other sparkling jewels of economic wisdom include his prediction at the beginning of 2008 that recession was a non-issue, or his comments from earlier in the decade (when the Fed had raised rates a bit) that the nation would achieve substantial long term benefits from the 'glorious housing boom' created by previously low rates, which had allowed many refinancers to invest and consume more.

Physician, heal thyself.

Re:93% of 2006 AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities... by ksraines on Thursday April 29, 2010 @03:34AM (#1303831)
Point taken. However, Krugman's comments were a little stronger than what you suggest. He explicitly called for the creation of a housing bubble (see my other response below).

Please don't take the link as a blanket endorsement of libertarianism; it was just the first link that came up as a result of my google search. I remembered reading up on Krugman's predictive failures many months ago ...

Krugman stopped being an economist a long time ago and is now a political hack - regardless of whether or not he has a point in this particular instance. I imagine that you didn't need Krugman to tell you that the raters were issuing ridiculous ratings ...

Re:93% of 2006 AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities... by anigbrowl on Monday May 03, 2010 @12:47PM (#1315199)
political hack

no disagreement there. It's just I think the same is true of some of his loudest critics :)

Re:93% of 2006 AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities... by ksraines on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @03:51AM (#1320634)
Nice.