Gigantic Bank Run Coming, Says Noble Prize Winner

In his Nov. 1 post, the economist every one enjoys making fun of believes the endgame for the euro lies in the breadbasket of the European sovereign debt market, Italy, leading to one of two lynchpin countries, France, to collapse next. Then, it's bedlam.

“The question I’m trying to answer right now is how the final act will be played,” Krugman writes. “At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France.”

Krugman states the obvious, of course, but he offers no recommendation for Europeans to protect themselves from the all-but-certain currency devaluations as a result of a broken euro—not that he is expected to do so. But it's times like these, one would think that this quack of economics had a suggestion for Europeans to protect themselves from a currency collapse. Or maybe the collapse of euro is how Treasury will be able to fund its upcoming $628 billion offering in the coming five months without going to war in another part of the world, as he had once suggested. But in a previous post of Sept. 6, Krugman attempted to formulate a response to the “Glenn Beck” gold crowd—a response that Ben Bernanke could have used in response to Rep. Ron Paul's queries regarding gold.

Krugman wrote, “ . . . [The] 'real' story about gold, in which the price has risen because expected returns on other investments have fallen; it is not, repeat not, a story about inflation expectations. Not only are surging gold prices not a sign of severe inflation just around the corner, they’re actually the result of a persistently depressed economy stuck in a liquidity trap — an economy that basically faces the threat of Japanese-style deflation, not Weimar-style inflation. So people who bought gold because they believed that inflation was around the corner were right for the wrong reasons.”

Nice try. Krugman doesn't get it, or doesn't want to get it. Investors buy gold because of the almost-predictable response to a “Japanese-style deflation” —that is, the political response—devalue the currency. A government that wants to prolong the eventual failure of a system Krugman has worked for so long defending won't stand idle along with its printing press. Hasn't Krugman noticed the course of action by the Fed to those ends so far?

Hyper-inflation, or just plain ol' very high inflation is the result of a series of political events and decisions, not economic or market ones. If he had read When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse by Adam Fergusson, he would be able to solve the 'puzzle' of a continued rise in the price of gold.

How, then, can we explain this man's elevation to a Noble Prize winner? Ask Obama; he may shed some light on the criteria used to award prizes these days. But a better explanation is attempted by Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski's, author of Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil. In his book, Lobaczewski makes the comparison between the US and Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler. He writes:

“A highly talented individual in the USA finds it ever more difficult to fight his way through to self-realization and a socially creative position. Universities, politics, and businesses ever more frequently demonstrate a united front of relatively untalented persons and even incompetent persons. The word 'overeducated' is heard more and more often. Such 'overqualified' individuals finally hide out in some foundation laboratory where they are allowed to earn the Nobel prize as long as they don’t do anything really useful. In the meantime, the country as whole suffers due to a deficit in the inspirational role of highly gifted individuals. As a result, America is stifling progress in all areas of life, from culture to technology and economics, not excluding political incompetence.”

Krugman can serve a purpose, however, outside of his sideshow opinions, much akin to what comes out of the mouth of the Pope; he can serve as a constant reminder that the US has devolved into a 'a truth is a lie, and a lie is a truth' type of society, just as Germany devolved during the 1920's and 30s.