Paul Krugman, fighting the good fight against draconian austerity measures at a time when stimulus is needed, lets fly from his drawn bow a couple of zingers:
Spanish banks did indeed need a bailout. Spain was clearly on the edge of a “doom loop” — a well-understood process in which concern about banks’ solvency forces the banks to sell assets, which drives down the prices of those assets, which makes people even more worried about solvency. …
Even as European leaders were putting together this rescue, they were signaling strongly that they have no intention of changing the policies that have left almost a quarter of Spain’s workers — and more than half its young people — jobless.
Call it the Darth Vader approach to economic policy; Mr. Asmussen is in effect telling the Greeks, “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
… a mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming, a mentality that a British journalist once dubbed “sado-monetarism.”
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This is something more than breakfast wit. For there does tend indeed to be some correlation between one’s take on economics -- in principle a purely scientific, mathematico-empirical matter, free of all input from personal quirks -- and one’s broader philosophy, and with that, one’s personality. Thus a number of prominent economists have been Ayn-Randers -- a Weltanschauung which, as much as nihilism or Branch-Dravidianism, should at the outset disqualify one from any role in public life.
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