Krugman on Bill Moyers

Economist Paul Krugman is a voice of reason, but at this point probably isn't in need of exposure. Nevertheless, I choose to post interviews and articles by him when they stand out. (In general, his column in the New York Times is worth regular reading.) Given that I haven't posted anything on him since May 2, 2012, and given the quality of this exchange with Moyers, I opted to post this link. Moyers, as usual, guides the discussion in a clear and logical way and asks good questions.

The subject of Krugman calls to mind a comment made by Republican commentator David Frum in August 2011. He was borrowing from a remark made by liberal commentator Susan Sontag in 1982 about communism, whose point was of dubious value. Frum's version gets it right:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page [which is far-right] between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

The observation here is sound. The so-called "conservative" ideologues can't be informative because it is their ideology that has pushed the country in the very direction that precipitated the current problems. They therefore can't deal in facts, which are required if one wishes to actually be informative. For a proper conservative analysis, one can read Krugman.

When bona fide conservatives (Krugman, Obama, et al.) get painted as "left," it indicates just how much out of the way the population is being pushed.

http://billmoyers.com/segment/paul-krugman-on-recessions-and-recovery

Frum
http://www.frumforum.com/were-our-enemies-right