The Beclowning of Scott Bessent

24 pointsposted 4 hours ago
by runeks

15 Comments

jqpabc123

4 hours ago

You get the leadership that you deserve.

vjvjvjvjghv

4 hours ago

I would be more willing to listen to Krugman if he hadn’t spent so much effort during the Biden administration to find reasons why inflation wasn’t bad but just a “vibecession”.

pjc50

3 hours ago

The consequence of COVID financial measures. The flipside is that growth was maintained through that period, which wasn't the case in less expansionary countries.

vjvjvjvjghv

25 minutes ago

I am not educated enough to criticize what was done during COVID and whether inflation could have been avoided. But the way Krugman tried to explain away the effects of inflation in the NYT almost every week wasn't right. The whole "vibecession" thing was extremely condescending from a multimillionaire like Krugman towards lower incomes and probably one of the reasons why the democrats lost.

datsci_est_2015

3 hours ago

I didn't interpret his explanations that inflation wasn't bad, but that it wasn't linked to more structural economic issues. It was due to the shock of Covid, and then the macroeconomic policies that tried (and very much succeeded, if you take other countries as counterexamples) to limit the medium- and long-term damage.

To compare and contrast, much of the current wave of inflation can be traced to tariffs and conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine, which is mostly self-inflicted and based on strongman politics. I would maybe argue even those aren't necessarily structural issues, as they could be relatively solved overnight, theoretically.

True structural economic issues are scenarios like the 2008 GFC.

tl;dr you've provided a poor reason to not be listening to Krugman, and you probably have more reasons than what you're letting on.

vjvjvjvjghv

30 minutes ago

"and you probably have more reasons than what you're letting on."

Can you enlighten me on these reasons?

redwood

44 minutes ago

What concerns me more is that he generally has been a cheerleader for spend spend spend don't worry about the debt (just like the Trump administration) and all that has come home to roost as Ray Dali ohas been warning. In short it's hard not to view him as a partisan hack and hypocrite if he cheerleads when one party does it and castigates when the other does

vjvjvjvjghv

22 minutes ago

"cheerleads when one party does it and castigates when the other does"

I always ask partisan people "what would you think about this issue if the other guys were in power". It's pretty sad how it has become normalized to find the same thing ok when one party is in power and being really angry about it when the other party is in power. Unfortunately Krugman can't resist that temptation either.

bryanlarsen

38 minutes ago

Krugman is an advocate for tax & spend, and critical of any government that increases spending while simultaneously cutting taxes. No hypocrisy there.

DivingForGold

4 hours ago

I hear a loud knock at your door coming up soon ...

bix6

3 hours ago

I am the house. Yeah and everyone can see the house is falling apart lol. What a clown show.

cyanydeez

4 hours ago

Whats most important is the bizarre amnesia regarding everything trump touches turning to shit. Press is not doing its job, the people who think anyone willing to work in the clown show wpnt be a clown is bizarre.

The smart money is dumber everyday thinking facts will win.

pjc50

3 hours ago

The media are doing the job they are bought and paid to do: promote Republicanism. Just look at all the media consolidation! Even the somewhat independent NYT is weak on this.

(The media you actually want for this case are the FT, which has ended up looking weirdly leftist by comparison to the rightward swing of everyone else, and, despite the ownership, Bloomberg. You can't feed business customers news which makes them lose money, they tend to notice when you've misled them.)

glimshe

3 hours ago

You could make a killing outsmarting them if you think that.