Krugman: "Save" the Euro by Creating Another Unsustainable Boom

In his latest column, Paul Krugman explains why he believes that the euro has been crashing, and in part, I agree. Europe, he says, is not like the United States which actually is a unified country which also has a federal government that spreads its own spending programs throughout those states. (This is not in praise of those programs, but rather an admission that there is more tying the USA together than what we see in the European Union.)

Furthermore, I agree with Krugman that the housing boom especially covered the underlying flaws of the EU and its currency. Krugman writes:

Why did the euro seem to work for its first eight or so years? Because the structure’s flaws were papered over by a boom in southern Europe. The creation of the euro convinced investors that it was safe to lend to countries like Greece and Spain that had previously been considered risky, so money poured into these countries — mainly, by the way, to finance private rather than public borrowing, with Greece the exception.

And for a while everyone was happy. In southern Europe, huge housing bubbles led to a surge in construction employment, even as manufacturing became increasingly uncompetitive. Meanwhile, the German economy, which had been languishing, perked up thanks to rapidly rising exports to those bubble economies in the south. The euro, it seemed, was working.

I even agree with Krugman's next statement:

Then the bubbles burst. The construction jobs vanished, and unemployment in the south soared; it’s now well above 20 percent in both Spain and Greece. At the same time, revenues plunged; for the most part, big budget deficits are a result, not a cause, of the crisis. Nonetheless, investors took flight, driving up borrowing costs. In an attempt to soothe the financial markets, the afflicted countries imposed harsh austerity measures that deepened their slumps. And the euro as a whole is looking dangerously shaky.

At that point, however, the agreement stops, as Krugman then decides that the best way to "fix" the crisis is essentially to engage in an economic version of "hair of the dog." He writes:

What could turn this dangerous situation around? The answer is fairly clear: policy makers would have to (a) do something to bring southern Europe’s borrowing costs down and (b) give Europe’s debtors the same kind of opportunity to export their way out of trouble that Germany received during the good years — that is, create a boom in Germany that mirrors the boom in southern Europe between 1999 and 2007. (And yes, that would mean a temporary rise in German inflation.) The trouble is that Europe’s policy makers seem reluctant to do (a) and completely unwilling to do (b).

I must admit that even though I have read Krugman for many years, something like this shocks me. The European and U.S. economies have been suffering in the aftermath of the collapse of the housing bubble, and the response of governments and central banks has been to try to recreate boom conditions somewhere else via easy credit and monetary expansion. We see how well that has worked.

So now Krugman claims that Europe and the euro will be saved if the EU Central Bank can do in Germany pretty much what it did in Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. And what happens when that boom/bubble in Germany collapses, as it inevitably would?

That's easy. Krugman will demand that the authorities create a bubble somewhere else. Maybe he wasn't joking in 2003 when he called for the creation of a housing bubble in the USA. And when the bubble crashes, then he can blame private enterprise.

Krugman's Great Illusion

Paul Krugman is in Spain this week, most likely telling the Spaniards what they want to hear: The European Central Bank can end the country's unemployment miseries painlessly by buying near-unlimited amounts of Spain's government bonds and then floating massive amounts of new euros around the world. Yes, for the umpteenth time, Krugman insists that if Europeans print money and spend it as though they are rich -- they can become rich!

Once upon a time, Krugman would have been classified as a "crank," someone who believes that wealth is cranked up on printing presses. Today, he is seen as a prophet, a "lonely voice" crying in the wilderness with the message that economic salvation is easy. Repent and be baptized in a flood of inflation, and all will be well.

He uses the analogy of Norman Angell's 1910 book, The Great Illusion, in which Angell claimed that because of the economic advances that had been made up to then, nations plundering nations via wars no longer seemed necessary:

Trade and industry, he pointed out, not the exploitation of subject peoples, were the keys to national wealth, so there was nothing to be gained from the vast costs of military conquest.

Moreover, he argued that mankind was beginning to appreciate this reality, that the “passions of patriotism” were rapidly declining. He didn’t actually say that there would be no more major wars, but he did give that impression. 

We all know what came next. 

Krugman then claims he knows the REAL lessons to be garnered in modern times. (No, it is not the lesson that wars are utterly destructive. After all, "Military Keynesianism" makes us rich, right?) It is that government hubris keeps governments from borrowing and spending as though they had the resources to do it:

The point is that the prospect of disaster, no matter how obvious, is no guarantee that nations will do what it takes to avoid that disaster. And this is especially true when pride and prejudice make leaders unwilling to see what should be obvious.

 And what is that "obvious" lesson?

It comes as something of a shock, even for those of us who have been following the story all along, to realize that more than two years have passed since European leaders committed themselves to their current economic strategy — a strategy based on the notion that fiscal austerity and “internal devaluation” (basically, wage cuts) would solve the problems of debtor nations. In all that time the strategy has produced no success stories; the best the defenders of orthodoxy can do is point to a couple of small Baltic nations that have seen partial recoveries from Depression-level slumps, but are still far poorer than they were before the crisis.

