Krugman, Keynesians, the Austrians, and the Housing Bubble

In a blog post, Paul Krugman points out that a number of "austerians" (people who believe we need to have fiscal and monetary responsibility) did not see the "housing bubble" approaching -- and he did. Therefore, according to Krugman logic, "austerity" must be bad.

As I see it, the logical construct goes this way:

1. The "austerians" were wrong on the housing bubble;
2. Krugman was right on the housing bubble;
3. Therefore, we need lots more government spending because Krugman believes that is what we need.

This is a classic non sequitur, and I hate to say it, but Krugman's correct view of the bubble does not mean he is correct today. The rightness or wrongness of his argument depends upon both the application of laws of economics and the current situation, period.

Now, in looking at the whole housing bubble business, let me say that I am not going to jump on Krugman's 2002 comment about Alan Greenspan needing to create "a housing bubble to replace the NASDAQ bubble." Krugman has denied that he was advocating such a bubble, and I am willing to take him at his word.

Nonetheless, there are two things that need to be discussed here. The first is the fact that the Austrians, and specifically Mark Thornton, were out in front to call the housing bubble what it was. Thornton wrote in 2004 that the housing market was "too good to be true," and also had this article in February 2004 that buttresses his claims.

Yet, Professor Thornton also is an "austerian," at least in Krugman's definition. He also predicted and recognized the housing bubble long before even Krugman made mention of it. So, there seems to be a crack in Krugman's rejection of "austerity" measures for the economy.

Before going further, however, I need to point out that Austrians are not "austerians" in the mainstream (or statist) view of economics. Austrians believe that the market should be free to sort out the malinvestments that came with the boom, and for the necessary liquidation and repositioning of assets to occur. This is quite different than the view that GOVERNMENT should be IMPOSING austerity. In the Austrian view, the government role is passive while in the mainstream view, government is active in its imposition of policies.

(I need to point out that Krugman rejects both viewpoints. Government needs to be active, showering new money, encouraging spending, and doing lots of borrowing and spending itself, according to Krugman.)

My second point is more theoretical. Keynesians deal solely in aggregates, because they believe that if government both engages in generalized spending (and encourages consumers and businesses to do the same), the economy will recover and grow to full employment -- provided the spending is great enough. However, Keynesianism does not have any kind of coherent capital theory, and I don't see how one can have a bubble, which constitutes a malinvestment in the Austrian view, AND, at the same time, claim that all that is needed is spending.

As I have written many times before (and I am hardly the only Austrian to be saying this), the Keynesian view implies that factors of production are homogeneous, and that it does not matter what kind of spending takes place, just as long as there is adequate spending. This cannot logically square with the creation of bubbles, since asset bubbles are specific and they clearly are malinvestments, yet Krugman continues to deny any theory that includes malinvestments.

Furthermore, Krugman knows that one cannot sustain a bubble, since bubbles by their very definition are not sustainable. Yet, he seems to be arguing that we need to both try to sustain this bubble, or at least not let housing prices fall, and, at the same time, recognize what a bubble really is. These two views are mutually exclusive.

So, in both sets of arguments, I believe that Krugman is using a non sequitur, nor does it surprise me he is doing so.

"Proof" that the "Stimulus" Worked?

In an August 27 post, Paul Krugman shows a graph that supposedly is "proof" that the "Stimulus" actually worked, but also constitutes "proof" that the "Stimulus" was "not big enough." Krugman's post hoc ergo propter hoc world, of course, is full of this stuff, but I believe it will do us well to take a brief look.

The post deals with the following two graphs, the first being Mark Zandi's prediction and the second being the actual GDP numbers (or at least what the government says are the GDP numbers). First, the Zandi graph:

Now, for the post-stimulus graph:

The graphs are what they are. However, Krugman's comment about them is most illuminating:

It’s not a perfect correspondence, nor would you expect one — other factors, especially inventory swings, were bound to make the timing of actual growth different from that of stimulus. Still, the two pictures support the view that stimulus worked as long as it lasted, boosting the economy — which is the same conclusion Adam Posen drew from Japan’s experience in the 1990s (pdf): Fiscal policy works when it is tried. (Emphasis mine)

But the stimulus wasn’t nearly big enough to restore full employment — as I warned from the beginning. And it was set up to fade out in the second half of 2010.

