PrintWhatever you do, don't take stock advice from these guys
Economist Joe Stiglitz, who's famous for his history of economic failures throughout the third world, has come up with a brainchild of an idea for Getting Trump: Assemble a group of fellow Nobel economists to say that Trump will destroy the world if he's re-elected president, so vote for Joe Biden.
It has the whiff and odor of a previous Democrat playbook play, like that of the 51 intelligence officials who signed the letter claiming Hunter Biden's laptop was fake and probably a Russian disinformation op.
So now he's drawn his 16 Nobel prize-winning economists with this, according to Axios:
Sixteen Nobel prize-winning economists are jumping into the presidential campaign with a stark warning: Former President Trump's plans would reignite inflation and cause lasting harm to the global economy if he wins in November.
Why it matters: The Nobel laureates are lending their academic prestige to a political argument the Biden administration has been making for weeks: Inflation would be worse under Trump.
- "While each of us has different views on the particulars of various economic policies, we all agree that Joe Biden's economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump," the 16 economists write in a letter, first obtained by Axios.
Zoom in: Since prices spiked in the summer of 2022, Democrats have been playing defense on the economy.
- But their various explanations — including a brief embrace of the term "Bidenomics" and big media buys — don't seem to have worked.
- Voters aren't vibing with an economy that the White House says is great.
It's ridiculous. Voters know that President Trump created a growing, vibrant, economy in his last term, and will do the same for this term. Why Joe Biden's miserable economy is a better idea is something only an academic could think.
Trump will allow energy companies to drill oil and gas, enough to supply the U.S. and export it abroad. He will deregulate the economy of all its monstrous green fetters and other absurdities that hamper economic growth the way he did last time, and he will make it more profitable for businesses to hire here and create here than embrace the opportunities they have abroad. Above all, he will turn off the money presses which are the root cause of inflation, as inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It's likely he will lay off thousands of useless government bureaucrats, same way Argentina's President Javier Milei did, both because they are useless and because they are disloyal. This explains the ends to which Joe Biden is going to keep them in place as an 'insurance' policy. As for Argentina, its inflation rate just clocked in at zero.
The whole thing stinks of election interference and not original election interference, but a pale, raddled version of what was done in 2020. It's also bad economics, proving once again that the eggheads don't know how the world works. First question I'd like to know is that with all that leftist clubbery here, where's Paul Krugman? Krugman somehow didn't sign this, and that's a red flag, because he pretty well knows how economics works when he's not mouthing Democrat talking points. Somehow this wasn't right with him, and this is the guy who said the economy would tank if Trump were elected in 2016. He didn't want to get egg all over his face a second time when the economy starts to blossom.
As for Stiglitz, well, he's always been a politicized partisan hack, dating from his days with Bill Clinton as his World Bank economist. His job was to go around the world rescuing countries in fiscal difficulties. He advised the Argentinian socialist government of Nestor Kirchner in 2007. Think about the implications of where that led.
In other words, he helped make Argentina Argentina, what it was with its hundred-percent-plus inflation rate until Javier Milei was elected president to hose the hellhole out. What's more, he praised Hugo Chavez's economic model -- see here. Nothing like a Chavista economy for the states. During Greece's 2010 economic crisis he insisted that Greece would not default on its monster debt and any thought of it was "absurd." He's advised Jeremy Corbyn of the U.K. Labour Party. Sound like the right guy to be advising the U.S. voters on how the economy needs to be run?
His entire career is like that, and in many nations, he's completely loathed for his bad economic prescriptions.
Would you take stock advice from this guy or any of his pals? Maybe Robert Schiller, who's inexplicably on the list, perhaps worried that Trump will step up spending, but the others are just garden-variety partisan leftist hacks who haven't said a word about Joe Biden's spendathon, let alone inflation.
George Akerlof, for instance, is Janet Yellen's husband. We all know he doesn't give good advice to Janet, who viewed inflation as 'transitory.' Sound like a guy who can credibly warn about inflation? Funny how he only does so when Trump is in office.
Whatever you do, don't take stock tips from these guys.
