Ron Paul Responds to Paul Krugman: ‘The failure of Keynesian economics is loud and clear’

For some reason or another, Keynesian economist Paul Krugman decided to attack former Texas Republican Congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul by calling him a “crotchety crank.” This is about as mature as calling everyone who disagrees with him “derp” or calling for a space alien invasion to ignite economic growth or urging the Federal Reserve to create a housing bubble or…well, you get the hint.

Writing in a New York Times blog post in late July entitled “The Old Man and the CPI,” Krugman referred to Paul as an “old man” and a “crotchety crank.” He opined that Dr. Paul, bestselling author of “End the Fed,” tends to “believe his own nonsense.”

Here is the passage that is drawing the ire of many of Paul’s supporters:

“True, there’s no reason to suppose that Paul is deliberately misleading his market—he probably believes his own nonsense. But in terms of the underlying dynamics that makes no difference,” Krugman wrote in his blog post.

“So who are the people who feel a deep affinity with a crotchety crank? Um, crotchety white guys feeling cranky.”

Paul decided to send a video response to the blog post on his Liberty Report. With true class, Dr. Paul denied ever being called a “crotchety crank” because most people he comes across thinks he’s never cranky and has a “a lot of fun in the world of ideas and presenting the cause of liberty.”

Although Paul was irked by the name-calling, the “Champion of the Constitution” delved into the issues and called Keynesianism a failed concept.

“The failure of Keynesian economics is loud and clear.” Paul stated. “That’s one of the reasons why I believe that you have become interested in addressing my issues and what I’m talking about.”

Paul noted how the average American has fared poorly in recent decades, even when the government has increased its spending dramatically, which has been encouraged by Keynesians like Krugman. Paul explained that since 1971 federal spending has increased close to four-fold, but median household incomes have stagnated over a decade and grew by less than 25 percent over the past 40 years.

Moreover, deficit spending leads to inflation and the destruction of purchasing power for the impecunious. Paul says that Krugman would like to allude to the CPI, but it’s a misleading number because the government manipulates the numbers to make things seem better than they are.

“The CPI doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s used for fiction to try to fool the people and even used to fool the markets.” Paul argued. “[The CPI] gets changed when it’s going up too fast. We do know that the CPI as measured by the old standards would be going up at four percent [per year].”

He added: “Sometimes you can have a lot of prices going up and they’re not included in the CPI, such as rents. They exclude rents and they’re skyrocketing.”

In the end, according to Paul, the system will fall apart but it can be reversed by welcoming liberty, private property rights and the principles of self-reliance.

The entire video can be viewed below:

(Please note: we apologize for the lateness of this story. It was recently passed to us. Thank you for your understanding.)