Most important, a new injection of money into a moribund economy (especially if it is an early injection) ALWAYS will bring about more economic activity. In his classic "Fiat Money Inflation in France," Andrew Dickson White points out that during the French Revolution, the first round distribution of Assignats brought new life to the French economy, a "stimulus," if you will.

However, with further injections, the economy responded less and less to the new money and new spending until finally all that was left was the inflation. In this case, I am not surprised at the numbers, but one has to remember that the stimulus was about SPENDING and nothing else. The new money for projects ended up in the hands of people who spent it, clearing existing inventories and the like.

What Krugman wants us to believe is that had there been more money made available through "fiscal" policies (more borrowing by the government), somehow that extra money would have given the economy "traction," which then would have allowed it to move along on its own. There is no real causality as to WHY this would happen; he just wants us to believe that this is what would have occurred.

Actually, what would have happened would have been bigger numbers (as Krugman claims) at the beginning, and then a steeper fall, as there would have been nothing to have SUSTAINED that earlier activity. In the Keynesian paradigm, the economy is a homogeneous mass driven only by spending; Austrians understand that there has to be long-term capital investment that can be sustained by economic activity, and that makes all of the difference.

Just Who is Funding What?

In today's column, Paul Krugman derides what he calls a Republican "witch hunt" because, well, politics has become a pretty ugly thing. If he were to do what I do -- not watch TV or listen to talk radio -- then perhaps his poor life would be a bit more peaceful.

At one level, I can agree with him. I am not enamored with Glenn Beck's antics, I don't listen to Limbaugh, am sick of the "Ground Zero Mosque" nonsense, and I don't believe that President Obama is a closet (or even open) Muslim, nor am I on a grand search for his birth certificate. Furthermore, I don't believe that Mexicans and Central Americans slipping into our border states is a "threat to national security," and I fear that conservatives are going to be pushing the dreaded "Your papers, please," regime upon us -- something that Democrats ultimately would embrace too, given that it would give them more power over those dreaded Republicans traveling about the country.

I am watching more and more Republicans making these things their central talking points, which is why I stay away from party politics. However, in reading Krugman's list of bogeymen, I think that he is also being his usual dishonest self. We read:

...powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.

Since I don't receive money from any of these folks nor work for their organizations (although I have published some articles in Cato's magazine, Regulation), I'm not beholden to any of them. But, for all of the hoopla about those dreaded rich people funding things Krugman doesn't like, let us not forget that Krugman and the Democrats have their own billionaire benefactors, led by George Soros.

Yes, if you look at huge numbers of organizations -- including those organizations that Mayer used to gain her "facts" against the dreaded "Kochtopus" -- you will find that they are funded by...Soros. In fact, a number of organizations that Krugman likes to use as his own fact gatherers are funded by Soros and his Open Society Institute. Furthermore, we often see the NY Times editorial page using Soros-funded outfits as their sources.

However, I don't ever recall Krugman mentioning the OSI in any of his columns or blogs, yet Soros is far wealthier and more active than even the Koch brothers. For that matter, Soros was every bit as active against George W. Bush's presidency as was the right against Bill Clinton when he was in the White House.

One does not have to like any of this to recognize what is going on. As the executive branch gets more powerful -- and more reckless (which is what "Progressives" like Krugman want, to be frank) -- the stakes get higher. More and more, it is the executive branch and its regulatory agencies calling the shots, and when that happens, huge amounts of wealth are transferred without a single vote from Congress.

