Sunday interview in guardian.uk.com
After his dinner at the White House on April 27 along with Joseph Stiglitz and other critics of the Administration, Paul Krugman abruptly ceased his criticism. He did write that he was not at liberty to discuss what was said on that occasion, but he has left his readers in the dark about some things.
From the interview
WH: And lastly - you've been critical about Obama. Your view now?
PK: I'm increasingly happy with him. I was unhappy; I think they could have gotten a bigger stimulus coming out the gate. But they've become more forceful. I would have been more aggressive on the banks; we'll see if we need to re-fight that battle later on.
Healthcare is looking really good. I'm getting increasingly optimistic on healthcare reform. Climate change looks like it's going to happen. So my odds that this will in fact be the kind of New Deal I was hoping for are rising. I had my scepticism, but he is smart. He's impressive. And it is such a relief to have somebody whom you can respect in the White House.
Wow. This is quite glowing. I wish I knew what is making him so optimistic on healthcare, while I am getting increasingly despondent about it. I have to admit that this has me wondering for the first time whether I've misjudged Obama as a leader. I'm a great admirer of Krugman's.
BTW, I kept getting an unresponsive script when I tried to add tags.
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Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
It was a shrewd move for Obama to invite his critics to dinner. Personal charisma can work. Even if it didn't, it's a smart and typical move for a leader to make. What's to lose? You get to suss out the motives of those who have opposed you.
Sounds like Krugman has been defanged by charm and hope. Notice he doesn't say he's changed his views but that he's more optimistic. I think we already know that's Obama's appeal. My skepticism is still firmly in place.
Who is WH?
And what has he done with Paul Krugman??
Come together at The Confluence
WH is one of the techs from West World?
Or was it Future World? One of those two, where they were replacing all the political and business leaders and opinion makers with slightly modified clones . . .
Other than his bizarre turnabout on Obama's thus far unchanged policies, the rest of the interview sounded like typical Krugman, and even though he is quite a bit more optimistic than me, the future of world economy reasoning was generally sound.
Sounds like a supporter to me
And not a fan. When we see the CDS and the death threats, we'll know we've got a fan on our hands. I've got plenty of issues with Krugman, but turning into an Obama fanboi isn't one of them. IMNSHO, the gold in that interview is Krugman placing himself on the Overton continuum very, very clearly. That's our issue, not personalia.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Since Krugman hadn't been writing much about WH, Obama since
the dinner, I've been wondering if he's been co-opted. I was hoping he's just been busy with other things would get back to assessing healthcare.
But this? Wow.
Healthcare is looking really good. I'm getting increasingly optimistic on healthcare reform.
From where I'm sitting, I'm getting increasinlgy pessimistic on healthcare reform and am stunned Krugman sees it "looking really good."
.... So my odds that this will in fact be the kind of New Deal I was hoping for are rising.
While my hopes are, well, falling....
I had my scepticism, but he is smart. He's impressive. And it is such a relief to have somebody whom you can respect in the White House. Wow.
Well, as I said...
... look where he places himself on the spectrum in the interview.
What I want to know is why no Bill Black posts? Why no posts on fraud?
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Economy Reality
I go to Calculated Risk.
They are not political (although the comments get there occasionally)
and have great chart porn. The comments are pretty funny too.
Here's one of my recent favorites:
"Dear State of California,
I quit my job last friday (a full time paying position, highly paid), so sadly I won't be able to help you with your impending bankruptcy. I will, however, watch the trainwreck from afar.
Dear Bank of America,
I have closed all my long time accounts. Try charging me for checks now. Good luck making any mortgages/refinances with the increasing interest rates.
Dear Fidelity,
I have cashed out all my 401k/IRA. Good luck trying to push more suckers into bonds from stocks. I hope index funds wipe you off face of the earth.
Dear Chase,
Only integrity stands between me charging the max on all my credit cards, and declaring bankruptcy. That line's getting thin, too. The creditors can't call me if I'm not in United States.
