At the beginning of this week a spectacle of simply stunning hypocrisy took place on Bloomberg television. In a segment titled ‘Paul v. Paul’, 2012 GOP candidate Ron Paul was matched against Keynesian economist Paul Krugman. If you have not seen this exchange, you should immediately do so now.

http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?embedCode=FtN2dsNDpMB5HR8z4lcnvp-bYkfjD0ZW&playerBrandingId=8a7a9c84ac2f4e8398ebe50c07eb2f9d&width=640&deepLinkEmbedCode=FtN2dsNDpMB5HR8z4lcnvp-bYkfjD0ZW&height=360&thruParam_bloomberg-ui%5BpopOutButtonVisible%5D=FALSE

Whilst this was most certainly not one of Ron’s strongest public appearances, I was simply stunned at the methodical hypocrisy of Krugman. However, it will come as no surprise to anyone in the audience that the left were more then willing to declare Krugman the winner. Before I get into that, there is one other point I would like to bring up.

I do not doubt Ron’s Austrian credentials and I consider him, unsurprisingly, the strongest voice for sound fiscal and monetary policy in the entire US government, only followed by his son. That is unfortunately however, not a significant achievement. If Bloomberg had wanted a more lively debate, specifically with someone who would more than happily have called Krugman on his crap, there were many other actual economists rather than politicians they could have called upon and I hope they may do so in the future. Again, despite what I feel was a weak showing by Ron Paul, he at least didn’t contradict himself and appeared knowledgeable – in stark contrast to Krugman’s amazing lack of knowledge concerning the most basic principles of economics.

In his opening statements, Krugman makes a number of simply hilarious remarks, but the golden egg here is at 2:20 into the debate.

Krugman : ‘We have an economy in which money is not just green pieces of paper, with, err, with faces of dead Presidents on them. Money, is, is, the result of the financial system that includes a variety of assets. We’re not even quite sure, where the line between money and non money is.’

Now this statement by itself is hilarious to any Austrian on a number of levels. Firstly, it’s hard to know whether when Krugman says ‘Money is the result of the financial system’ he fully understands why that is. Following that up with ‘that includes a variety of assets’ would appear to confirm his complete ignorance to just how much control the financial system has over monetary policy to ensure the continued existence of their FRB operations.

The gem though is his statement that “We’renot even quite sure” what money is (whoever “We” are because it certainly doesn’t include Austrians). Now that would be bad enough by itself, but mere minutes later Krugman in effect admits that not only does he know what money is. Further, while denying US citizens are forced to use the dollar he, through a back of the hand clarification, admits that US citizens are actually forced to use the US dollar. This begins at 8:18

Ron : All I want to do is get rid of the monopoly. I want to legalize competition. There’s legal competition on currencies around the world. Why can’t we allow ourselves here, the legal competition over the gold or silver standard. Why is the Fed so frightened about this and then if I’m wrong, poof. Who cares if I’m right, if I’m right, if you want the paper money and I’m wrong, it doesn’t hurt anybody. Just allow me to legalize the currency, get rid of the monopoly, take the taxes off gold and silver, and get rid of the sales tax and capital gains tax and legal tender laws. Don’t hide behind a monopoly and force. People today, if they use gold and silver, go to jail, in this country.

Krugman : You really think that people, that’s not what I, that’s not my understanding of the law. Do you really think that people are only using dollar bills because the Federal government isn’t allowing them to use other stuff? That seems to me to be a very strange point of view. And by the way, we have lots of private…

Paul : You don’t have a choice, you go to jail if you use anything else.

Krugman : Not what I’ve heard, you can do barter. You can do barter with all kinds of stuff.

You don’t need to be a genious to see the twist: the whole purpose of money is to circumvent having to engage in barter, but Krugman admits that alternative option to using the US dollar is barter. I’m sure there will be those of the left leaning persuasion who will jump to his defence stating that, ‘Oh no, you’ve got it wrong you see. He didn’t mean barter, he meant something else,’ which just means that Krugman is completely oblivious to the legal tender laws Ron wanted removing. And as Ron put it when answering ‘Do you really think that people are only using dollar bills because the Federal government isn’t allowing them to use other stuff?’ the answer is a resounding YES for all of those men and women who understand the scam being pulled off by people such as yourself Mr Krugman.

I could go on, but this is basically Krugman’s tactic throughout the interview : thinly veiled jibes, baseless statements and declarations of ignorance concerning any world view contradicting his, denying obvious realities. As already been covered by other outlets Krugman simply doesn’t engage with arguments prefering to stay in his own delusional reality. Will he ever snap out of it, I don’t know, but in the meantime, we can leave the left to continue creaking backwards and forwards in their rocking chairs.