Yet, this kind of unaccountable government, with its symbiotic ties to "private" organizations and "think tanks" funded by billionaires, is precisely the very dream of "Progressivism," and Krugman is squarely in that mix. So, given that Soros began his OSI antics in 1979 -- long before the Koch brothers were funding groups on the Right -- I would say that this process first started on the Left.

But to read Krugman, we are supposed to believe that these poor Democrats are poor little babes in the woods, cowering before the Billionaire-Funded Republican Attack Machine. Give me a break, people. This is politics on all sides, and it is ugly and destructive, and Paul Krugman is an integral part of the ugliness.

Goldstein Halts the Recovery!!

Paul Krugman is correct: we are NOT in a recovery. In fact, the rock is rolling quickly down the hill as we are about to have a downturn -- in a downturn.

Are policy makers in "denial," as Krugman claims? Hardly. Granted, Washington is booming, just as it did from 1933 to 1946 when government became firmly entrenched in the lives of everyone else and, well, someone had to be paid in order to carry out the "entrenching." No doubt, these people are enjoying good times and even if the rest of the country suffers, those tied to the federal government even are enjoying increased incomes. Life is good, at least in DC.

As usual, Krugman trots out the usual canards for this obvious downturn, including (1) the original "stimulus" was not large enough, and (2) Goldstein The Republican Party is blocking new spending. Let us look at both arguments, which are predicated with the nonsense that Goldstein is to blame. Krugman writes:

In the case of the Obama administration, officials seem loath to admit that the original stimulus was too small. True, it was enough to limit the depth of the slump — a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says unemployment would probably be well into double digits now without the stimulus — but it wasn’t big enough to bring unemployment down significantly.

Now, it’s arguable that even in early 2009, when President Obama was at the peak of his popularity, he couldn’t have gotten a bigger plan through the Senate. And he certainly couldn’t pass a supplemental stimulus now. So officials could, with considerable justification, place the onus for the non-recovery on Republican obstructionism. But they’ve chosen, instead, to draw smiley faces on a grim picture, convincing nobody. And the likely result in November — big gains for the obstructionists — will paralyze policy for years to come.

Let us remember that in 2009, Republicans were in NO position to engage in any "obstructionism." The Senate had a filibuster-proof majority and Nancy Pelosi firmly controlled the House. Obama had come in as a combination of Superman-Messiah, and he was in a position to do whatever he wanted, Republicans be damned.

Yet, once again, Krugman chooses to claim that the government did not take on enough debt and fund enough projects (that somehow would magically have carried us onto a wave of prosperity and four-percent unemployment) to end the recession all because a few Republicans were making noise about spending. This is nonsense, pure nonsense.

Furthermore, Krugman NEVER has laid out the causal chain to explain just how taking on a few hundred billions more in government debt would have placed our economy in the pink. He likes to say that the economy would have gained more "traction," but I would ask just what he means by that. An economy is not a perpetual motion machine, and the idea that throwing in some more dollars would have given the economy enough push to sustain itself lacks an explanation device. Instead, we are supposed to just believe it.

We also see the Silvio Gesell side of Krugman when he urges the Fed to ramp up the inflation in order to "encourage" spending. Krugman writes:

The Fed has a number of options. It can buy more long-term and private debt; it can push down long-term interest rates by announcing its intention to keep short-term rates low; it can raise its medium-term target for inflation, making it less attractive for businesses to simply sit on their cash. Nobody can be sure how well these measures would work, but it’s better to try something that might not work than to make excuses while workers suffer.

Here is the problem: businesses are not just sitting "on their cash" because it makes their bottoms feel good. They have no confidence about the future, and the anti-business rhetoric that comes not only out of the White House, but also from Congress and the media is not exactly going to give business owners and investors more confidence.

So, Krugman resorts to the "trick" of rapidly depleting the value of money in order to encourage spending. However, the problem is that businesses only are engaging in short-term investments when, in fact, we need to see long-term movement in order for a recovery to begin. Unfortunately, that is not possible in this political environment, and instead of recognizing that fact, Krugman calls for financial trickery that, in essence, would be a de facto confiscation of money from those who currently are saving.

