What a Change! "The Week" Gives Airtime to an Expert

It is remarkable. In addition to their substance-free bloviators--George Will, Cokie Roberts, et cetera--The Week puts Paul Krugman on the air. And people watching can actually learn something:

Steve Benen comments:

The Washington Monthly: On ABC's "This Week" earlier, George Will explained his belief that FDR financial/regulatory policies discouraged investment and created an environment in which the "depression became the Great Depression." Fortunately, Will was sitting next to Paul Krugman. To hear Will tell it, the Roosevelt administration stood in the way of investors. In a fairly devastating 45 seconds, Krugman not only set the record straight, but explained that it was FDR's desire to balance the budget and cut federal spending that contributed to a decline in 1937.

My antipathy towards Will has lessened this year, after he had some genuinely sharp criticism of the McCain/Palin ticket, but he's still spouting conservative nonsense on economic issues, and it was highly entertaining to see him receive some well-earned comeuppance from the Nobel laureate to his left.

Thanks to our friends at Firedoglake for posting the clip to YouTube.

Comments

[dah_sab]

George Will is such a pompous ass. Few things are as infuriating as seeing him pronounce with righteous certitude on a subject when he's so wrong. Thank f**k Professor Krugman was there to put Will in his place.

[Leila Abu-Saba]

This further confirms my policy of not watching television news at all. If anything good happens on TV, the internet tubes will alert me.

[pants]

Hmm, I can respect George Will a lot for being able to criticize his party as harshly as he has.

HOWEVER, wrong is wrong, and I'm glad Krugman set him straight. I really like watching him speak, too. He's always engaging, gets right to the point and doesn't spend forever explaining something that can be explained in, say, 45 seconds. :)

[MattYoung]

Krugman did admit that it took a world war, not DR, to get us out of the depression.

Krugman might be tempted to think that enormous works programs are the only way out of depressions, and he would likely fulfill Will's theory if we tried that.

[Cal]

They cut it off too fast, Cokie Roberts at the end can be heard saying, after Krugman says it took an enormous public works project called WW II to pull us out of [FDR's 1937 mistake], that "you're just saying the same thing [differently] . . ." Will starts with the premise that WW II ended the Great Depression, then goes into his fantasy about how investment was dissuaded by bad government. Krugman says, no, FDR's programs were helping but then he made a mistake in 1937 . . . [and by the way, it wasn't government regulation that dissuaded investment it was rational thinking that dissuaded investment because who's going to build another factory, when there's already excess capacity and no demand." Roberts takes Krugman's last sentence and Will's first statements and conflates the reasoning that say that both get to the same conclusion so what's the big deal about the details between 1933 and WWII. Will is an ignorant, blowhard. Roberts is just a dumbass, who can't understand what she's hearing and who has spent so much time on television and going to the same cocktail parties as Will that she doesn't get the fact that Will is an ignorant, blowhard.

[Steve LaBonne]

"Krugman might be tempted to think that enormous works programs are the only way out of depressions, and he would likely fulfill Will's theory if we tried that."

And you know this how? Because some ideologically blinkered dumbass like Will told you so?

You'd have to be a bleeding idiot to value George freaking Will's economic advice over Krugman's

[bigTom]

Of course Kevin's title implied that Krugman was schooling Will. But nothing could be further from the truth. Will and his ilk, do not use theory, logic, and data, to try to refine their world view to more closely approximate the truth. To them, all intellectual effort is aimed at improving the propaganda in the service of their own tribe. So you can be sure, Will learned nothing -except to be wary of Krugman in the future.

[DrDick]

What is this? They really had someone on the show who actually knows what he is talking about. Really a shame he has to deal with idiots like Will and Roberts.

[Thomas]

It did not take WWII to get the US out of the Depression. Look at the numbers.

year per capita real gdp
1929 7099
1930 6418
1931 5960
1932 5152
1933 5056
1934 5567
1935 6021
1936 6761
1937 7065
1938 6769
1939 7256

Real per capita gdp was higher in 1939 than 1929. Krugman is right about the 1937 tax increase, but he might also point out that marginal tax rates had been very high since 1933. Overall fiscal stimulus was modest through out the Depression becasue of low spending by Hoover and inappropriately high taxes under Roosevelt.

[MattYoung]

Well, Krugman said exactly that, a mass public works program, right on that video, in which, right on that video, he said the recovery happened when WW2 started, he said that, that is how I know, dumb nuts, whoever you are, that is how I know what Krugman believes.

I watched the video!

