I love reading Paul Krugman. Seriously. I do. I can't stand him personally for his vicious demeanor and disgraceful lack of intellectual honesty, but his columns do entertain.
In today's N.Y. Times he outdid himself. After a reasonably thorough overview of rising commodity prices and the causes for same ( bad weather in the Ukraine and Australia ; our stupid ethanol policy; higher demand for meat and thus feed grains in China; high cotton prices causing conversion of fields from food to fiber ) Krugman approaches and then takes a dive on a PRIME cause for the recent run-up in food prices and resultant political chaos in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. He literally dismisses with a wave of his hand Bernanke's monetary policy and instead reaches down and comes up with the real root causene of his favorite bugaboos btw, Climate Change ! In the immortal words of Robert Wuhl , "I shit you not ! "
Without any expertise in geography, climatology or meteorology ( Not to worry Paul, it never stopped Al Gore. ) Krugman says it's all the fault of Climate Change.He doesn't give a single crop figure or harvest numbers. He just cites to a few supposedly apocalyptic weather phenomena from last year and this and then pronounces them as the root cause of current agricultural price disruptions. And this guy ( and Al Gore ) won a Nobel Prize ? He is an economics professor at Princeton. If he had submitted that kind of dreck as his PhD. thesis I'd like to think he would have flunked. One can never be too sure given the intellectual corruption in American academia. Cornell West is also a tenured professor at Princeton, so anything is possible.
Let's assume Krugman is right. Let's give the Fed a pass and blame it all on Climate Change. So what ? There is nothing that can be done that would have any meaningful or practical effect. We've gone over the "how's" and "why's" too many times to count.
Let's assume hybrids are part of the solution. The same folks pushing them are the same ones opposing new nuclear plants. Plants needed to generate the electricity that those and fully electric cars need to keep running.



ne of his favorite bugaboos btw, Climate Change ! In the immortal words of Robert Wuhl , "I shit you not ! "
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