None of this trickery and coercion will produce a strong economy. Like all good Keynesians, Krugman is worried only about the shortest-term situation, but if the government continues to follow this current path of financial folly (and even try to make Krugman happy), we won't have to worry about the long run because we really will be dead.

Are We Really Suffering from a Paradox of Thrift? Two Critics of Keynes (and Krugman)

In a blog post today, Paul Krugman claims that the U.S. economy is suffering from the "Paradox of Thrift," and we cannot hope to have a recovery until people stop saving and start spending. It is another way of saying that what might be rational for an individual is irrational for the entire economy.

Krugman writes:

In normal times, we believe that more saving, private or public, leads to more investment, because it frees up funds. But for that story to work, you have to have some channel through which higher savings increase the incentive to invest. And the way it works in practice, in good times, is that higher savings allow the Fed to cut interest rates, making capital cheaper, and hence on to investment.

But right now we’re up against the zero lower bound — yes, I’ll get the usual complaints about how long-term rates aren’t zero, but the Fed doesn’t have direct control over those rates — so this normal channel doesn’t work.

And what that means is that if people — or the government — try to save more, they only end up depressing the economy. And the weaker economy leads to lower, not higher investment. And this in turn means that attempts to save more don’t help our future prospects. On the contrary, they reduce the economy’s future growth.

In answering this latest missive, I turn to Robert Murphy (again) and Clifford Thies, both of whom are excellent economists and good writers to boot. Murphy writes:

...it will be useful to spell out exactly what happens in a market economy when consumers decide to save more of their income. The first thing to realize is that people do not decide to "spend" or not; rather, they decide whether to spend in the present versus in the future. For example, imagine that thousands of couples in a large city one day decide to skip their weekly restaurant outings in order to save up for a summer cruise. At first, it seems that this would hurt the economy. After all, local restaurants see their sales drop, and so they buy fewer items from their suppliers and lay off some workers. The suppliers and workers in turn have less income to spend, and so sales are hurt elsewhere too.

However, so long as the entrepreneurs involved in the cruise industry anticipate the eventual increase in demand for their services, they will exactly offset the above effects when they hire more workers and other items in preparation for the busy summer months. The new savings (which were previously spent on restaurants) drives down interest rates, perhaps allowing the cruise operators to borrow money and pay for an additional liner. Thus the decision to save more doesn't reduce total income or employment, once everyone adjusts to the new spending patterns. It is really no different from a scenario where thousands of people become health conscious and decide to spend their money on vegetables rather than fast food.

Now it's true, in the present circumstances of our financial panic, consumer spending has fallen because of fear, not because of a fundamental shift in the desired timing of consumption. But still, the point remains that people cut back on present consumption in order to be able to "spend money" in the future. The difference between our present situation and the cruise-liner story above is just that people right now aren't sure exactly when, and on what, they will be spending this extra savings.

Even so, the best solution is still for the government to mind its own business and let people work things out voluntarily. The uncertainty isn't phony; people really don't know what's going to happen next month. In this situation, it is entirely appropriate for humans to stop cranking out so many iPods and designer clothes, allowing a temporary build-up of the resources that go into the production of these nonessential items.

What is especially ironic in all of this is that even on his own terms, Krugman's recommendations make no sense. That is to say, even if we put aside all of the real, physical readjustments that must occur to revamp the economy in light of the unsustainable housing boom, it would still be the case that the government ought to do nothing. If the present crisis really were largely the result of irrational panic and hoarding then government activism would only make people more uncertain about the future. In particular, no one has any idea what Paulson & Bernanke will announce next regarding financial companies and mortgages. If we're trying to reassure consumers that everything is normal, why would we resurrect tools from the New Deal playbook?