Meanwhile the euro’s crisis has metastasized, spreading from Greece to the far larger economies of Spain and Italy, and Europe as a whole is clearly sliding back into recession. Yet the policy prescriptions coming out of Berlin and Frankfurt have hardly changed at all.

One would think from that statement that European governments had massively cut back spending and allowed entrepreneurs to pursue profitable lines of production without the kind of government interference for which European governments have been famous. Think again.

No, the past four years have been characterized by governments expanding their regulatory and tax reaches, along with the massive implementations of "security" measures and other mechanisms of state power. The "austerity" programs also have brought huge tax increases and efforts by governments to stop the free flow of capital and trade. In other words, governments have used the financial crises to increase the power of governments.

To read Krugman over the past few years, one would think that the U.S. and European governments have embarked on a large-scale experiment in free markets, free trade, and measures to lesson the impact and burden of the Warfare-Welfare State, and have been the epitome of fiscal and monetary restraint. That hardly is the case.

What is needed? Once again, Dr. Krugman offers his advice to governments: pretend that you are rich and borrow and spend as though there is no tomorrow.

What would it really take to save Europe’s single currency? The answer, almost surely, would have to involve both large purchases of government bonds by the central bank, and a declared willingness by that central bank to accept a somewhat higher rate of inflation. Even with these policies, much of Europe would face the prospect of years of very high unemployment. But at least there would be a visible route to recovery.

Yes, another Krugman howler. We are supposed to believe that governments need to suck up the "courage" to borrow, print, tax, and spend on a level never seen before outside world wars. This brings the obvious question to mind: Since when did governments ever have to employ "courage" in order to do these things?

No, governments do them as a matter of course. The euro was supposed to impose a certain amount of fiscal discipline of the governments of the member states, just as the U.S. Dollar is supposed to have similar effects upon state governments. Yet, what have we seen over the last decade? I can tell you that "fiscal discipline" has not exactly been the watchword of the U.S. Government, the U.S. states, and European states.

Being that he is a good Keynesian, fiscal "discipline" is the last thing that Paul Krugman ever would want to see in government. Anyone who claims that the USA still is in depression because state governments are not spending enough money is not someone who has a handle on the reality of the current situation.

Governments -- and central banks -- do not create wealth on their own. They confiscate the wealth produced by individuals and then transfer it to others. Yes, I admit that roads and bridges can help create wealth, provided they are located in places other than the furthest reaches of "Nowhere," but the funding for those projects still must be garnered via confiscation of wealth created by others. 

(Keynesians can claim "social contract" or anything else, but taxes are a confiscation of wealth. One can argue whether or not they are "proper" confiscations, but nonetheless they are taken from people via threats. That is, unless one actually believes that the IRS never uses coercion and implied threats along with outright brutality to take money.)

I'm sure that Krugman's message will be well-received in Spain, and I am sure that he will not mention how Spain's very strict employment laws (it pretty much is impossible to fire workers, no matter how unproductive they might be) contribute mightily to that country's high-unemployment rate. Instead, he will claim that the only thing that is needed is for the other European states -- and especially Germany -- to understand that the economic version of "Hair of the Dog" is the True Pathway to Recovery.

To be sure, Krugman's scheme will not create new wealth, nor will it help economies move toward those structures of production that are sustainable. After all, Krugman is a graduate of MIT, a program made famous by Paul Samuelson and his belief that a doctrine of "Schmoo Capital" really would be appropriate for setting up working models to describe the economy.

What Krugman really is endorsing, however, is not creation of wealth or allowing entrepreneurs to move resources from lower-valued to higher-valued uses. No, what he is saying is that the Germans, the Dutch, and others in the European Union should be forced to transfer massive amounts of resources from their countries to Spain, which then will use those resources in a way that will frustrate the creation of new wealth, with the whole scheme masked by central bank borrowing and essentially the printing of money.

That this scheme actually will result in widespread prosperity is a huge illusion, but in desperate times, people especially buy into that kind of mental deception. However, it is Krugman who is delusional, for he really wants us to believe that the answer to our economic needs is for governments to spend recklessly, borrow, and print, something that governments have done as long as governments have been in existence.

Krugman wants us to believe that preparation for an imagined invasion of "space aliens" would bring back prosperity. One only can wonder if he can sell the Europeans on the same kind of scheme. Maybe there really is enough illusion to go around, after all.

Can we "save" the euro through inflation and outright financial fraud? Good luck!

It has come to this: all we need is a bit more time to sort out the financial mess that now engulfs Europe (and, by proxy, the United States). In the meantime, the Federal Reserve System, the European Central Bank, as well as four other banks, will resort to the usual "fixes" of inflation and the everlasting game of "Let's pretend that the worthless securities they purchase really are valuable."

