Paul Krugman – On The 8 Spot

August 18, 2009

Petron and the Healthcare Debate::The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

When petron was a government owned company, they were able to distort the supply curves because they were in essence the regulatory arm of the government. If the outcry was large enough shell and caltex may increase their prices but petron’s price does not move. What’s interesting in the case of the philippines is that petron was sold to foreign interests and afterwards the oil industry was deregulated. Double whammy to the Filipino people. Our government does not have the balls and probably the manpower to effectively police what is in effect price collusions of oil industry players. The solution is string institutions but I guess that is near impossible for us right now. Buy back petron would be second best with the least amount of complications, although where we are going to get the money, I don’t know. Maybe a few of Pres GMA’s entourage could chip in!

The public option as a signal
Look, it is possible to have universal care without a public option; Switzerland does. But there are some good reasons for the prominence of the public option in our debate.
One is substantive: to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective regulation of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done — which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism for disciplining the industry.
via The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

March 24, 2009

Hey Paul Krugman

: Image via Wikipedia

lyrics from nyt freakonomics blog here:
Hey Paul Krugman,
Why aren’t you in the administration?
Is there some kind of politicking that I don’t understand?
I mean, Timothy Geithner is like some little weasel.
Wasn’t he in a position of power
when all this sh*t went down in the first place?
When I listen to you, things seem to make sense
When I listen to him, all I hear is blah, blah, blah.
Hey Paul Krugman,
where the hell are ya, man?
‘Cause we need you on the front lines
not just writing for The New York Times.
I’d feel better if you were calling some shots
instead of writing your blog and probably thinking a lot.
I mean, don’t you have some influence?
Why aren’t you secretary of the Treasury?
For God’s sake, man, you won the Nobel Prize.
Timothy Geithner uses TurboTax.
When I listen to you, things seem to make sense.
When I listen to him, all I hear is blah, blah, blah.
Hey Paul Krugman, where the hell are ya, man?
(Obama Breakdown)
Sing it with me!
When I listen to you, things seem to make sense.
When I listen to him, all I hear is blah, blah, blah.
Hey Paul Krugman, where the hell are ya, man?
Your country needs you now.

March 3, 2009

Easy Way To Find Things To Do Great Work On (Advice from Paul Krugman)!

PRINCETON, NJ - OCTOBER 13: Princeton Profess... — Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I was, of course, only saying something that critics of conventional theory had been saying for decades. Yet my point was not part of the mainstream of international economics. Why? Because it had never been expressed in nice models. The new monopolistic competition models gave me a tool to open cleanly what had previously been regarded as a can of worms. More important, however, I suddenly realized the remarkable extent to which the methodology of economics creates blind spots. We just don’t see what we can’t formalize. And the biggest blind spot of all has involved increasing returns. So there, right at hand, was my mission: to look at things from a slightly different angle, and in so doing to reveal the obvious, things that had been right under our noses all the time.

From How I Work–Paul Krugman

October 14, 2008

funny—Andy Borowitz: Krugman Could Turn into Massive Douchebag, Colleagues Fear

One day after the Nobel committee announced that Paul Krugman had won the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics, colleagues of Mr. Krugman voiced concerns that winning the coveted award could turn him into an egregious douchebag.
At The New York Times, where Mr. Krugman is an op-ed page columnist, and at Princeton University, where he is a professor of economics, co-workers of the newly-minted Nobel laureate were reportedly bracing for the worst.
“I think it’s safe to say that Paul had pretty high self-esteem before the Nobel thing went down,” said one of Mr. Krugman’s Princeton associates, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But now he’s walking around like he’s Jay-Z or something.”
The first ominous sign, according to the associate, came at a meeting of the economics department this morning, when Mr. Krugman showed up with a coffee mug reading, “No. 1 Economist.”
Andy Borowitz: Krugman Could Turn into Massive Douchebag, Colleagues Fear.

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