Thies adds:

The paradox of thrift simply took Keynesian economics to its illogical conclusion. If governments should increase their spending during recessions, why should not households? If there were no principles of "sound finance" for public finance, from where would such principles come for family finance? Eat, drink and be merry, for in the long-run we are all dead.

The Keynesian revolution was about overthrowing the doctrines of balanced budgets and sound money, free international trade, and laissez-faire economics, and adopting instead the doctrines of deficit spending, inflation, and the managed economy. Adherence to the tried and true was to be replaced by trust in the new, self-confident generation of macroeconomists, who were not to be constrained by old-fashioned precepts, but who were to be free to do as they knew best.

Both articles are worth reading in their entirety. The point is that in a Keynesian world of homogeneous factors and "spending" (as opposed to purposeful action by consumers and producers), the "Paradox of Thrift" makes perfect sense. But, if capital and other factors are heterogeneous and the structure of production is complex and must fit the economic patterns set by consumers and producers, then the "Paradox" is not a paradox at all, but rather just another economic fallacy.

Krugman's Willful Distortion of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

Once again, Paul Krugman creates a caricature of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, calling it the "Hangover Theory," and then continues to misrepresent what it says and what its adherents say in their analysis of the boom and bust cycles. His recent blog post continues this dishonesty.

Before dealing directly with his accusations about the ATBC, I will note that both David Gordon and Robert Murphy do credible jobs in debunking Krugman's misrepresentations. I will add briefly to what they already have written.

Krugman declares:

...one more thing struck me: at least some members of the FOMC have bought into the hangover theory — the modern version of liquidationism in which mass unemployment is somehow necessary in the aftermath of a burst bubble....

This is an important point, because while Austrians are adamant that malinvested resources and capital that were created or advanced during the boom are NOT sustainable during the crisis and the subsequent bust. (Krugman, it should be noted, insists on saying that Austrians, such as Nobel-Prize Laureate F.A. Hayek, push an "overinvestment" theory when, in fact, the Austrians have dealt with that very term and have said it is not an appropriate one in the ATBC. In other words, even though Austrians address that very word, Krugman still pretends as though they have not done so.)

Furthermore, Austrians, unlike Keynesians, who believe that factors of production generally are homogeneous and are equally affected by new injections of spending, look carefully at the issues of the factors, for what is where the result of the downturn are concentrated. Furthermore, NO Austrian calls for some sort of "general liquidation" of the economy. Instead, Austrians hold that those investments in capital and other factors that no longer are sustainable should be liquidated or transferred to other uses for which there clearly is consumer demand. This is a far cry from Krugman's point.

I know of NO Austrian who claims that "mass unemployment is somehow necessary in the aftermath of a burst bubble," none. Austrians say that if there is mass unemployment (and especially if that unemployment is chronic) we can look to government intervention as the reason. Rothbard, in America's Great Depression, writes:

If government wishes to see a depression ended as quickly as possible, and the economy returned to normal prosperity, what course should it adopt? The first and clearest injunction is: don't interfere with the market's adjustment process. The more the government intervenes to delay the market's adjustment, the longer and more grueling the depression will be, and the more difficult will be the road to complete recovery. Government hampering aggravates and perpetuates the depression. Yet, government depression policy has always (and would have even more today) aggravated the very evils it has loudly tried to cure. If, in fact, we list logically the various ways that government could hamper market adjustment, we will find that we have precisely listed the favorite "anti-depression" arsenal of government policy. (Emphasis mine)

Rothbard then explains the policies that are most harmful:

1. Prevent or delay liquidation. Lend money to shaky businesses, call on banks to lend further, etc.

2. Inflate further. Further inflation blocks the necessary fall in prices, thus delaying adjustment and prolonging depression. Further credit expansion creates more malinvestments, which, in their turn, will have to be liquidated in some later depression. A government "easy money" policy prevents the market's return to the necessary higher interest rates.

