Live debate recap: Ron Paul versus Paul Krugman

Presidential candidate and a giant of the Libertarian crowd, Ron Paul, debated Nobel-prize winning Paul Krugman on Bloomberg’s Street Smart.

See the debate here.

Krugman, who favours stronger fiscal and monetary intervention to reduce unemployment, argued that American has a managed monetary policy, and the country can’t go back to the past to some ideal time. Inflation is needed to re-start the economy.

“This notion that capital can come out of the expansion of the money supply is remote,” countered Paul.

“Now Prof. Krugman says we want to go back one hundred years ago is not true. We would like to improve on what happened back then. But he wants to go back 1,000 or 2,000 years ago to the Greeks and Romans when they debased their currency.”

Krugman deferred on an argument regarding Roman history, but instead focussed on the Great Depression and policies that led to growth in the ’50s.

Paul said we should be using Milton Friedman and not Keynes as a guiding principle for economic policies.

“I want to say something about Milton Friedman here,” said Krugman.

“Because if you actually read what he wrote in his readings for economists instead of his slightly loose popular writings you’ll see that he wrote the Federal Reserve is responsible for the Great Depression because it didn’t do enough. Friedman’s complaint is that the Federal Reserve did not print enough money. When Ben Bernanke uses the helicopter metaphor, he was borrowing it from Milton Friedman.”

The Twitter-verse was aflame on the debate, much of it snark:

Krugman didn’t stop with Ron Paul. He also took on Carly Fiorina, failed Republican candidate in the Californian gubernatorial race, over tax policy.