The Media Research Center has a bizarrely deep animus toward New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, which showed itself repeatedly over the past year. Joseph Vazquez, the MRC’s biggest victim of Krugman Derangement Syndrome, ranted in a January 2023 post:
The often wrong but never in doubt New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman is clearly neck-deep in denial about how bad the Biden economy really is. He whipped out a new catch-all to accuse so-called “election deniers” of also being “economy deniers.”
Krugman railed in his Jan. 9 column, “Election Deniers Are Also Economy Deniers,” that “G.O.P. economic views are almost as divorced from reality as their political fantasies are.” It’s a mystery how Krugman can legitimately bellyache about people being “divorced from reality” in the face of his own dirty laundry list of terrible “transitory” inflation calls and gaslighting Americans on a made-up “Biden boom” in 2022. But Krugman, suffering from a complete lack of self-awareness, babbled against Republican congressional members for daring to “believe that the U.S. economy is in terrible shape, with the federal government at great risk of going bankrupt.” Talk about arrogance.
[…]Krugman’s elitism clearly precludes him from seeing economic danger signs that don’t comport with his leftist politics.
Forbes released a Dec. 31 piece headlined: “Outlook: 2023 Recession Likely Deeper And Longer.” The magazine noted that “in 2022 we just experienced a flat (no growth) economy (at least through Q3).” In November, Forbes also noted that “[a]ccording to the general definition—two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP)—the U.S. entered a recession in the summer of 2022.” [Emphasis added.]
However, in Krugman’s distorted view, “There wasn’t a recession in 2022. Indeed, the U.S. economy ended the year with continuing strong job growth and the unemployment rate all the way back down to what it was before Covid.” He also touted the “seriously encouraging” data on “wages” as part of his premature celebration about inflation supposedly cooling off. He linked out to a tweet by economist Jason Furman alleging “stable/negative growth of around 4.5%–consistent with about a 3.5% inflation rate (and somewhat lower in the last few months).” [Emphasis added.]
But as we all know, the alleged recession did not get “deeper and longer” in 2023, despite Forbes’ and Vazquez’s hopes — as we documented, GDP turned positive in the final quarter of 2022 and has stayed positive since. Meanwhile, inflation ended the year at 3.4 percent — even better than Krugman’s predictions. Vazquez hasn’t exactly rushed to correct the record.
Vazquez spent another January 2023 post ranting at Krugman for calling out Republicans (and their fellow travelers, like Vazquez) who want to hold the government hostage (and ruin the economy) to force ideological budget cuts:
Have legitimate concerns about the national debt? Well, you may just be one of those GOP “economic terrorists,” according to New York Times bloviator-in-chief Paul Krugman.
Krugman’s Jan. 19 column spewed bile at GOP congressional members seeking spending concessions from President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling issue. “Don’t Try to Appease Economic Terrorists,” the headline read. Yes, Krugman actually used the word “terrorists.” [Emphasis added.]
He sugar-coated the issue falsely claiming that raising the debt ceiling “simply allows the government to honor its promises, which include everything from paying interest on its debt to sending checks to Social Security recipients.”
He lectured that “[n]o, raising the debt limit doesn’t give the president free rein to spend whatever he wants.” This is just dumb semantics. Raising the debt ceiling ad infinitum gives the government a pass to borrow as much as it wants to service the current debt, thereby sinking the U.S. economy further into debt by racking up the bills (the U.S. national debt is over $31 trillion now).
This rage at Krugman, over both his economic and political opinions — mostly from Vazquez — continued throughout the year:
- SNOBBERY: Millionaire Paul Krugman Browbeats Americans Filled with ‘Rural Rage’
- Paul Krugman Undercuts Biden on Banking Crisis: ‘They Were Bailouts’
- ‘Inequality Ahoy!’ Did Paul Krugman Forget He’s Richer than Clarence Thomas?