3. Keep wage rates up. Artificial maintenance of wage rates in a depression insures permanent mass unemployment. Furthermore, in a deflation, when prices are falling, keeping the same rate of money wages means that real wage rates have been pushed higher. In the face of falling business demand, this greatly aggravates the unemployment problem.

4. Keep prices up. Keeping prices above their free-market levels will create unsalable surpluses, and prevent a return to prosperity.

5. Stimulate consumption and discourage saving. We have seen that more saving and less consumption would speed recovery; more consumption and less saving aggravate the shortage of saved-capital even further. Government can encourage consumption by "food stamp plans" and relief payments. It can discourage savings and investment by higher taxes, particularly on the wealthy and on corporations and estates. As a matter of fact, any increase of taxes and government spending will discourage saving and investment and stimulate consumption, since government spending is all consumption. Some of the private funds would have been saved and invested; all of the government funds are consumed.[15] Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption-investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression.

6. Subsidize unemployment. Any subsidization of unemployment (via unemployment "insurance," relief, etc.) will prolong unemployment indefinitely, and delay the shift of workers to the fields where jobs are available.

Interestingly, ALL of these things listed above are precisely what Krugman claims will END the downturn. Yet, we have seen government do these things in spades, yet the economy continues to tank. Rothbard clearly notes that mass unemployment, and especially mass unemployment over a long period of time, is NOT necessary, but generally occurs because of government intervention, not in spite of it.

So what does Krugman do? He claims that the REAL problem is that government did not spend enough, regulate enough, tax enough, jack up wages past marginal productivity levels, and subsidize enough unproductive industries (i.e. "green" jobs). And when the economy continues to tank, he creates a caricature of the only business cycle theory that accurately explains what is happening, and then builds a series of falsehoods from there. Just another day at the office for Paul Krugman.

It Doesn't Get Much Worse Than This

[Note]: I am departing from my view of Paul Krugman's analysis in particular and Keynesian analysis in general to post about the state of government "justice" in this country. What I find is that most people take one side or the other according to what has happened to them personally.

I spent all spring blogging on the Tonya Craft trial in North Georgia and witnesses one legal disgrace after another, from perjury to outright judicial and prosecutorial misconduct that was up-front, in-your-face, and perfectly accepted by the "oversight" authorities of Georgia. Having written on the federal "criminal justice" system for the past decade, I have lost any hope that "justice" can be reformed in this country. Furthermore, I believe that what we are seeing is the logical extension of the Progressive Movement that began in the late 19th Century and continues through today.

Progressivism was about creating a "reformist" government that would be administrative in nature and would depend upon "experts" and others who were "superior" in intelligence and virtue to others. It is reminiscent of Nietzsche's belief that one could create the "Ubermensch," and we know how that turned out in Germany. Progressives were scornful of the need for Constitutional checks and balances that, in the view of Woodrow Wilson (perhaps the most virulent racist ever to occupy the White House and the man who brought Jim Crow policies to the federal government), kept the federal government from being able to do what would be "good" for the people.

Instead, Progressives believed that the state should be run by people like them, people who were more intelligent than others, and who could move quickly and decisively, unlike the corrupt legislatures and the various markets. So, I include my post from my other blog today. In one sense, it is a repudiation of Krugman's "Progressivism" and his belief that a government composed of people like him would run the world perfectly. (No, I don't believe that a government of "libertarians" would "run the world" particularly well. There is no Utopia, libertarian or otherwise.) [End Note]

During the erstwhile Duke Lacrosse Case, Joe Neff from the Raleigh News & Observer helped carry the day. In the early days of the affair, the N&O drove the coverage in a dishonest, smarmy way, with one of its resident leftists, Samiha Khanna, writing most of the copy.

However, the adults soon took over and Joe Neff from late spring until the end of the case compiled an extremely impressive list of articles that ultimately exposed the case for the sham it was. Since then, Neff has written a series of article on the scandal that has engulfed the North Carolina "justice" system involving the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) crime lab, a place where "forensics" often was a sham and where employees tricked the results in order to help prosecutors gain convictions.