The latest reprieve, for all its ballyhoo, is nothing but a stay of execution for the euro and (next) the dollar, but for the moment the central bankers -- and especially Ben Bernanke -- can share the spotlight and have the Usual Suspects praising them for their Great Wisdom and Foresight:

In Europe and the United States, where the announcement broke well ahead of stock market openings, the prospect of more cheap money to ease banks’ operations sent stock indexes soaring. A broad index of German stocks, the DAX, jumped almost 5 percent Wednesday, while the broad measure of American stocks, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, climbed more than 4 percent. Short-term borrowing costs also declined modestly for some European governments and banks.

But policy makers and analysts were quick to caution that the Fed’s action did not address the fundamental financial problems threatening the survival of the European currency union. At best, they said, efforts by central banks to ease financial conditions could allow the 17 European Union countries that use the euro sufficient time to agree on a plan for its preservation.

In other words, the head has been temporarily moved from the chopping block, and that is cause for a party. Keep in mind, however, that the very people who celebrated in the stock and bond exchanges sooner or later will return with very different looks on their faces, as they realize that this lurching from crisis to crisis -- with the "solution" being more "liquidity" (read that, inflation) -- is unsustainable. The debt is unmanageable, period, and these economies are incapable at the present time of generating enough income to pay back these loans, especially given that the current set of "bailout" loans coming from the Fed and elsewhere are nothing more than loans to enable these countries to pay their current debt service.

Now, according to Paul Krugman, there really is a way out for the euro and the dollar. Yes, in response to the Greek crisis and others that follow in its wake, the European and U.S. government must follow policies that resemble...Greece. No, I'm not kidding.

Read for yourself:

I hope, for our sake as well as theirs, that the Europeans will change course before it’s too late. But, to be honest, I don’t believe they will. In fact, what’s much more likely is that we will follow them down the path to ruin.

For in America, as in Europe, the economy is being dragged down by troubled debtors — in our case, mainly homeowners. And here, too, we desperately need expansionary fiscal and monetary policies to support the economy as these debtors struggle back to financial health. Yet, as in Europe, public discourse is dominated by deficit scolds and inflation obsessives.

Yes, what is needed is inflation and more borrowing, the very things that put us in this untenable position in the first place. The U.S. economy is not producing enough to give the tax revenues needed for this burst of spending in the last four years, so borrowing and, essentially, monetizing U.S. debt are the only ways even to continue this spree.

There is another way out, one that is painful but at least will not have the long-term destructive effects of the kind of massive inflation that seems to be on the horizon: default. Yes, default.

First, a real default versus what Krugman is demanding -- default via inflation -- will not have the same distorting economic effects that inflation (and especially if it reaches double-digits...and beyond) would have, and second, a default would provide a much more realistic picture of what the situation really is, as opposed to what happens when inflation undercuts the price system. Yes, there will be a sharp downturn when this happens, but afterward, there will be the real prospect of an economic recovery, something that simply is not going to happen if this borrowing and printing madness continues.

When Krugman calls for "expansionary fiscal and monetary policies," he is not talking about policies that actually will expand the real economy. No, he is talking about more financial trickery, more central bank "pulling rabbits out of hats," more "stimulus" money given to politically-connected groups that are tied to the Obama administration, and so on.

Trickery and inflation won't save the euro. The irony as I see it is that the euro has a lot better chance of surviving if some honesty is permitted to enter the discussion. At the present time, unfortunately, the loudest voices are those that call for further debasement of the euro (and the dollar) and even more borrowing to cover the payments for the last set of loans. Neither option is sustainable, but for now, that is all the Keynesians seem to be offering.

Krugman: "Save" the euro by inflating it to death

Like most Keynesians, in the end, Paul Krugman is a one-trick pony who always recommends inflation as the answer to economic problems. (After all, he DID say in The Return of Depression Economics that inflation could provide a "free lunch" during economic downturns. In other words, the printing press negates the Law of Opportunity Cost.)

So, I see that Krugman now is giving the "Vietnam Strategy" to the Europeans: in order to "save" the euro, you must destroy it -- via inflation. Furthermore, we are supposed to think that had the German government in 1930 embarked on a policy of inflation, that it would have "saved" the country. Somehow, I doubt it.

How should the Europeans do it? Krugman already has set out a strategy that marks the way in which the European Central Bank would purchase the short-term debt of countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece and hope that in the future, these countries will get their fiscal house in order. (Even Krugman knows that Greece cannot and won't do it, given Greek policies and its bloated government sector. Nonetheless, he believes that maybe the European Central Bank can inflate Greece's problems away, too.)

