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There's no middle ground in a debate between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman. Paul: "I don't want the...

  • Monday, April 30, 2012, 7:20 PM ET
    There's no middle ground in a debate between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman. Paul: "I don't want the government or Federal Reserve fixing the rate of interest... Governments aren't supposed to run the economy. The people are." Krugman: "I want the market economy to be left as free as it can be, but there are limits. You do need the government to step in to stabilize." (video)
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  • I just love Krugman posts. Here's my take. Krugman sees the world through the eyes of a socialist. Most people are useless and must be provided for by enlightened government else they will be oppressed by the successful minority. Of course, the socialists simply turned the useless into parasites. Before that, they just died. So it was, so it will be again.
    30 Apr 2012, 07:33 PM Reply Like
  • That is not what Krugman says.

    What he says - and I agree - is that free market needs regulation so they can function.

    The libertarians don't like regulations even if the free market is about to destroy itself. FDR intervened and saved the capitalism and there are still people out there that says that he was a socialist...
    30 Apr 2012, 08:24 PM Reply Like
  • Krugman is a socialist central planner. Of course, regulation is necessary. Free men will game any system to their benefit. The question is how much regulation is required and the consequences for bad behavior. I favor maximum freedom and maximum punishment. If you cheat me, you should go to jail. In today's environment, we have maximum freedom for the cheaters who own the regulators and go unpunished. This is a recipe for anarchy.
    30 Apr 2012, 09:04 PM Reply Like
  • Gov can regulate with regards to force and fraud via its grant of force. It cannot regulate with regards to price because it's grant of force makes it price blind. Free markets are free when they are free of force and fraud, not when they are free to do what ever they want. That occurs when gov is not limited. Then it's force becomes the agent of theft.
    30 Apr 2012, 10:30 PM Reply Like
  • The problem is that if someone that wants to do exactly what you are asking for, he is labeled as a socialist. You cannot have both ways.
    1 May 2012, 01:00 AM Reply Like
  • How can you compare anyone to someone as ignorant as Krugman. I think Ron Paul is pretty low on the believability scale but this this is an insult to him, lawyers, used car salesman, Congress, the Administration, and reporters as they are all even lower on the believability scale.
    30 Apr 2012, 07:38 PM Reply Like
  • Yeah, the very people who blew the bubbles in the first place should be given more power to control the economy more, prop up the banks and we should just "trust" them while they destroy the $US by another 98%, while they create bigger and bigger TBTF banks. Morally bankrupt economists can't see the corruption they are creating, the destruction they are causing.

    Too bad the interviewers have no knowledge or depth. When Krugman said "The dollar is actually doing pretty well", they should have IMMEDIATELY come back with "COMPARED TO WHAT?" Because compared to fiat currency well, ok. But do the comparison to GOLD and what do you have??????

    The simple fact is that there is NO MAN ALIVE who should be trusted with the power to print MONEY. Not one.
    30 Apr 2012, 07:42 PM Reply Like
  • Krugman is the pig that tells the other pigs in the barnyard that the reason they are kept in a pen and fed by the farmer is because the farmer is "benevolent and we pigs can't be trusted to do for ourselves".

    "But, say the other pigs, "what is the farmer's endgame?"

    Pig Krugman replies, "We'll see but so far so good. It should all work out in the end for us pigs."
    30 Apr 2012, 07:48 PM Reply Like
  • DVL..Very funny..well played..
    30 Apr 2012, 08:21 PM Reply Like
  • nasdaq99, what is money to you? For most people it is a proxy of an exchange of value. In exchange for hours worked one receives money, which can in turn be exchanged for goods and services. This proxy must be universally accepted and convertible. You seem to believe that having the proxy "collateralized" by gold would solve most of our problems. First of all, given the value of aggregate reserve currencies it would be virtually impossible to accumulate enough gold as collateral unless the value of gold almost qualdrupled from where it is today. If this would happen South Africa would all of the sudden be the new Saudi Arabia, just because it has signficant reserves of a shiny yellow mineral in its ground. A gold standard is just not practical and certainly it would certainly turn global financial markets on there heads.

