[kj] OT: Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on the economic crisis

[B. Oliver Sheppard]

Krugman isn't a fascist, nor does he support "what amounts to fascism," 
whatever that means. Geez-Louise.

The Fed didn't design this disaster. Only in the conspiranoid world of 
Ron Paul and Alex Jones did that happen. Private sector financial 
oligarchs drove it - secifically, the Northeastern finance sector - 
driven by their own financial "innovation," with complicity from ratings 
agencies who over-rated what were really junky, toxic assets.

The overly simplistic "private sector good, public sector bad" mantra, 
which sees any and all evils endlessly redounding to the gubmet, is a 
worldview that can straitjacket one into not saying the reality of 
things, which is that private enterprise very often causes a lot of the 
b.s. (Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, the accounting scandals of the 2002 era is 
another big recent example). Countrywide, Beazer Homes, IndyMac, and a 
lot of these private institutions kick-started this mess; it was enabled 
- but not caused - by the deregulatory fervor of the right; specifically 
Gramm-Beach-Blilely/Commodity Futures Modernization Act, GOP-driven 
pro-finance legislation that made legal a lot of things that had been 
illegal since the Great Depression, when FDR ruled with an iron, 
"fascist" fist, as some critics also like to contend.

In fact, it was stripping away government oversight that enabled this 
mess to happen; the government played a role inasmuch as it did that. 
But this one is on the banking and especially the finance industry of 
the Northeastern U.S.

-Oliver


Matthew Burke wrote:

> I thought he was good on the war and torture (which are subjects now 

> forgotten in the haze of a mystery flu).  But, as an economist he 

> supports the continuance and acceleration of Bush's insanity of 

> propping up malinvestments and failed performance with huge spending.  

> This is the Keynesian madness that got us to the point of collapse, 

> and now with the new puppet in the White House is leading to outright 

> fascism.  The Federal Reserve designed this disaster, why should we 

> give them more power?

>

> Didn't mean to piss on anyone's parade, I didn't get much sleep.

>

>