"Spooky" Krugman Says Alien Invasion Good for Economy

We've come to save your economy.

"The Truth is out there," Special Agent Fox "Spooky" Mulder used to say on the television series The X-Files as he and his partner hunted down unexplained phenomena and searched for extraterrestial life. For Paul Krugman, economic Nobel Prize recipient, the truth is way, way out there as he hunts down economic fallacies and tries to make them true.

On the Fareed Zakaria show on CNN, Krugman offered this suggestion, "If we discovered space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and, really, inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months."

Umm, yeah. Sure, Mr. Krugman, if there were a looming space alien threat, and the world changed its production scheme to build up against this threat, maybe this slump would be over in 18 months. Apple could switch focus from producing tablets to making viruses for alien spacecrafts. The unemployed would get a boost digging underground bunkers. The IRS, unable to collect tax revenue, could re-form as the MIB. The TSA, with their expertise in the matter, could become sabatoer volunteers for alien probing. Lockheed could, well, just continue what they were already doing. I just hope the alien invaders would wait 18 months for our economic recovery before attacking.

President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick proposes debate over the Gold Standard

From Financial Times:

Mr Zoellick, a former US Treasury official, calls for a system that “is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi that moves towards internationalisation and then an open capital account”. He adds: “The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.”

His views reflect disquiet with the international system, where persistent Chinese intervention to hold down the renminbi is blamed by the US and others for contributing to global current account imbalances and creating capital markets distortions.

Krugman Responds:

So Robert Zoellick wants us to return to return to a modified gold standard. Brad DeLong pronounces him the stupidest man alive; that’s much too kind.

Contrary to What the Money Magicians Say ...

... our economy is headed south. And not in a warm way either. With people like Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, as recent as two weeks ago, saying "Welcome to the Recovery," is it any wonder that the economy is headed in the exactly opposite direction? Or there is Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke who didn't even see the Great Recession coming and only now  is saying that the economy is "unusually uncertain." And lest we forget the economic ivory tower's oracle Paul Krugman who, like Bernanke, saw no recession coming is finally speaking out about the possibility of a double dip.

Instead of listening to these morons whose policies got us in the whole in the first place, we should be listening to people like Egon von Greyerz. Although his predictions seem a bit too dire and catastrophic, they still hold a lot of truth. He starts with this,

No, there will be no double dip. It will be a lot worse. The world economy will soon go into an accelerated and precipitous decline which will make the 2007 to early 2009 downturn seem like a walk in the park. The world financial system has temporarily been on life support by trillions of printed dollars that governments call money. But the effect of this massive money printing is ephemeral since it is not possible to save a world economy built on worthless paper by creating more of the same. Nevertheless, governments will continue to print since this is the only remedy they know. Therefore, we are soon likely to enter a phase of money printing of a magnitude that the world has never experienced.  But this will not save the Western World which is likely to go in to a decline lasting at least 20 years but most probably a lot longer.

Read the rest of this very important article here.

Rick Santelli: "Stop Spending! Stop Spending! Stop Spending!"

Rick Santelli is the Anti-Krugman. From the man who ignited the 2009 Tea Party rallies, comes this:

"Go read some Austrian economist instead of the funny pages." Santelli tells Liesman, to which the response is "I am ready to talk about Fred Hayek, John Hayek, and Selma Hayek." Followed promptly by the Santelli coup du jour: "Go back to Russia where you understand the state and the citizen."

Let's make this go viral.