Contra Krugman, episode 219.

Welcome to the podcast that takes apart Paul Kruikman's New York Times column.

Join us as Tom Woods and Bob Murphy teach economics by uncovering and dissecting the arrows of Krookman.

Nobel Prize winner, newspaper columnist, and Destroyer of Nations.

It's time for Contra Krugman.

Hey, folks. Wanted to encourage you, if you haven't done so already, to give my own podcast a chance,

especially if you're going to be cooped up for a while. Go to Bob Murphy's Show.com to check it out.

Hey, everybody, Tom and Bob here with another episode of Contra Krugman.

Of course, on people's minds these days is this coronavirus issue.

And the column we're talking about today, March 7th, 2020, that's the date of the Krugman

column we're talking about, does not hit this directly.

But nevertheless, it's not a million

miles removed either because it's called the case for permanent stimulus, parentheses,

wonkish. He puts parentheses wonkish next to the headline of a column where he gets into the

weeds and some details, sometimes a little math for the economists, let's say, or for the not very good

economists. But what he's arguing here is that we all know, who's we, of course, but we all know

that monetary policy eventually hits a brick wall when you're in a so-called liquidity trap, for example. It runs into a

brick wall and can't deliver what you wanted to. So therefore, you have to turn to fiscal policy,

that is so-called fiscal stimulus. But Krugman says that, unfortunately, there are times when, you know, you need it, let's say,

there's just a, the economic conditions are depressed and the times really call for it.

But it's hard to get some of these policies going on short notice, really sound public investment

policies on short notice.

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