On Being Clueless

Mike "Mish" Shedlock writes about a lot of things, and he tends to come from the position of the "Treasury View", which states, among other things, that deficit spending cannot hasten recovery, since it takes money from other things.

It should be noted that this theory has been widely, from Keynes and Galbraith to Friedman, has been discredited since the 1930s.

In his latest, he goes after Paul Krugman for writing in 2004 that the Bush tax cuts should be rolled back to help with the deficit, and for writing in 2009 that the stimulus package, and the resultant deficit, are not matters of immediate concern.

Of course, in 2004, we were dealing with a frothy economy, most notably in the housing market, though it was still 2 years off peak, while in 2009, we are suffering from the worst recession, and worst banking crisis since the depression, with the central bank unable to lower rates because they have run up against the zero bound.^*

Of course, Mich has the answer:

Q. What's different?

A: Politics: a democrat ultra-liberal is in the White House.

(If Barack Obama is ultra liberal, I'm Jayne Mansfield)

It's complete crap like this that keeps him off my blogroll and my feed list (it went there via a link).

I do actually check out some sites that I disagree with vociferously some times, Mat Rodina comes to mind, but in those cases I get insight into a point of view, in that case Russian nationalism, that I would not otherwise understand.

There are people who are cogent writers who help me understand opposing views. Mike "Mish" Shedlock is not one of them.

^*Zero bound: When rates cannot be lowered, because they are effectively 0%.