- BUST: How Paul Krugman Flip-Flopped from Prophesying ‘Biden Boom’ to Defending ‘Not So Bad Economy’
- Krugman Whines WashPost Isn’t Buying His Insane $1 Trillion Coin Idea
- Paul Krugman Sobs Green Energy Victim of ‘Anti-Woke Mind Virus’ in Texas
- HYSTERICAL: Former Enron Adviser Paul Krugman Claims We ‘Absolutely Should Politicize the Weather’
- Krugman Ludicrously Touts ‘Bidenomics’ Despite Sky-High Prices
- NYT’s Bidenomics Shill Paul Krugman Claimed Trump Poses ‘Existential Threat’ to America
- Paul Krugman in La-La Land: ‘Economic Data Have Been Surreally Good’
- Amanpour Lets Green Party Nut Bash Capitalism and Bolsters Bidenomics With Krugman
- NYT’s Krugman Faceplants: ‘The War on Inflation is Over. We Won’
- BUFFOONERY: Paul Krugman Claims Far Left ‘Has No Significant Influence on the Democratic Party’
- Sad: NYT Pundit Paul Krugman Still Looking for the Killer App That Will Take Down X/Twitter
Even as the economy continued to improve at the end of the year, the MRC continued to be in denial and be more interested in lashing out at Krugman for noting it. Vazquez ranted in an Oct. 24 post:
Paul Krugman, New York Times economics columnist and chronic escapist, can’t help making himself look even more clownish by casting Bidenomics as anything other than the inflation-stimulating mess that it is.
“The Secret of America’s Economic Success,” read Krugman’s Oct. 23 piece of propaganda. Krugman regurgitated his ridiculous flapdoodle that America has somehow beaten the scourge of high inflation.
He pointed to a graph by blockchain-based firm Truflation purporting to give a more accurate inflation depiction to proclaim a “steep decline in inflation over the past year.” But there’s a problem. The graph Krugman pointed to just shows a slowing inflation rate, not a “decline in inflation” as Krugman deceptively insinuated.
In fact, ongoing inflation has caused prices to skyrocket more than 17 percent higher on average since President Joe Biden first took office. That trend has not reversed.
But Krugman went right ahead and attributed this illusion of economic success largely to Biden’s absurd pursuit of an “aggressively expansionary fiscal policy.” Despite Americans showing profound disapproval for the Biden economy in recent surveys due to their current struggles, Krugman still chose to double down: “[O]ne thing is clear: We have been remarkably successful, even if nobody will believe it.”
A Dec. 20 year-end post by Nicholas Schau similarly berated Krugman for not talking down the economy like a right-winger:
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a master in the art of being perpetually wrong, stayed true to form by making the ludicrous claim that 2023 was a stellar year for the U.S. economy under President Joe Biden.
Krugman brazenly claimed in a Dec. 18 column that “2023 will go down in the record books as one of the best years ever” from an “economic standpoint.” Yes, you read that right. Krugman continued to spew nonsense by characterizing 2023 as a “year in which inflation came down amazingly fast at no visible cost, defying the predictions of many economists that disinflation would require years of high unemployment.” This is misleading. Inflation hasn’t come “down” as Krugman’s choice of words implies. “Disinflation” means prices are still increasing at a slower rate, and they’re over 17.6 percent higher than when Biden first took office.
Schau continued to insist that a recession was coming any day now, citing right-wing economists who have been wrong about a recession so far:
Further, economists such as Harry Dent predict that current state of the market in particular is just a massive “everything bubble.” When that bubble pops, Dent told Fox Business that “2024 is going to be the biggest single crash year we’ll see in our lifetimes.” Economists Steven Hanke and John Greenwood also wrote in a Dec. 13 National Review piece that the economy was effectively running on “fumes” based on the drastic drop in the money supply. Both economists analyzed that this all pointed to a recession: “[T]he U.S. economy is on schedule to tank in 2024.”
Schau went on to huff that “Krugman is notorious for ridiculously predicting positive economic outcomes under Biden, before moving the goalposts when his predictions inevitably go wrong.” He refused to admit that Krugman’s prediction about lower inflation at the beginning of the year was correct.