Dear Fed Reserve,
I will be traveling in Asia, with my savings already in a foreign bank account, living comfortably with $7/day food and $400/month rent. Why work when the government steals your labor via the printing press, I ask myself. I'll just come back when hyperinflation prompts the american public to hang you from the statue of liberty."
A grumpy professor friend of mine just turned me onto voxeu as well.
Coming face to face with a narcissistic
personality type can be devastating for anyone. It's how really smart people get conned out of big money. He may have said a great deal about healthcare that they wanted to hear - that doesn't mean he was telling the truth about what he planned to do. .
If it's a narcissistic contact high, it will wear off. If and when Obama doesn't deliver, he'll get over it.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
krugman's field is international trade,
not health care economics, so i give him a pass on this, sort of.
pk was always more generous in his praise of the demoplan [first edwards' version, then hillary's] than it really called for. at least edwards was bold enough to say outright that he thought his plan would eventually get us to single payer.
hard to tell with obama. his hobby as poker player really does seem to mirror his way of doing things irl, which is really frustrating [and why i think we need to advocate only for single payer, forget the public option]. his record in the illinois legislature suggests his rhetoric is well left of what he can actually be counted on to deliver, so it remains to be seen if krugman fell for the rhetoric or if he's now got some insider knowledge of just how far left obama is willing to go now that he's made it to the top.
then again, krugman, fine upstanding liberal he may be, has never been hugely left of center that i can recall.
The optimistic view is...
Obama has decided that his brand of health care reform, whatever that ultimately really is, is key to his legacy.
Which should we expect to get passed:
* Something lame and incremental?
/Village
props to Obama for trying (and doing it better than than She Who Must Not Be Named)
* Something more expansive, but as heinous, corporate, and cruel as the current system... or worse?
* Significant improvement?
* Nothing, but big OFB
* Nothing, and it's the tipping point into the "Democrats Who Over-reached" meme?
It won't be overreaching Dems
They could have "overreached" on the stimulus but caved massively. Bipartisanshit is seen as an end in itself.
Krugman is sharp so if he is optimistic I'm sure he has good personal reasons to be. However, he's not been the best at evaluating centrist Democrats with nearly the same rigor as he evaluates GOPers. I've said before that this isn't the Dem Party of five years ago when that was definitely a good bet. The merging of the parties and focus on postpartisanship has made me reevaluate that premise.
Only tyrants rig elections.
Expecting Obama to get some substantial done
on healthcare is like expecting a guy who has never played football before to score a touch down in the first quarter against the Steelers. It took everything Johnson had learned to get Civil Rights passed - and Obama is no LBJ.
I'm expecting it to be a corporate boondoggle of the first order. The oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the defense contractors all made huge, unreasonable amounts of money off of the American public being maneuvered into handing over unprecedented wads of cash without any investigation during the Bush admin. So the banks and the healthcare companies want their share of unreasonable profits this time out.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Krugman was unbending throughout primaries
about everybody needing to be included, or else healthy people would game the system and the costs could not be brought down.
I was just listening to Orzag being interviewed on NPR. The interviewer started with the premise that we will have incremental change. The question was asked whether in 10 years everyone would be covered. Answer: probably not.
I can't believe Prof. Krugman is feeling good about this. I'm in despair. This was my fear all along: that we'll just keep adding a bandaid here and a bandaid there and at some point in the future what we'll have achieved is fewer uncovered people.
based on his time in illinois,
where obama worked the pragmatic bipartisanshipness to
bring universal affordable health care to illinoisestablish a commission that would eventually expand medicaid and schip coverage for some of the uninsured, i expect we'll get about the same result nationally too.it's worth noting that medicaid [for the very poor] has been more and more privatized over the years, and that schip [for kids of the not-quite-poor] is basically subsidized private insurance.
That and he got that Prize
--which may have gone to his head as well. Too bad, and I hope the swelling on the brain goes down soon, we need clear thinking like he used to provide.
Elliot Lake