I do not always agree with Paul Krugman, but on occasion he comes out with a line that knocks me over.
In this piece he draws a historic link between past conservative praise and current economic disaster. He writes:
This may explain the almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today. “Reforms have made Iceland a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep crisis now.
So Krugman's observation almost suggests that if you want to see a financial train wreck in the making, read the ravings of the anti-regulatory right... and then wait for two to three years for that economy to tank. In short, the current laissez-faire intellectual leanings of the conservative movement that regulation is bad, "bureaucrats" are bad and that "free markets" are possessed with an eerie ability to just get everything right, like it was magic. Somehow this week that idea is not playing too well, as the world's stock markets retch up some more of their guts.
What is fascinating is that the conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have no news ideas, nor apparently any ability for self-analysis. They must know what they have been saying, lobbying for and speaking out for, and how that approach has played out in the real world. One would think that they would be immersed in a dark period of reflection, for having botched things so badly. Are they? Do you really need to ask?
Arthur
In this piece he draws a historic link between past conservative praise and current economic disaster. He writes:
This may explain the almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today. “Reforms have made Iceland a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep crisis now.
So Krugman's observation almost suggests that if you want to see a financial train wreck in the making, read the ravings of the anti-regulatory right... and then wait for two to three years for that economy to tank. In short, the current laissez-faire intellectual leanings of the conservative movement that regulation is bad, "bureaucrats" are bad and that "free markets" are possessed with an eerie ability to just get everything right, like it was magic. Somehow this week that idea is not playing too well, as the world's stock markets retch up some more of their guts.
What is fascinating is that the conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have no news ideas, nor apparently any ability for self-analysis. They must know what they have been saying, lobbying for and speaking out for, and how that approach has played out in the real world. One would think that they would be immersed in a dark period of reflection, for having botched things so badly. Are they? Do you really need to ask?
Arthur
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