I stumbled on this today:
“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, 1998, via Zero Hedge
Hat tip to Maggie’s Farm.
Paul Krugman may be the most incompetent human being currently alive. His “advice” is dispatched with the lofty air of one expecting us sheep to follow his glowing wisdom but he is wrong every time! It’s uncanny. Everyone, all of us, are fallible mortals, but Krugman is never right. How is it that anyone listens to a goddamn word the man says? Why does he have a job?
I’ve come to believe it’s not humanly possible to be wrong enough to lose a job as an economist at the New York Times. I know this because in 1999, the year the Times hired Krugman, they closed the year selling at $49 ($72 adjusted for inflation). They’re selling at $23 today. So they’ve had a Nobel Prize winning economist on staff for 19 years and managed to lose 68% of their value. Dude’s a deluded rat on a sinking ship.
Think about your crazy Uncle Ralph who’s been married eight times and is underwater on the timeshare condominium next to a crack house. You know how he went short on silver the day Obama got elected ($10.22) and then decided to buy it back at in 2011 ($40.00) in order to “cut his losses”? You know how he drinks too much wine on Thanksgiving and starts dispensing advice? You know how he saves money by not changing the oil in his car and thinks Hot Pockets are health food? Yeah that guy! He’s right more often than Paul Krugman.
Here’s a clip I wrote last winter:
“Also, for the sake of humanity, would someone please take Paul Krugman behind the barn and beat him with a calculator. Why is he still employed? He said “the stock market will never recover from Donald Trump’s presidential victory“. It recovered immediately and then hit the afterburners into a 31% run which is still going. It’s almost mathematically impossible to make worse predictions than that flaming dipshit Krugman.”
When I wrote that post (last December) the DOW had soared 31% during the period when Krugman insisted things would “never recover”. I checked just now and it’s up 35% (6464.79 points) since Trump’s election.
That means that last winter Krugman was almost inhumanly wrong and now he’s even more wrong. You can set your clock by Krugman’s wrongness.
Here’s another reference:
“Ideally we should round up every employee of the mainstream media and tattoo “Pics or it didn’t happen” on their ass. The only drawback to my wise suggestion is Paul Krugman. Some poor soul would have to look at Paul Krugman’s ass and after all the economic bullshit pulled out of that orifice it’s going to look like the gateway to a deluded and incomprehensible hell. Nobody wants to see that!”
Last but not least, the fictional world of Lesbian Activist Squirrels has not been spared the wrongness of Krugman. I can imagine a world of disco based mind control but Krugman’s galactic incompetence crosses the barriers of time and space and reality itself. I simply can’t imagine this or any portion of the multi-verse where he’s not wrong. Nothing is so fanciful that it’s not grounded in the wrongness of Krugman. If I wrote a story with spacefaring orange Pandas playing poker at a table with death, David Lynch in a tutu, and a ham sandwich… there would still be a person named Krugman cavorting in the periphery… and he’d still be wrong:
So, you’re not a fan of P.K.?
The cat was reading over my shoulder and when she reached “Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman” she decided grooming herself was a better use of her time.
Of course, cats think anything they do is a better use of their time as long as it isn’t whatever you’re trying to get them to do.
Why has the NYT kept him on?
P.S.: autofill came up with TWO email addresses for me but nuthin’ for my name. I’ve been scrubbed! Sorta. WTHeck?
The Nobel prize became a parody of itself; especially the peace prize. Yasser Arafat is where I started wondering if they paid attention to the affect of these people we’re supposed to honor. Are we supposed to think there was more peace on earth because Arafat was in power? Really? Then came Al Gore. A Powerpoint and yammering about ice free polar ice caps in the summer in 2014? I could do that! It’s like they gave the prize for a dude who made a high school group project and took it on the road because he lost the election and was sad. Then Barak Obama spent eleven days in office and got his prize for… um well for being black basically. Which I suppose he did rather well. But did he create more peace?
It seems to go further downhill yearly. I think they skeeved out Bob Dylan horribly. I suspect he only accepted it to avoid avoid further publicity or entanglements with their black hole of navel gazing. Poor guy.
Krugman is just the icing on the cake. “The award in economic predictions that are always wrong goes to…”
Incidentally there is talk that North and South Korea might finally officially end their war. This may have a lot to do with America’s involvement in the guise of Cheeto Jesus. Peace between North and South Korea is definitely a good thing and would have justified Obama’s medal. If Cheeto Jesus ever gets the award look to see liberal heads exploding planet wide. I can’t imagine it would happen but it would be funny to say “President and Nobel Laureate Donald Trump”; possibly while in a Starbucks in Portland. (On a non-funny note, I’d like to see North and South Korea stand down and don’t actually care who gets the credit.)
The medal should carry Trump’s likeness rather than Nobel’s. Ha!
Oooh, oooh, I have a thought re Trump ‘n Starbucks! 8,000 Starbucks will be shutting down for “racial sensitivity training”- BUT it’s a cover for DT and Kimmie to secretly meet in one of them which was chosen by an NSA random number generator. Kimmie could get totally buzzed on burned coffee and then get sucked into our Hedonistic Capitalist Lifestyle. He would naturally want to abandon his missile program and divert the freed-up funds into keeping him buzzed.
My Nobel is a yuge honor. It’s a very very good Nobel. I had my people melt it down and put my image on the medal. Now it has an American on the front, which Makes Nobels Great Again.
Has Krugman offered any opinion on global warming? Why yes, yes he has: https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/894950398439677952?lang=en According to the 15’x30’x10′ (yes, feet!) pile of snow I moved from my driveway last weekend (a short but exciting sledding hill for the kids), his track record is unblemished.
Paul Krugman is fractally wrong. No matter how you look at his predictions he’s wrong. No matter how you scale any numbers he farts out, those are wrong. If he tells you the sun’s rising in the east tomorrow, look west. If he tells you something is a sure thing, bet the other way.
Fractally wrong is a perfect description.