Anti-Government Economic Orthodoxy

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



Anti-Government Economic Orthodoxy
October 27, 2012

Financial news network CNBC is dominated by correspondents and anchors who worship at the altar of the Market, preaching the right-wing theology of unrestrained capitalism and tightly constrained government. Amid that religious certainty, CNBC’s Becky Quick breezily mocks economist Paul Krugman, Beverly Bandler notes.

By Beverly Bandler


Becky Quick, co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” thinks she knows more than Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, former Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina D. Romer and countless other eminent economists who have studied the New Deal and recession recovery data since the 1930s.

Quick, who joined CNBC in February 2001 after working for seven years for The Wall Street Journal, also believes she knows more than 320 economists who repudiated the right-wing budget-slashers in a statement from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for America Progress in March 2011. Quick, who received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Rutgers (1993) and whose exposure to serious economics is unknown but appears limited, wrote in Fortune: “A call for frank talk about our debt from Bill Clinton (and me).”

In her Fortune piece, Quick is quick to dismiss Krugman’s concern about “deficit hysteria,” “fiscal scare tactics,” and the dangers of the “austerity budget.” In February 2010, for instance, Krugman presciently wrote:

“Thanks to deficit hysteria, Washington now has its priorities all wrong: all the talk is about how to shave a few billion dollars off government spending, while there’s hardly any willingness to tackle mass unemployment. Policy is headed in the wrong direction — and millions of Americans will pay the price.” .......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/10/27/anti-government-economic-orthodoxy/

[xchrom]

1. More interesting than I care to say. Nt