According to Krugman, we should embrace the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, particularly his view that the national debt is in fact a "national blessing." We are unconvinced!
Krugman is now blaming poor economic times (but hasn't he been trying to tell us things are much better than the stupid right-wingers say?) on a lack of competition. Lax antitrust enforcement is the problem! Sure it is. In fact, antitrust itself is the problem, as we show in this week's episode.
Krugman is upset this week at a judicial ruling that held that the government's case for naming MetLife a Systemically Important Financial Institution (SIFI) was inadequate and should be thrown out. Sure, it's impossible to nail down what the criteria for a SIFI are, says Krugman, but so what? We take on the whole issue -- not just MetLife, but the whole idea of extra regulation for so-called SIFIs.
Krugman argues that blinkered conservatives and cynical progressives alike have failed to appreciate the successes of the Obama presidency. He concentrates on four areas: the economy, health care, financial reform, and climate change. We concentrate on those areas, too -- and come up with rather different conclusions. Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, joins us as a special guest this week.
Show notes for Ep. 30
This week Krugman says we ought to acknowledge that there are losers in international trade, and that we should introduce government subsidies, rather than trade restrictions, to help them. He says right-wing ideologues have failed to make note of these losers, even though he himself failed to mention them in his own scholarly work on trade.
But we spend much of the episode defending the unpopular view that globalization is overwhelmingly and indisputably a good thing.