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.
How Krugman could claim “no visible cost” is absurd in light of issues like, for example, the New York Post’s recent report that mortgage payments alone have spiked 90 percent under Biden amidst the Federal Reserve’s drastic rate hikes. Not only that, but the interest rates on retail credit are also taking a record bite out of Americans’ wallets. The Post summarized that “aspiring buyers are confronted with one of the most unaffordable markets in recent memory.”
Krugman also absurdly complained about how Biden hasn’t been praised enough for his illusory economic successes. However, as much as rich media talking heads like Krugman are doing their utmost to gaslight people into believing that everything is fine and dandy, reality isn’t going along for the ride. Along with the insanely high prices and record credit card debt, new monthly home payments are reportedly almost double what they were at the beginning of Biden’s term, and 70 percent of Americans reported that they are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
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.”
These problems still hit everyday Americans hard and do not spell a thriving economy like the one Krugman is desperately trying to convince them exists. “So far, at least, the public seems unwilling to believe the good news or to give the Biden administration any credit,” he wrote.
Public opinion clearly reflects the effects of these problems. According to a Fox News poll, 78 percent of registered voters believe that the economy is in “bad shape” and will get worse.
Krugman also went after economists who he claimed got their inflation predictions wrong. Krugman has apparently forgotten that he is high on the list of economists to “beware” because of his vehement inaccuracy when it came to his “transitory” inflation predictions that took him months to admit he was wrong in 2022. What’s ironic is that Krugman reneged on his 2022 mea culpa in his latest op-ed by claiming that “transitory” apologists like himself who admitted they were “wrong” were somehow still right, committing the very offense he accused others of doing. His excuse was that “‘transitory’ ended up meaning years rather than months,” which literally makes no logical sense. His headline, “Beware Economists Who Won’t Admit They Were Wrong,” speaks for itself.
Krugman is notorious for ridiculously predicting positive economic outcomes under Biden, before moving the goalposts when his predictions inevitably go wrong. He’s in no position to be lecturing anybody about the virtue of admitting that they messed up.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The New York Times at 800-698-4637 and demand that it distance itself from Krugman’s hypocrisy and radical leftist activism.