[Batavicus]

Thomas, could you post a link to your source? (For my edification, not because I doubt your honesty) I've been trying to find GDP stats from 1900-1950, but economagic seems to have only as far back as 1947. (I'm not the best searcher, I admit)

[Ethel-To-Tilly]

Batavicus - try the tables in the Annual Economic Report of the President and also the tables at the Bureau of Economic Analysis

[Charles]

Seventy seven seconds of sanity within an eternity of propaganda.

It's a start.

Batavicus, look at www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?

SelectedTable=3&Freq=Qtr&FirstYear=2006&LastYear=2008

Just take out the space I inserted after the question mark.

[Charles]

MattYoung, the GDP figures are pretty clear: the decline in GDP that began in 1929 had been reversed by 1939.

However, unemployment was still high, and there was terrible regional poverty. World War II did return the US to a full employment economy.

There are some pretty bright people posting on these boards. Just because you watched the video doesn't mean you understood it.

[Kfritz]

Substance free? I'll believe when I see the blood workups! It's difficult to imagine that kind of 'thinking' occurs without mood altering compounds!

[MattYoung]

Charles, I do not deny that WW2 masked the dis-equiilibria, and that is as far as I go.

There is nothing in any economic theory that says world war is nothing more than massive dis-equilibrium.

If you discount war as a solution, then when did we really leave the depression? How about 1956 when we quit the Korean war and built the national highway system?

That is what FDR failed to do, and it is right in Krugman's Nobel prize research! We failed to match the transportation system to the new means of distribution, the same result Krugman discovered about Africa in his research. If a nation does not have the transportation efficiency to match the new equilibria then they get protectionist and their economy falls off the map, right out of Krugman research.

What changed the means of distribution in 1925? The answer to that is the new theory not the results that Krugman found in his nobel prize. Go look at technology changes in the 1920s, find those technology changes that had immediate and substantial effect on the distribution of goods world wide. When you or any other economists finds what technology changed, then come back and explain it.

None of the economists will find the answer in something the banks did.

[kharris]

The Great Depression was a double dip deal. Output was on the way up, but faltered for about a year. Something was working prior to WWII.

[Neil B]

Please, P-E Obama, give Paul Krugman a post in your Administration.

[pgl]

A graph of net investment from 1929 to 1941 would have made Paul's point clearly so I took the liberty of drawing one here:

econospeak.blogspot.com/2008/11/net-investment-under-fdr-krugman-v-will.html

As I suggest, pundits like Will should be required to provide clearly drawn and accurate pictures of the time series they mention. Had Will done this, he could have saved himself the embarrassment.

[Sash]

I am one of Professor Krugman's biggest fans. That having been said, can someone whisper in his ear, that he could greatly increase his effect on TV if he would learn not to avert his eyes when speaking. Its a typical thing certain people do when they are thinking. (I do it myself). However, to many, its open to other, less flatering, interpretations.

[Charles]

MattYoung says, "That is what FDR failed to do, and it is right in Krugman's Nobel prize research! We failed to match the transportation system to the new means of distribution, the same result Krugman discovered about Africa in his research. If a nation does not have the transportation efficiency to match the new equilibria then they get protectionist and their economy falls off the map, right out of Krugman research."

This sounds like, pardon me, nonsense.

First, FDR promoted infrastructure as hard as he could. Roads were built. The TVA brought electricity to rural areas. This was a major basis of the New Deal.

But we already had a good railroad grid, air transport, a rapidly developing phone system, and many other features that were at the frontier of infrastructure at the time.

The Depression was ended by stabilizing the financial system and putting people to work. The war simply created a lot more work in a hurry.

[pgl]

Brad has another post showing how gross investment did follow the pro-cyclical pattern Krugman noted plus a lot more links (including my small contribution).

[Lawrence Krubner]

I can't hear anything the folks in the video say. The downside of the modern era of ubiquitous video is that it all gets very, very compressed and sound quality suffers. I'm sitting at a coffee shop with my laptop, and the laptop does not have the greatest speakers to start with. And there is background noise. Even with the sound cranked all the way up, I can't hear what they are saying.

[Palolo lolo]

Mr Will doesn't look very pleased in that last shot.Being spanked in public must be a new experience to him.

[gregjc]

Krugman spanks Will regularly on This Week, and they're not love taps. It has made the show much more entertaining. In a previous show, Will said that the financial crisis was purely psychological. Krugman said, No, banks are rightly worried about lending to other banks with low capital cushions.

[macheath]

You get this sort of thing weekly on the Times Op-Ed page, where the moronic and self-important David Brooks spouts some half-digested nonsense about the economy, and then Krugman tells you what's actually going on. The incredible thing is to watch or read windbags like Will and Brooks talk about the economy, with the ever-lucid Nobel laureate sitting right there.