If you wish to get a good sense of what happened, read the series in the N&O, as well as Radley Balko's excellent Reason crime column. Balko writes:

A stunning accompanying investigation by the Raleigh News & Observer found that though the crime lab’s results were presented to juries with the authoritativeness of science, laboratory procedures were geared toward just one outcome: putting as many people in prison as possible. The paper discovered an astonishingly frank 2007 training manual for analysts, still in use as of last week, instructing researchers that “A good reputation and calm demeanor also enhances an analyst's conviction rate.” Defense attorneys, the manual warned, often “put words into the analyst's mouth to try and raise inaccuracies.” The guide also instructs analysts to beware of “defense whores”—analysts hired by defense attorneys to challenge their testimony.

Indeed, it was that same mentality shown by prosecutors in their "win at all costs" (the main cost being the truth) in the Tonya Craft trial that led Chris Arnt and Len Gregor to tell a jury that highly-respected defense witnesses Dr. Nancy Aldridge, Dr. Nancy Fajman, Dr. Ann Hazzard, and Dr. William Bernet were nothing but "whores of the court" and people who "lied for pay." At the same time, "Alberto-Facebook" and "The Man" expected people to believe that the poorly-trained and educated, giggling, eye-rolling, sighing, and shoulder-shrugging charlatans at the local Children's Advocacy Center were crackerjack experts.

Why do these things occur? They occur because the legal system protects the criminals within it. Suborning perjury, tampering with evidence, forging documents, and lying in official documents all are crimes, yet no matter how egregious the violations of the law, no prosecutor (and usually no cop) ever is in danger of facing the bar of justice.

In short, prosecutors run the system, and judges (most of whom are former prosecutors) go along with the crimes, and then make rulings that protect all of the wrongdoers from punishment. As a woman at the Georgia State Bar told me, all of these things are just examples of prosecutors "doing their jobs," and she approved of everything I just have listed.

As I have read through the years of example after example of prosecutorial misconduct, I have come to realize that there really is no more hope for the system. The defense bar has been emasculated, and innocent people are convicted each day as prosecutors run about like wild animals. Indeed, if you want to find a group of criminals in the LMJC, don't go to the local jails; just go to Buzz Franklin's office.

While North Carolina claims to be trying to "reform" the system, one cannot "reform" anything when the prosecutors are in charge. The only way there can be any meaningful reform in American criminal justice is to end immunity for prosecutors, police, and judges. If the rest of us have no immunity, and we continue to do our jobs, then why should this class of people be protected from having to obey the law?

As I go through the various links demonstrating misconduct on behalf of prosecutors around the country, I come to realize that nothing is going to change. We see a charlatan like "dentist" Michael West testifying for prosecutors and helping to win convictions, even though all prosecutors who use West know that he is a fraud. Radley Balko explains:

I’ve written extensively on West over the last few years, most recently in a feature about the 1992 Louisiana murder trial and eventual conviction of Jimmie Duncan. In that case, I obtained a video showing West repeatedly jamming Duncan’s dental mold into the body of the young girl Duncan was accused of killing. Forensic specialists say that what West does in the video isn't a remotely acceptable method of analysis, and may amount to criminal evidence tampering. Duncan is on death row in Louisiana, based in part on West's analysis.

The whole thing is so outrageous that one does not wonder why West is not behind bars, but even today, prosecutors in Mississippi seek out the services of this lying charlatan and the disgraced "forensic pathologist" Steven Hayne. (I am sure that both men would be welcomed with open arms in the LMJC both by prosecutors and judges. Liars and charlatans feel very, very comfortable around each other. Maybe they can have a group hug.)

In a country where people actually cared about justice, men like Arnt, Gregor, West, Outhouse, and many others would be looking for honest work or would be sitting in the crowbar motel. Instead, they draw large salaries on the public till, lie in court, present false evidence, send innocent people to prison, and are touted in the local press as "heroes."