    Secondly, those who argue for a gold standard alway point to the depreciation of fiat currency against gold, not against a more useful measure of standard of living. Who cares what the value of a currency is against gold. Who needs gold? The answer is no one. However, if you compare the value of an hour worked by the average person in the U.S in terms of how well they can eat, provide shelter, and other necessities, the hour worked today buys much more than it did in the early 1900's. This is why our standard of living has increased so dramatically over the last 100 years.
    30 Apr 2012, 07:59 PM Reply Like
  • I agree that gold is not likely to resume its role as money for the simple reason that it is not elastic. That is precisely why gold bugs champion it as a store of value. The current fiat system is backed by debt. In the current crisis, credit is worth barely the paper it is printed in. The only response is to throw more borrowed money after the bad. I suspect we will see a new monetary system in the not too distant future that ties currencies to some basket of goods or commodities in order to provide a sounder system.
    30 Apr 2012, 08:14 PM Reply Like
  • throw in the silver too. it's in the constitution.

    you would also not have all the debt funded wars, and you wouldn't have strip centers to infinity sitting empty with graffitti all over them, you wouldn't have $1m houses selling for $300k and you WOULD NOT have $105 oil, or $1600 gold.

    gold is honest. and you trust a bunch of academics who have never met a payroll and who translate an economy into an algebraic equation that doesn't compute greed and corruption? good for you. you're winning. but only because there is not one honest broker of power in DC or Wall St. yes, your team is winning. but all they're doing is transferring a mountain of debt onto your children. it's really a sociopathic protection of power. they will lie cheat and steal to protect the status quo.

    did you watch the interview? they have destroyed 98% of the value of the currency in <100 years!
    30 Apr 2012, 08:27 PM Reply Like
  • nasdaq99 gold is a finite commodity which does not get destroyed, thus there is a static amount of gold available for a rapidly expanding global population. Of course gold has appreciated versus currency, which is expanded to accomodate a growing world economy. That is a no brainer. The problem with your statement is the the spending power of the U.S. dollar has not depreciated nearly 98% versus commonly used goods and services, I would actually argue than in many cases that dollar has become more valuable against the cost of many commonly used goods and services. If that were not true, standards of living in this country would be falling not rising over the last 100 years.
    30 Apr 2012, 08:51 PM Reply Like
  • ok then, remove the Fed's monopoly power over money, let private contractors produce hard backed currency and see which one survives. the Fed has you seduced with all the fractional lending/debt as money bs and you are buying it. i suggest to you that if the Fed had competition for money that the $US would go quickly south. you are being paid in toilet paper and you don't even know it yet.

    yes we are in a discussion of what "money" is! it's so fundamental that it is forgotten. the founders got it but you grew up with the almight dollar an you won't get it until it's too late for you.
    30 Apr 2012, 09:05 PM Reply Like
  • The Founders did not have a choice, America had no credit to speak of. Credit has to be earned and that did not happen overnight. All you are doing is parroting Ron Paul, who is a babe in the woods compared to Paul Krugman when it comes to economics and workings of monetary policy. I like Ron Paul, he amuses me, but I certainly would not want him anywhere near monetary policy of the U.S. than he is now, which is an entertaining questioner of the Chairman of the Fed during Congressional testimonies.
    30 Apr 2012, 10:58 PM Reply Like
  • 'Stepping in' has proven to be the easy part. The 'stepping out' part is where the real entertainment will begin. This i gotta see.
    30 Apr 2012, 08:31 PM Reply Like
  • The founders understood DEBASEMENT of the currency. It's simply counterfitting by another name. The Coinage Act of 1792 provided for the Death Penalty for debasement of the currency. They got it. It's stealing:

    Section 19:

    http://bit.ly/IjA9ZK
    30 Apr 2012, 08:38 PM Reply Like
  • Your detractors have been educated by the purveyors of modern monetary theory which is alchemy by any other name. The real problem now is controlling the mob when it realizes that there is no free lunch. The politicians have over promised and the only solution they have is to keep kicking the can down the road.
    30 Apr 2012, 09:11 PM Reply Like
  • well, it's quite seductive to pretend that the man behind the curtain pulls levers and chains and magically the economy starts humming along. the problem is that they've gone to the well every single year since they discovered this alchemy and will continue to do so at every turn until it collapses. it's not hard to get it, just look at europe.

    if Germany pulls out of the eurozone, for financial survival, the eu collapses. so why would germany with it's recent history allow france, spain, italy, greece, portugal et al pull them into the drain with them? i think they will simply pull out one night while we are sleeping.

    actually i think they are trying to beg, borrow or steal IMF, etc money in order to facilitate "all euro area bonds going back home" and then it will be every state for themselves.
    30 Apr 2012, 09:24 PM Reply Like
  • If you can divine the end game, you will be well rewarded. For me, it's scarce hard assets. Gold and silver fit the bill, but so too do other resources.
    30 Apr 2012, 09:39 PM Reply Like
  • http://bit.ly/IMc9Od

    http://onforb.es/zyyVvT

    plenty on the Fed destroying the dollar
    30 Apr 2012, 09:50 PM Reply Like
  • "Depressions are a bad thing for capitalism and it’s the role of the government to make sure they don't happen, or if they do happen, they don't last too long." P. Krugman.

