Matthew Yglesias and Ryan McNealy: Niall Ferguson Debates Himself

As Tim Harford says, "my new maxim is never to stand in the middle of a fight between Niall Ferguson and Niall Ferguson." This is a thing of beauty:

Matthew Yglesias and Ryan McNealy: Niall Ferguson Debates Himself: I’ve been known to remark on the conservative movement’s strong adherence to Keynesian arguments as a justification for tax cuts in the wake of the mild 2001 recession, adherence that seems puzzling in light of their contrary rhetoric in the wake of the cataclysmic 2008-2009 downturn. Brad DeLong observes that one particularly hilarious example of this is historian-turned-pundit Niall Ferguson who wrote a December 12, 2003 article on the Bush administration that’s in considerable with his contemporary take on things. DeLong requests a Ferguson v Ferguson debate, and with assistance from Ryan McNeely I’m prepared to unveil one. 2003 Ferguson is in boldface, 2010 Ferguson is in italics:

Certainly. Long before Keynes was even born, weak governments in countries from Argentina to Venezuela used to experiment with large peace-time deficits to see if there were ways of avoiding hard choices. The experiments invariably ended in one of two ways. Either the foreign lenders got fleeced through default, or the domestic lenders got fleeced through inflation.

But the United States has broken the guns or butter rule before. Under President Ronald Reagan, substantial increases in military spending coincided with comparable increases, relative to gross domestic product, in personal consumption — that proportion of G.D.P. that the public, as opposed to the government, spends. The crucial point, of course, is that in the short term at least, fiscal policy is not a zero-sum game.

But this doesn’t respond to long run inflationary fears. When economies were growing sluggishly, that could be slow in coming. But there invariably came a point when money creation by the central bank triggered an upsurge in inflationary expectations.

But, as Keynes remarked, in the long run we are all dead! Aren’t these “inflationary expectations” priced into the markets?

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who likens confidence to an imaginary “fairy” have failed to learn from decades of economic research on expectations. All it takes is one piece of bad news – a credit rating downgrade, for example – to trigger a sell-off.

But this will not be the kind of inflation experienced in the 1970’s and 1980’s. So powerful are the deflationary forces today (notably in the second and third biggest economies, Japan and Germany) that Washington can splurge on its military and social services with only a modest impact on expectations of inflation.

But it is not just inflation that bond investors fear. Foreign holders of US debt – and they account for 47 per cent of the federal debt in public hands – worry about some kind of future default.

But the United States has a unique advantage over all other sovereign borrowers: central banks and other institutions around the world need to hold dollars as the currency most frequently used in international transactions. While this is true, America can count on selling large amounts of dollar assets, like 10-year Treasury bonds, to foreigners — very large amounts.

But for how long? The evidence is very clear from surveys on both sides of the Atlantic. People are nervous of world war-sized deficits when there isn’t a war to justify them. According to a recent poll published in the FT, 45 per cent of Americans “think it likely that their government will be unable to meet its financial commitments within 10 years”. Surveys of business and consumer confidence paint a similar picture of mounting anxiety.

The only imminent danger is that the dollar could slide sharply against Asian currencies, as it has against the euro. But the chief losers then would be the Asians. And those who panicked about the debt under President Reagan failed to see how manageable it was. It’s even more manageable today.

Hogwash. It was said of the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and learned nothing. The same could easily be said of some of today’s latter-day Keynesians!

Indeed!

Now, oh Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation of the Lord!