Talk about great moments in headline writing: “Bernanke Turns Timid in Krugman View of Princetonians on Japan,” Bloomberg.com “reports:”
When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke launched a $600 billion round of asset purchases in November, he said it would lead to a “virtuous cycle” that boosted the expansion. Paul Krugman, his former colleague at Princeton University, said “meh.”
Yes, it’s true. “Meh” is indeed the secret Krugmanian code to begin the alien invasion/super-ultra-mega-total war-sized stimulus.
More fun with Bloomberg.com:
“I think Bernanke’s definition of the long run is ‘after all this nasty stuff is behind us’” Krugman said in an e-mailed response to questions. “And similarly for Fed policy. So the speech was basically saying that in the long run we don’t matter, and in the short run, which could be pretty long, not our problem.”
On his New York Times blog after the speech, Krugman quoted John Maynard Keynes: “This long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”
Only if the alien invasion gets through. Otherwise, our descendents will long be paying for the effects of the last three years of Keynesianism on massive amounts of steroids.
(Found via James Poulos of Ricochet and PJTV.com; headline inspired by James Taranto with a Sega assist.)
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