    Depressions are particularly bad for bankers. Thus the Fed reason for existence. Protect the banking brotherhood.
    30 Apr 2012, 11:10 PM Reply Like
  • Ron Paul = 1893 = Depression
    1 May 2012, 04:34 AM Reply Like
  • Interesting how people can be condescending towards Dr. Ron Paul who only wants to stop borrowing money, reconnect the government with the Constitution and let private citizens lead private lives.

    The people who laugh at him seem to have no problem with their currency being turned into Monopoly money and TSA agents molesting their kids in the name of "safety".

    Paul Krugman has the same prize as Yasser Arafat. Think about that for a moment.

    It is like America has officially entered the Twilight Zone.
    1 May 2012, 04:51 AM Reply Like
  • Arafat had a Nobel Prize in Economics?
    1 May 2012, 08:21 AM Reply Like
  • Of course not.

    If the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is the sort to give the Peace prize to Arafat (or "Drone War" Obama for that matter) then what respect is due to the Economics Committee?

    Pointless Northern European prizes or Ivy League ivory tower mortarboards just makes most people yawn, myself included.

    Those pieces of paper are not some sort of shield against acquiring serious ignorance in your field of study.
    1 May 2012, 11:48 AM Reply Like
  • Noble prizes for peace or economics seem to be awards for "who has come up with the best idea for looting the United States."
    1 May 2012, 11:52 AM Reply Like
  • That's the primary objective of the puppet-masters - Pull the legs out from under the USA, including both economic and the Constitutional Legs.
    1 May 2012, 01:36 PM Reply Like
  • DeepValueLover, it is simply ignorant to be anti-intellectual as you seem to proudly where on your sleeve. Maybe you have not known too many people who have an Ivy League education, but I have and those people are generally very impressive. I also have a child entering an "elite" liberal arts college and I know how selective her school was and I also know a handful of her classmates who are going to be attending an Ivy League institution. If you knew these teenagers as I do, you would be very optimistic regarding the future of our country.
    1 May 2012, 07:49 PM Reply Like
  • There is nothing wrong with an Ivy League education.

    There IS something wrong with the belief that such an education is a lifetime pass to a club of elite human thinkers who cannot possibly be bothered by the inferior ideas of lesser souls who have no such education.

    In other words, just because your nose is way higher than ours doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to smell your own bull$**t.
    1 May 2012, 08:12 PM Reply Like
  • Don't confuse the Nobel Peace prize with the prize in Medicine or Economics or Physics. Not in the same universe.

    E
    1 May 2012, 10:21 PM Reply Like
  • The Nobel Prize means nothing to me. No matter which one.
    2 May 2012, 04:57 AM Reply Like
  • DeepValueLover, I do not have an Ivy League education, but I have worked collaboratively with those who do and I have not experienced what you are alledging. Maybe one thing that gets taught effectively in those institutions is how to discern a good idea from a bad idea. The fact is, and it is well documented, there are a heck of a lot of illiterate and conflicted thinkers out there in the workplace. I really don't think dismissing "inferior" ideas has anything to do with where one's degree comes from as much as it has to do with the fact that there are far more people out there with bad ideas versus good ideas.
    2 May 2012, 08:02 AM Reply Like
  • Please explain why an MBA or a Ph.D. from Harvard or Penn is superior to an MBA or Ph.D. from the University of Missouri or The Ohio State University.
    2 May 2012, 08:47 AM Reply Like
  • "Please explain why an MBA or a Ph.D. from Harvard or Penn is superior to an MBA or Ph.D. from the University of Missouri or The Ohio State University".

    Its called the old-boy network. Not ivy, then your a hick (and probably a conservative.)
    2 May 2012, 01:23 PM Reply Like
  • George W. Bush:

    Yale.

    Harvard.

    lol.
    2 May 2012, 02:25 PM Reply Like
  • "George W. Bush:

    Yale.

    Harvard." and not at all a conservative.
    2 May 2012, 05:05 PM Reply Like
  • Hey Chairman Mao Zedong was a Yalie as well.
    2 May 2012, 07:02 PM Reply Like
  • As was Abd al-Karim al-Iryani, Prime minister Yemen.
    2 May 2012, 07:55 PM Reply Like
  • DeepValue, I would not make that type of stereotypical comment. However, I have a tremendous amount of respect for intellectuals and professionals who first of all were smart enough and applied themselves so well that they could get into Harvard, Yale or Princeton. The benefit from attending one of these highly selective schools is not necessarily the education per se, but the experience of being able to emerse oneself in an atmosphere made up of such intelligent and accomplished fellow students. The students learn more from each other than they do from their professors and that is what these types of schools foster.
    2 May 2012, 07:58 PM Reply Like
  • Sure.

