Paul Krugman Issues Scathing Critique of Trump’s Economic Team

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:43 pm

Paul Krugman issued a scathing critique of Donald Trump’s economic team in a series of tweets this morning:

“Are people noticing that the Trump economic team is shaping up as a gathering of gold bugs? Treasury goes to a guy with little public profile, but hangs out with John Paulson (who is also close to Trump). And Paulson has been predicting inflation — sometimes double-digit — from Fed policy for years. Budget director appears to be John Bircher and conspiracy theorist (but aren’t they all? But note economic views. Birchers want return to gold and silver, Mulvaney seems to agree. In this crew, Kudlow — who thinks it’s always the 1970s, but doesn’t seem to see hyperinflation under his bed — is the most reasonable.”

Scary to think that Kudlow, who warned us all was well and laughed off what he derisively called “bubbleheads” on the eve of the crash of 2008, is “the most reasonable” of the bunch in Krugman’s estimation.

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Then Krugman added as an afterthought,

“Whoops — forgot Mulvaney’s Bitcoin derp: “He praised bitcoin as a currency that is ‘not manipulatable by any government.'”

Bitcoin is a digital currency popular online and has its ardent supporters. Perhaps tongue-in-cheek, Krugman said back in 2013, “Bitcoin is evil,” but he argued persuasively that,

“Placing a ceiling on the value of bitcoins is computer technology and the form of the hash function… until the limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached. Placing a floor on the value of bitcoins is… what, exactly?”

Time‘s Christopher Matthews agreed, stating a year later that,

“Bitcoin is an elegant technological innovation that may find a future in niche applications, like as a means for transferring money cheaply across borders. But economists are right to be skeptical of those who hope it will supplant government-controlled fiat money. Bitcoin enthusiasts simply have not posited a believable scenario where the vast majority of us will abandon fiat money for their virtual coins.”

Libertarians will dream, however. Worse, they will try to make their dreams a reality, and what better place for that than a Trump administration where facts are fiction and fiction facts?

This is a grim appraisal by a Nobel prize-winning economist of the men in whose hands Donald Trump is putting our economy. The Republican Party destroyed our economy – and nearly the world’s – in 2008 and we seem headed that way again after eight years of sanity under the Obama administration.

As Paul Krugman observed earlier, “discussion of economic policy is now monopolized by people who have been wrong about everything, have learned nothing from the experience, and can’t even get their numbers straight.”

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.