Someone created a faux Paul Krugman Google+ account and posted the following:
People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.
The message sent out on Twitter (now removed) was picked up by Tim Carney (retweet now removed) and skeptically by Allahpundit. There is an extensive Memeorandum thread as well.
I don’t approve of creating fake accounts to deceive people, but the thing is, it could have been Krugman:
… I will share this gem from Paul Krugman’s recent blog post in which he claims that the tragedy and recovery in Japan likely will be “expansionary.” Yes, we see yet another “economist” become a caricature of the people whoclaimed that the hoodlum who broke the baker’s window described in Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics in One Lesson.As Hazlitt explains in the first chapter, the “Broken Window Fallacy” is the central fallacy that we see in one form or another, and from what I see, Krugman is the biggest advocate of this fallacy. Hey, I know. We’re in a “liquidity trap,” so the world is turned upside down. Right?
More on the Broken Window Parable from Kathleen’s post last March.
While it wasn’t Krugman, it could have been. And that’s the priceless part of it. Life imitating parody, or vice versa.
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