    AFTER the failed presidency do the neocons disavow Bush.

    lol.
    2 May 2012, 09:19 PM Reply Like
  • It looks like getting away from the self-congratulatory, stuffy, "we are the Gods of thought...you should bow to us" Ivies is the REAL deal.

    Gates.

    Zuckerberg.

    By the way...the people who steered America into the economic ditch...didn't exactly come out of your inferior schools like Michigan or Kentucky, right?

    Hmmm....

    Or Long Term Capital? Remember them?

    http://bit.ly/KvCh00
    2 May 2012, 09:23 PM Reply Like
  • DeepValue, your argument does not fly because of course you, or any one else for that matter, can come up with examples of very successful people who did not attend an elite liberals school, as well as people who did and failed. The fact remains that one should never diminish or try to take away great academic or professional accomplishment regardless of the institution of higher learning that on attended, or for that matter did not attend.

    Paul Krugman is a brilliant and accomplished economist and writer and no one should disrespect those credentials. Ron Paul, well he is not a brilliant and accomplished economist and many of his beliefs are so far removed from what is practical or realistic, that in spite of being a likable politician, he has not been able to garner much more than 8% to 10% of the vote in this year's Republican primaries. Primaries which have been contested by the likes of weak candidates such as Baughman, Cain, Gingrich and Perry.
    2 May 2012, 10:56 PM Reply Like
  • And Ron Paul got his MD from Duke.....
    2 May 2012, 11:23 PM Reply Like
  • "Paul Krugman is a brilliant and accomplished economist and writer and no one should disrespect those credentials."

    Thanks, that's the funniest thing I've heard all day.
    3 May 2012, 12:11 AM Reply Like
  • Well, I don't know who Baughman is but I know who Ron Paul is.

    He is the guy who makes predictions. Then people laugh at his kooky predictions...right up until the moment they come true, then they pretend "no one saw it coming".

    http://bit.ly/ICbBMz

    http://bit.ly/ItmSl5

    As for Krugman?

    He has been asked one simple question for years and has avoided answering it during multiple interviews:

    How, EXACTLY, do we pay back the trillions that we've already borrowed PLUS the trillions more you wish us to borrow?

    You'd think, during his many years of superior Ivy League learnin', the subject of "paying back borrowed money" would have come up!
    3 May 2012, 04:47 AM Reply Like
  • The "Nobel" committees are ignorant and irrelevant. There're all about politics and who wants to impress who and who wants to go to who's parties. No different than Hollywood in any material way.
    3 May 2012, 07:40 AM Reply Like
  • This is it. This is how it happens. We are watching how an aristocracy and its related tyranny gets started. Those who proclaim they are the superior ones, decide that if everyone else rejects their superiority, why then, the superior ones will capture the gov guns in the name of the common good, and ram their superiority down our throats. Its like that line, "How did the nobles become noble? They took it, at the point of a spear."

    Some day, if we continue down this ruinious path, some of our non-noble children will find themselves in some sort of "camp" reminding themselves how their parents pointed out this juncture in history.
    3 May 2012, 08:15 AM Reply Like
  • "Paul Krugman is a brilliant and accomplished economist and writer and no one should disrespect those credentials."

    No, he just found that he can make a lot of money as the court clown.
    3 May 2012, 09:15 AM Reply Like
  • Neil

    Now that's profound.

    When the state used to regulate religion, there were those in religion that advocated for the state. "You better do what the King says, or God will hurt you." And what did the King say? Why pay your taxes and your TITHES. Think about all the complicated teachings of religion, and how they proclaimed state regulated religion couldn't be understood by the commoner. "Its too complicated", they would say, "you need to leave it up to the PHDs in economics, er, I mean religion".

    So, the chief had his medicine man that scared the tribe into letting the chief and the medicine man get the largest share of the hunt. Noble Europe had its King and its Cardinal that convinced the people into letting the King and the Cardinal have the largest share of the hunt. Now we have Gov and its economists that advocate for taxes that is delivered to the Gov and the gov gives grants and subsidized tuition to PHDs who study and expound on things the commoner just can't understand. They're still trying to get the largest share of the hunt.

    Every tyant needs an advocate.
    3 May 2012, 09:28 AM Reply Like
  • "How did it ever come to that?"

    "How did people not try to stop it?"

    "Why did no one say anything?"

    It all makes sense now...

    People did say things, and people did try. They just got laughed at.

    "Be a good little republicrat, there is a difference between the two!"
    3 May 2012, 11:16 AM Reply Like
  • Well, Paul is a libertarian (and a bit strange). Krugman is a socialist-flavored fascist (and a bit strange). You might figure there'd be a teensy bit of disagreement there. News? Not.
    1 May 2012, 06:12 AM Reply Like
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