However, Krugman does not even contemplate any realistic outcomes of his strategy. If the ECB simply acts as the Big Sugar Daddy for countries by purchasing government bonds wily-nily, what is to keep everyone else from joining the Free Lunch? Sure, the European Parliament can enact policies that supposedly will limit this foolishness, but it is doubtful that once the shower of goodies starts, that anyone will hold to fiscal discipline.

In the end, this is a strategy that would inflate the euro out of existence. Now, that might be "good" for the dollar, given that investors around the world holding money are looking for safe havens. But the dollar sucks, too, thanks to the money-pumping strategy of the Obama administration.

So, in the end we are left with blizzards of paper money. But never fear, says Krugman. After all, everyone from Princeton and Washington knows that paper is more valuable than gold because paper is managed by Really Smart People Who Know More Than Everyone Else.

Greece: Creating prosperity through spending, Right?

A constant theme of Paul Krugman's columns and blog posts is the idea that prosperity is created through spending, lots and lots of spending. When the economy started tanking seriously four years ago, Krugman and politicians of both parties immediately started to push more spending as a way to end the downturn.

Obama himself after taking office declared that the USA would spend its way out of this recession/depression and the only condemnation that Krugman could muster of this strategy was that the administration wasn't borrowing and spending enough money. Since the government could create its own "money" at a whim, the only limit on spending our way back to boom conditions was a political will to increase the government's debt obligations to future taxpayers.

Then came the Greek crisis. Consistent with his Keynesian viewpoint, Krugman said that the "solution" for Greece either would be huge European Union bailouts or a return of Greece to its own currency, abandoning the Euro. Anyone who might argue that governments were cannibalizing future resources and production in order to maintain current spending was condemned as a promoter of "austerity," which in Wonderland is a Truly Evil Person.

Ever since joining the EU, the Greeks have acted as though Paul Krugman were their Guiding Light. As this article demonstrates, Greece's government, courtesy of EU taxpayers, has created boondoggle after boondoggle complete with a bloated public payroll:

Even on a stiflingly hot summer's day, the Athens underground is a pleasure. It is air-conditioned, with plasma screens to entertain passengers relaxing in cool, cavernous departure halls - and the trains even run on time.

There is another bonus for users of this state-of-the-art rapid transport system: it is, in effect, free for the five million people of the Greek capital.

With no barriers to prevent free entry or exit to this impressive tube network, the good citizens of Athens are instead asked to 'validate' their tickets at honesty machines before boarding. Few bother.

This is not surprising: fiddling on a Herculean scale — from the owner of the smallest shop to the most powerful figures in business and politics — has become as much a part of Greek life as ouzo and olives.

Indeed, as well as not paying for their metro tickets, the people of Greece barely paid a penny of the underground’s £1.5 billion cost — a ‘sweetener’ from Brussels (and, therefore, the UK taxpayer) to help the country put on an impressive 2004 Olympics free of the city’s notorious traffic jams.

The transport perks are not confined to the customers. Incredibly, the average salary on Greece’s railways is £60,000, which includes cleaners and track workers - treble the earnings of the average private sector employee here.

The overground rail network is as big a racket as the EU-funded underground. While its annual income is only £80 million from ticket sales, the wage bill is more than £500m a year — prompting one Greek politician to famously remark that it would be cheaper to put all the commuters into private taxis.

Not that any of this would matter in Keynesian thinking. Indeed, the Greek Underground would be considered the Ultimate Exercise in Creating Prosperity because it spends lots of money, and anyone who might protest that this is a huge waste of resources is an Enemy of the People.

The picture painted of Greece in the above article is a picture you won't read on Krugman's page or in the NY Times, as the omission of Greek wastefulness really highlights where Keynesians and Austrians part company (not that they ever walked together, anyway).

In the Keynesian/Krugman view, spending is separate from production and, to be honest, spending is the key to producing wealth. If you spend, they will produce.

I note this because I can anticipate the objection: Demand drives production, and even Austrians, with their emphasis upon the valuation of the factors of production being imputed by consumers placing value on the "final product," would admit to that. However, when Keynesians and Austrians speak of "demand," they are speaking in two different languages.

Keynesians couch demand in simple spending; put money into the hands of people, let them spend, and the economy magically will appear. (Chartalists go even further, claiming that because governments can claim a legal monopoly over money creation, that the amount of "demand" governments can create is infinite, since government is not "revenue constrained.")

Austrians, on the other hand, note that one cannot consume when one is not producing, and that Say's Law -- yes, that "tyrannical" Say's Law that Keynesians hate so much -- has something to tell us. The only way out of this world-wide depression is for governments to stop this massive borrowing and spending and permit the malinvestments -- and they are legion -- to liquidate and for the lines of production that are sustainable to be permitted to develop.

The current tragedy in Greece is the product of reckless spending and malinvestment. Unfortunately, neither the Greeks nor the economics faculty at Princeton are willing to face the facts.