Krugman Calls Out Niall Ferguson's Obama Hit Piece in Newsweek

    Economic fakery is nothing new to Niall Ferguson. However, it's surprising that an allegedly serious news magazine like Newsweek would put his hit piece on the President on the front page. Typical of the allegedly "liberal" media.

     It's not so surprising that Newsweek is considering ending it's print magazine all together. The latest by Ferguson shows that whatever intellectual integrity the magazine ever has is long gone.

     Politico Dylan Byers reacts:

     "Tina Brown -- (sigh) -- is out with yet another -- (sigh) -- controversial edition of Newsweek.
The cover-story, which hit the top of Drudge Report on Sunday evening, is by Niall Ferguson and titled "Hit The Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President." For those who don't know Ferguson, he's an Oxford-trained Harvard historian who was once ranked among the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. He is also to the subject of the past what Malcolm Gladwell is to the subject of the future: a weaver of disparate facts and data that, when selectively thrown into the same pot, create in the reader that best-selling a-ha feeling."

      "Ferguson also dabbles in counterfactual history, and in keeping with the genre has managed to write a cover-story about our incumbent president that, as New York Times op-ed writer and economist Paul Krugman points out tonight, runs counter to fact."

    "There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking..." Krugman writes.

    "Krugman highlights Ferguson's claim that the insurance-coverage provisions of Obamacare are estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation."

    Krugman:

Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.
Now, people on the right like to argue that the CBO was wrong. But that’s not the argument Ferguson is making — he is deliberately misleading readers, conveying the impression that the CBO had actually rejected Obama’s claim that health reform is deficit-neutral, when in fact the opposite is true. ...
We’re not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?

      "Tina Brown certainly swings for the fences. She just puts a little too much pine tar on the bat."

       http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/krugman-to-newsweek-correct-obama-story-132502.html

       Can it be that this was once considered a highly reputable mainstream publication?  

       P.S. Thank God Krugman is back, we need him now more than ever!

       P.S.S. Sumer's blog has more or less been taken over by the Major Freedomites-the extreme Rothbardians, the "anarcho-capitalists" etc.

      http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=15812#comment-177914