Paul Krugman, Contrarian Indicator
Paul Krugman has a silly piece out called Yes He Could. The deck headline: “Health Care and Climate: President Obama’s Big Deals.” It’s his typical partisan hackery and I won’t bore you with most of it, but this part caught my eye:
A larger answer, I’d guess, is Simpson-Bowles syndrome — the belief that good things must come in bipartisan packages, and that fiscal probity is the overriding issue of our times. This syndrome persists among many self-proclaimed centrists even though it’s overwhelmingly clear to anyone who has been paying attention that (a) today’s Republicans simply will not compromise with a Democratic president, and (b) the alleged fiscal crisis was vastly overblown.
When Paul Krugman says it’s “overwhelmingly clear” that “the alleged fiscal crisis was vastly overblown” . . . it’s time to buy gold.
Have any longtime readers bought gold recently? Any advice? I know to be wary of the numismatic coins that are peddled by Glenn Beck and the other yakkers as if they were bullion gold. Other than that obvious point, any tips?
Patterico (9c670f) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:17 amDon’t buy teh KRUGerrands!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:31 amtake the words of this
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:33 amferret-faced economist
with a grain of salt
Liberalism is a form of mental illness, and Krugman is a case study of that.
Mark (75db68) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:37 amI’ve been out of gold for a while but I did make some money on it when Democrats were elected. The stock market with zero interest rates has been the inflation hedge for the past few years. That will come to an end and I don’t like to think about the consequences then. Bubbles pop. We’ve seen two, one the Clinton Internet bubble, the other the Barney Frank real estate bubble.
Mike K (cd7278) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:50 amit’s time to buy gold
George Soros says just hold on to your cash.
nk (dbc370) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:59 ami’d suggest investing in brass copper & lead…
😎
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:17 amI found a video of Krugman trying to rally the troops.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN-aCYVVtyo
scott (6196a3) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:27 amR.I.P. Tony Gwynn
Icy (ef91d6) — 6/16/2014 @ 8:32 amI’d actually suggest silver as a precious metal investment. Right now gold is $1275/oz. If inflation shot through the roof the value of any conceivable format in which you can possess gold would be too large to buy anything less than a car.
You’d have to own it as dust, like you see in the old westerns where the prospector comes into town and buys supplies and drinks a pinch at a time from his gold dust pouch. I don’t know anyone who sells gold dust. Ever thought of prospecting, Pat?
At the moment Silver is $19.66/oz., which makes it more convenient as a medium of exchange.
You may want to look into junk silver. These are older US dime through dollar coins with no collector value. Anything minted 1964 or earlier is 90% silver. Kennedy half dollars minted between 1965=70 are 40% silver. There are precious metal companies that sell junk silver in various lot sizes but you can also buy it on ebay in as large or small amounts as you like.
I have zero doubt that as the second coming of FDR Prom Queen wouldn’t hesitate to confiscate gold. But junk silver is still legal US tender. I think it’d be harder for him to get his greedy hands on it. Although I have to admit I have a few commemorative euros in gold.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:17 amthe value of any conceivable format in which you can possess gold would be too large to buy anything less than a car
Not so. You can pound gold so thin it self-adheres. Thinner than paint. That’s how gold-fillings were done. Numerous films of gold packed into the cavity one at a time. My dentist told me, it was part of his final exam. He got his mother to volunteer as the patient because it took three hours to do one cavity. And then there’s the ubiquitous gold leaf on books and such — it’s pure gold.
nk (dbc370) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:30 amA few updates on the climate front from Watts Up With That?:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/14/stunning-admission-and-a-new-excuse-for-the-pause-lousy-data/
The problem clearly isn’t that the climate scientists were looking at the wrong end of the dog. It was that the wrong end of the horse was looking at it. But as Anthony Watts observes in his comment, what they mean by “lousy data” is that it doesn’t support their theory. So they go in search of data that supports their theory. Which according to the Guardian article WUWT links to will be sea rise. Even though if you look at the historical record, sea rise doesn’t support the theory of global warming either.
But the global warming mongers couldn’t make it clearer what they are doing is the opposite of science. If you are following the scientific method you test your theory against the evidence, and if the evidence invalidates your theory your theory is wrong. Not these guys. Their theory must be right, so if the evidence doesn’t support it then it doesn’t invalidate the theory. Because it’s not a theory it’s a religious belief. So it’s the evidence that’s wrong.
