There's a hole in the logic, dear Krugman, dear Krugman...

When numerous financial houses and banks in the USA and Europe were finally exposed for their massive holdings of worthless securitized mortgages and the infamous Housing Bubble was exploding, the political and financial "leaders" around the world quickly decided upon the "solution": Create a bigger bubble, and use the government's ultimate "Rabbit-Out-of-the-Hat" scheme, which is getting the central banks to do what governments in Latin America and Zimbabwe have done to pull off the scam.

In a recent column, Paul Krugman excoriates these creators of the New Bubble for their actions. No, he is not declaring that all they did was to make the problem worse; instead, he tells them in no uncertain terms that, in his opinion, they didn't make the Bigger Bubble big enough.

Yes, had the U.S. and European central banks been even more aggressive in creating and sustaining a huge bubble in government securities (that are as worthless as the mortgage securities that turned toxic), then we would be in a real economic recovery right now. If you think I am joking, read what Krugman says:

Think about countries like Britain, Japan and the United States, which have large debts and deficits yet remain able to borrow at low interest rates. What’s their secret? The answer, in large part, is that they retain their own currencies, and investors know that in a pinch they could finance their deficits by printing more of those currencies. If the European Central Bank were to similarly stand behind European debts, the crisis would ease dramatically.

Yes, what Krugman is saying is that the central banks of the USA and Great Britain can print money to buy their own government securities and the process can go on indefinitely. Lest anyone think that printing more dollars and pounds might have a negative effect upon those currencies, Krugman also has The Answer:

Wouldn’t that cause inflation? Probably not: whatever the likes of Ron Paul may believe, money creation isn’t inflationary in a depressed economy. Furthermore, Europe actually needs modestly higher overall inflation: too low an overall inflation rate would condemn southern Europe to years of grinding deflation, virtually guaranteeing both continued high unemployment and a string of defaults.

Yeah, it all is Ron Paul's fault. But in the next paragraph, Krugman demonstrates that he wants the Federal Reserve System to do what has been prohibited from the very creation of the 1913 law that created the Fed: have the central bank purchase short-term U.S. Government paper in the primary market. He writes:

But such action, we keep being told, is off the table. The statutes under which the central bank was established supposedly prohibit this kind of thing, although one suspects that clever lawyers could find a way to make it happen.

The cynicism drips off the column with that one, and his comments are a dream come true for those who claim (falsely) that governments are "not revenue constrained," as though the printing press can erase the Law of Opportunity Cost. Krugman's Ultimate Solution, one that I have said for months underlies most of his economic commentary, is dependent upon printing money and nothing else.

Understand the logical construct of what Krugman has declared in this latest column. If the various central banks announce that they are going to start buying short-term government bonds from whatever country seems on the verge of default (or simply cannot pay its bills with regular tax revenues), this immediately will stop the various runs on banks that are holding this government paper, increase the value of government bonds, lower interest rates, bring more spending in the economies of the world, and give us a widespread economic recovery. That is the Krugman economic logic in one sentence.

So, recovery is just a "clever lawyer" away. Intent of laws that were written to prevent the U.S. and European governments from doing what Juan Peron did in Argentina and Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe mean nothing, and Krugman makes it clear that he really believes that the secret to prosperity is the printing press:

The story of postwar Europe is deeply inspiring. Out of the ruins of war, Europeans built a system of peace and democracy, constructing along the way societies that, while imperfect — what society isn’t? — are arguably the most decent in human history.

Yet that achievement is under threat because the European elite, in its arrogance, locked the Continent into a monetary system that recreated the rigidities of the gold standard, and — like the gold standard in the 1930s — has turned into a deadly trap.

So, it turns out that the secret to Europe's prosperity was not producing goods and services that other people wanted and needed. Instead, the "secret" was political democracy and the welfare state, as though both of these entities actually produce something. No doubt, Krugman claims that these economies are in a "liquidity trap," and such a situation turns the laws of economics upon their heads. That is nonsense, pure nonsense, for no government and no economist can repeal the Law of Scarcity and the Law of Opportunity Cost.

The world is in financial trouble because central banks, the financial districts, and governments created massive malinvestments in housing and the stock markets in order to achieve a veneer of "prosperity." Those malinvestments have been exposed, and exposed greatly.

Instead of dealing with that reality, Krugman and others insist on creating a New Reality, one in which people are forced to "invest" in government spending, as though flooding economies with various currencies magically will bring back the prosperity that was lost. In other words, Krugman believes that creating The Mother Of All Financial Bubbles in government securities is going to bring our economies into the bliss of recovery. While Krugman uses the song, "There's a Hole in the Bucket," to push his point (the solution, according to Krugman, is to fill the "bucket" with newly-created money), he forgets that his logical constructs themselves are full of holes.

What happens when THAT bubble blows up like a volcano? Just print more money.