{"id":189139,"date":"2010-05-16T19:38:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T00:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/05\/16\/read-the-shrill-one\/"},"modified":"2010-05-16T19:38:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T00:38:00","slug":"read-the-shrill-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/05\/16\/read-the-shrill-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Read the Shrill One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He <a href=\"http:\/\/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/05\/15\/misimformation\/\">comments on the IMF&#8217;s latest report on the fiscal situation worldwide<\/a>, and notices something buried in the footnotes, that the large structural deficits currently forecast are due to depressed demand and economic activity causing deflation, not government spending.<\/p>\n<p>The solution is therefore for governments to engage in stimulus activities of the sort that put an end to the great depression, while (hopefully) avoiding that whole &#8220;World War&#8221; thing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">It takes careful reading to discover what\u2019s really going on: <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(102, 0, 0);\"><p>The persistence of deficits reflects permanent revenue  losses, primarily from a steep decline in potential GDP during the  crisis, but also due to the impact of<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"> lower asset prices and financial  sector profits<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Aha. Most people who look at the IMF report will, I suspect, read it  as telling a tale of government profligacy getting us into a hole. But  what the report actually says is quite different: it says that the  financial crisis has made us permanently poorer, which among other  things reduces revenue, and governments have to tighten their belts to  make up for that loss.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He is correct when he says that the IMF&#8217;s burying the lede means that , &#8220;[T]he report isn\u2019t literally misinformation, but in practice it\u2019s likely have that effect.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He comments on the IMF&#8217;s latest report on the fiscal situation worldwide, and notices something buried in the footnotes, that the large structural deficits currently forecast are due to depressed demand and economic activity causing deflation, not government spending. The solution is therefore for governments to engage in stimulus activities of the sort that put &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1002,1200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-good-writing","category-inflation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}