Krugman in the New Republic

James Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu
Thu Sep 24 18:01:24 PDT 1998


On someone on lbo's recommendation, I read Paul Krugman's article at:

http://www.thenewrepublic.com/magazines/tnr/current/krugman100598.html

I didn't see any endorsement (or even mention) of Malaysia's Mahathir or, for that matter, anti-semism there. (BTW, Krugman is Jewish.) All he does is argue, in effect, that rapid flows of hot money make small countries face an unhappy choice between (1) maintaining speculator confidence but causing a serious recession and (2) forgetting about the speculators, leading to a major financial crisis, and preventing recession. To avoid this dismal choice, he recommends stopping the flow of short-term capital, though he doesn't explain how.

Elsewhere, Krugman has An open letter to Prime Minister Mahathir in which he talks about the limits of capital controls.

It's pretty tame stuff, though from the point of view of Stanley Fischer or Larry Summers, it may be heresy.

Jim Devine jdevine at popmail.lmu.edu & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/19980924/6a4f33f6/attachment.htm>



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