LMAO!!! ~ the Daily Currant strikes again ~ what is truly hilarious is that apparently several conservative talking heads and blogs are picking this up and reporting it as news ~ this is the only fun part of knee-jerk hate ~ ~ Sooz

Paul Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy
Mar. 06, 2013

Economist and columnist Paul Krugman declared personal bankruptcy today following a failed attempt to spend his way out of debt.

In a Chapter 13 filing to the United States Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, lawyers for Krugman listed $7,346,000 in debts versus $33,000 in assets.

The majority of his debts are related to mortgage financing on a $8.7 million apartment in lower Manhattan, but the list also includes $621,537 in credit card debt and $33,642 in store financing at famed jeweler Tiffanys and Co.

The filing says that Krugman got into credit card trouble in 2004 after racking up $84,000 in a single month on his American Express black card in pursuit of rare Portuguese wines and 19th century English cloth

Rather than tighten his belt and pay the sums back, the pseudo-Keynesian economist decided to "stimulate" his way to a personal recovery by investing in expenses he hoped would one day boost his income.

Cockroaches and Creditors

Between 2004 and 2007 Krugman splurged on expensive cars, clothes, and travel in hopes that the new lifestyle would convince his bosses at the New York Times to give him a giant raise.

"They say always dress for the job you want," Krugman explains. "So I thought maybe if I showed up in $70,000 Alexander Amosu suits they would give me ownership of part of the company. If I had only been granted a sliver of the New York Times Co., I could have paid everything back."

Even after he realized an equity stake was not going to happen, Krugman continued to spend wildly hoping his bling and media appearances would increase demand for his personal brand and lift his book sales.

His biggest mistake came in 2007, when at the height of the financial bubble he decided to invest in high-end real estate in New York City. His multi-million dollar apartment lost 40 percent of its value just months after its purchase, and has been underwater ever since.

"You'd think a Nobel Prize winning economist could recognize a housing bubble," says Herman Minsky, a retired television executive who purchased Krugman's home at a huge discount. "But hey, I'm not complaining."

Conscience of a Fraud

Krugman, a renowned trade economist, joined the New York Times as a columnist in 2000. Since the start of the financial crisis he has used the platform to argue vociferously for what he terms Keynesian deficit spending.

However, Keynes did not advocate using debt financing to stimulate the economy. Rather, he argued that government should save in the good times and spend in the bad.

Through his lawyer, Bertil Ohlin, Krugman explains that despite his travails with spending and debt in his personal finances, he stands by his pseudo-Keynesian policies.

"I still defend my analysis that on the macroeconomic level sovereign debt crises can be fixed by increasing government borrowing to lift aggregate demand. I admit, however, that on the microeconomic level this strategy has failed spectacularly."

http://dailycurrant.com/2013/03/06/paul-krugman-declares-personal-bankruptcy/

Thanks for posting this, Sooz.

I was able to use it elsewhere when someone posted it as news.

Captain Reality strikes again!

Now this is something to smile about.

this goes into the wishful thinking file.

I really LOVE this story ~ for me, it exemplifies the raw power, stupidity, and danger of knee-jerk hatred ~ Sooz

Monday, Mar 11, 2013 08:50 AM CDT
Breitbart duped by satirical news outlet
The conservative website and Boston.com both ran stories from a competitor of The Onion on Paul Krugman.
By Alex Seitz-Wald

How delicious: Paul Krugman, legendary economist and liberal lion has declared bankruptcy! Breitbart.com saw solid gold and quickly jumped on the story — If Krugman can’t even manage his own finances, why should we trust his advice on the nation’s, right?

Unfortunately for conservatives in the early throes of schadenfrued, the story comes from The Daily Currant, a satirical news site that competes with The Onion. It’s bogus. “I decided not to post anything about it; instead, I wanted to wait and see which right-wing media outlets would fall for the hoax,” Krugman wrote on his blog. “And Breitbart.com came through!”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go give a lavishly paid speech to Friends of Hamas,” he continued, poking fun at Breitbart’s recent invention of a group that doesn’t exist.

Breitbart summarily removed the story without a correction or note, so that the URL now leads to a 404 error. It’s generally considered more ethical to leave an erroneous story online with a prominent correction than to delete it entirely, except in the case of plagiarized material, when leaving the story up could violate the source author’s intellectual property.

But we expect this kind of thing from Breitbart. The more troubling issue is that the Breitbart story was based on an item posted at Boston.com, a website run by the Boston Globe. Breitbart sourced its story from the site, which in turn cited an Austrian magazine that had picked up The Daily Currant story. The Boston.com story was not original content, but a cross-post from The Prudent Investor. As of this publishing, it had not yet been removed or corrected.

Boston.com News Editor Angela Nelson told Salon in an email that she was not aware of the issue. “I’ve contacted the vendor and asked them to take it down immediately,” she explained.

It’s not the first time The Daily Currant has duped a high-profile publication. Last month, the Washington Post picked up a (phony) Currant story saying Sarah Palin was moving to Al Jazeera.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/breitbart_duped_by_satirical_news_outlet/