Evening Must-Read: Paul Krugman: Inflation, Septaphobia, and the Shock Doctrine

Paul Krugman: Inflation, Septaphobia, and the Shock Doctrine: “The bad news from Europe is a reminder that the basic insight…

…some of us have been trying to convey, mostly in vain, ever since 2008 remains valid: the great danger facing advanced economies is that governments and central banks will do too little, not too much…. Yet the power of the hard money/fiscal austerity orthodoxy (yes, market monetarists want one without the other, but they have no constituency) remains immense. Why?… The one percent (or actually the 0.01 percent)… have much more to gain from asset appreciation than they have to lose from the small chance of runaway inflation. In fact, if you compare stock prices in the US, with its aggressively easing Fed, with Europe, you can see the difference…. An alternative is selective historical memory. Some time ago Kevin Drum suggested that it’s all about septaphobia, fear of the 1970s…. Finally, there’s the notion that it’s implicitly about politics: crises are a chance to force “reforms” that strip away worker protections and the welfare state, and any suggestion that technical solutions, monetary or fiscal, could do the job is rejected. The thing is, it sure looks like a form of false consciousness on the part of elite. But I’m still trying to figure it out.