Quote do dia

Esta peca genial vem de uns dias atras... faz parte do documento escrito pelo Cochrane a criticar o Krugman por este ja nao perceber grandes coisas de economia (o Krugman anda a recitir Keynes... e esquece-se por completo o que o Barro ja mostrou... acho que a comissao Nobel devia comecar a pensar em revogar um premio Nobel que foi atribuido o ano passado):

"If you believe the Keynesian argument for stimulus, you should think Bernie Madoff is a hero. He took money from people who were saving it, and gave it to people who most assuredly were going to spend it. Each dollar so transferred, in Krugman’s world, generates an additional dollar and a half of national income. The analogy is even closer. Madoff didn’t just take money from his savers, he essentially borrowed it from them, giving them phony accounts with promises of great profits to come. This looks a lot like government debt.

If you believe the Keynesian argument for stimulus, you don’t care how the money is spent. All this puffery about “infrastructure,” monitoring, wise investment, jobs “created” and so on is pointless. Keynes thought the government should pay people to dig ditches and fill them up.

If you believe in Keynesian stimulus, you don’t even care if the government spending money is stolen. Actually, that would be better. Thieves have notoriously high propensities to consume."

Claro que ha sempre falhas de mercado que podem ser tratados com esse dinheiro (tipo bens publicos quando eles nao existem... um dos grandes beneficios dos planos de recuperacao dos anos 30 foi eles terem construido muitos bens publicos que nao existiam nos EUA) mas o Krugman anda apenas a dizer barbaridades por isso precisa de levar umas aulas de economia.