A couple of other updates:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/04/the-pause-continues-still-no-global-warming-for-17-years-9-months/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/13/new-study-suggests-a-temperature-drop-of-up-to-1c-by-2020-due-to-low-solar-activity/
The fact that the Earth isn’t warming and may well be entering a cooling phase will not stop President Lindsey Lohan from saying the stupidest things in the world.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/15/obama-invokes-tauntology-in-discussing-climate-skeptics/
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:32 amIf you buy gold, buy gold that you can bury in your own yard, not kept in someone else’s vaults.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-24/get-your-fake-tungsten-filled-gold-coins-here
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-06/one-ton-gold-shipment-hong-kong-revealed-contain-just-worthless-metal
SPQR (c4e119) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:39 amYou could do that, nk. You could also just cut the coin apart to make change. People have done that since ancient times.
That’s where we get the terms “pieces of 8” as the Spanish 8 real coin could literally be cut up into 8 parts worth 1 real. Or if you cut up a dollar coin into 8 parts then “2 bits” equaled a quarter dollar.
I just thought that would be too much work, when silver coins are so handy. And are more likely to fly under the radar when the Leninists start blaming Obama’s economy on “wreckers” and start searching out “hoarders.”
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:41 amActually I don’t think they ever cut up dollars into 8 parts, just quarters. But the “2 bits” slang comes from the practice of cutting up the Spanish coin into 8 parts.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:46 amI was thinking, back when Patterico was talking about the gold standard, that we could have gold leaf dollar bills that contained a dollar’s worth of real gold. Probably would have to polyurethane them or something to keep the gold from rubbing off, like my daughter’s kindergarten teacher did to her picassos.
nk (dbc370) — 6/16/2014 @ 9:50 amI’ve also heard to buy physical gold as stated by SPQR. The markets for gold are leveraged, so they sell more paper gold than they have physical gold to back it with.
DejectedHead (a094a6) — 6/16/2014 @ 10:18 am16. The price of gold is not stable.
Sammy Finkelman (69aa73) — 6/16/2014 @ 10:48 amIt’s an alleged fiscal crisis because we have a printing press wingnuts?!??!! I don’t see how any thinking person can be onboard with Paulie. He went from a deficit hawk to deficit dove only when Bush was heading out the door. The only bigger obviously partisan flip flop was made by the liberals who learned to heart drone killings.
East Bay Jay (a5dac7) — 6/16/2014 @ 10:49 amThe price of gold would be the weight of the gold leaf on the dollar bill divided by one dollar, Sammy. Let’s say we wanted to fix it at today’s prices, it would be 1/1,200th of a troy ounce per dollar bill. That would give us about seven and a half trillion dollars for the entire economy of the world since gold started being mined. Are you snickering yet?
nk (dbc370) — 6/16/2014 @ 11:01 amConventional wisdom is often wrong:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/06/confirmed-las-vegas-cop-killers-were-members-of-far-left-occupy-movement/
narciso (3fec35) — 6/16/2014 @ 11:17 amThis is the same Krugman who repeatedly says that the stimulus failed because it was too SMALL to deal with such a “severe” crisis? Isn’t it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/krugman-the-stimulus-tragedy.html?_r=0
Sure looks like it to me…
SaveFarris (e23e53) — 6/16/2014 @ 2:23 pm#21. ah thanks.
I was wondering why I stopped hearing about those right-wing killers, I was thinking they’d be good for another 3 weeks of headline.
max (4fdf98) — 6/16/2014 @ 2:49 pmon another trope;
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/06/guatemalan-ambassador-violence-in-central-america-is-not-reason-for-influx-of-illegals-to-us/
narciso (3fec35) — 6/16/2014 @ 3:50 pmnarciso, violence has always been high in Central America, but there has been no spike in violence. It remains at its normally high levels.
Steve57 (d38ceb) — 6/16/2014 @ 4:31 pmAfter giving it quite some consideration, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I decided to go with investing in silicon and copper and other metals, mostly …
We have put solar photovoltaic on the roof of our house to give us approximately 40 kWh per day (averaged) …
It just seems to make so much more sense than an equivalent investment in any precious (yet non-functional) metals …
Alastor (e7cb73) — 6/16/2014 @ 4:53 pmDoes he even bother to explain why the fiscal problem is “exaggerated” ?
Perhaps he should visit the pacific northwest, where property values are down over 50% since 2008, commercial real estate vacancies are up over 25% since 2010 and is getting worse (just in Seattle, the Sears store downtown closed, there are now 2 empty storefronts at a busy downtown intersection)
I’m wondering if he is suffering from NYC blinders.
seeRpea (23bca2) — 6/16/2014 @ 7:06 pm