Paul Krugman the lord of wrong predictions

It is the rare human who can be found wrong about nearly all of his opinions and predictions.  It’s an even rarer human whose predictions have been consistently wrong, and yet dismisses the dismal track record and shamelessly makes more predictions. You’d think he would seek another line of work.

(Photo by Louise Wateridge/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

But no. Not Paul Krugman, the Keynesian economist for The New York Times. Here’s a guy who just can’t seem to get it right most of the time. It is hard to find an economist who is wrong as much as Krugman. That’s because he calls himself an economist while he is moreso a partisan political entertainer with a distorted worldview. Even worse, the Times doesn’t seem to care.

Let’s look at some of his predictions and claims. His most recent one earned him 1st Place in President Trump’s 2017 Fake News Awards. This was Krugman’s prediction, on the day of Trump’s landslide victory, that the U.S. stock market would “never” recover. Since then, the Dow Industrials have set 94 new record closing highs, and is up 8,000 points. Nice call, Paul.

Earlier in 2016, Krugman created the term “Trumpenfreude” to predict that the Trump candidacy “would bring down the Republican Party in ruins”. As we know, the opposite happened, adding to the growing evidence that there may be few economists in Western Civilization who have been more incorrect than Krugman.

Then, in September 2017, Krugman blamed Trump for a “cholera outbreak” in Puerto Rico; only problem was that the Center for Disease Control stated, “There was no evidence of cholera in Puerto Rico”.

In December, Krugman showed how elegant he was by claiming America is on the verge of collapse because of “dictator wannabe” Trump, and Krugman’s solution was “I vote that we make pink p**sy hats the symbol of our delivery from evil”. Classy guy, huh?

Here’s one, included for a laugh: Last June, Krugman wrote that “tackling climate change in the way envisaged by the Paris accord….these days it looks pretty easy”. When is the last time you read something that naïve?

Now let’s go back in time to one of the colossal economic mis-predictions of the present era. Krugman staked his reputation for years by championing the “economic successes” of “the European Project”. Here’s one of his classic (but wrong) lines from 2010: “The real lesson from Europe is … Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.” Shortly afterward, Europe erupted into a huge crisis nightmare of fiscal irresponsibility.

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Paul Krugman is seen on August 7, 1998(Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Krugman predicted in 1998 that the Internet would have little effect on the economy and commerce, with “no greater impact than the fax machine”. That’s Paul, always out for laughs, endless entertainment.

In 2003, he claimed California’s taxes are “now probably below average”, when California’s taxes were then ranked eighth-highest among 50 states, and headed higher. In 2010, Krugman falsified a quote by Newt Gingrich, deceived his readers about Obamacare by misrepresenting data contained in a report he quoted, and in 2011 praised Veterans Affairs Administration as a triumph of “socialized medicine”. Krugman ignored the glaring truth about U.S. debt in 2014 by calling it “distinctly non-alarming”.

When America’s oil-fracking industry started up, he predicted that the U.S. was going to be “just a bystander” in global energy markets. In 2012, “Wrong-Way” Krugman opined that the soon-to-default economy of Argentina will be “a remarkable success story”. He predicted in 2015, “the Puerto Rico story is one (that will) fall well short of utter disaster”, and said what will save their economy is “the saving grace (of) big government”.

Interestingly, Krugman won a Nobel laureate in 2008. How can this be, you ask? No surprise here, it has everything to do with politics and little to do with qualifications. There is a political answer: Remember other questionable Nobel laureates, including Yasser Arafat, Kofi Annan, Al Gore? And of course, Barack Obama who won the Nobel Peace Prize— he was nominated before his presidential swearing-in. How does that work?

But how many times does Krugman have to be wrong before the Times waves the white flag and sends their golden boy to the bad economist’s boneyard? I nominate him for the hands-down winner of the World’s Wrongest Economist.

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John R. Smith

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