9/11/2011

Krugman's ill considered claims about Giuliani and Bush on 9/11

What exactly useful does Krugman add to this debate? Here is a link discussing Krugman's post entitled "The Years of Shame." What ideological or personal gain does Krugman think that Giuliani and Bush got from this tragedy?

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te (sic) atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. . . . A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it. . . .


UPDATE: James Taranto reminds us of an earlier weird economic claim made by Krugman.

"It seems almost in bad taste to talk about dollars and cents after an act of mass murder," he observed, then went ahead and did so: "If people rush out to buy bottled water and canned goods, that will actually boost the economy. . . . The driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings."

That was former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, who added that "the attack opens the door to some sensible recession-fighting measures," by which he meant "the classic Keynesian response to economic slowdown, a temporary burst of public spending. . . . Now it seems that we will indeed get a quick burst of public spending, however tragic the reasons." He went on to denounce the "disgraceful opportunism" of those who "would try to exploit the horror to push their usual partisan agendas"--i.e., conservatives who he said were doing exactly what he was doing. . . .


Minor point is that even if we want to focus on spending, spending depends on wealth and the country's wealth is destroyed.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is not people like Bush and Guiliani that made 9/11 a wedge issue. They did their best to unify an outraged nation to defend itself against and defeat one of the oldest enemies of the Western way of life.

It is Krugman and other socialists who have done everything in their power to convince Americans that our nation, our liberty, is not worth defending, and that we should be ashamed of trying.

Krugman and his fellow travelers are traitors, as far as I'm concerned, giving aid and comfort to our enemies, and demoralizing the rest of us.

9/11/2011 2:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Was it Bush that rushed out as fast as he could to cameras on a Sunday evening to gleefully proclaim that he had ordered the killing of a terrorist leader? Maybe I missed it since I don't follow much of what Krugman says, but I don't think Krugman raked Obama over the coals for exploiting that for political gain.

9/12/2011 7:02 PM  

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