http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-saudis-gambled-and-texas-won-1441063219?mod=trending_now_4 Get outta here. This can't be true. We all known a free market oil and gas based economy is static and unsustainable. I don't believe it.
Guys like Krugman are dying for the Texas economy to go into the toilet, and I'm surprised that even he would be ignorant enough to think an oil and gas slump would do substantial damage to the Texas economy. I know partisanship severely blinds his intellect, but anybody with even a slight understanding of economics and of what industries make up the Texas economy would know not to predict or suggest that the Texas economy was going on any kind of significant slide.
For the forum he has been given by the NYT he is incredibly wrong on so many things. It is amazing to me Krugman keeps his job. Has he been right on anything?
While the Texas economy is much more diversified than a few decades ago, it's too early to claim victory. Although hurting from low prices, most struggling companies have thus far survived due to low interest rates, accounting gimmicks, and "insurance protection" from low prices. The wells are still being drilled for the most part. Crunch time will probably arrive by November for many of these companies and we will be better to assess where the state is at that point.
His on-paper qualifications are impressive. He's a Yale and MIT grad, has taught economics at some of the most prominent universities in the world, and won the Nobel Prize in economics. I don't doubt that he's very smart. However, he's hyperpolitical and hyperpartisan, and I think that is what mostly drives his writings that actually get in the newspaper (meaning the **** he writes that people actually read).
Krugman's prescription for any economic problem is for governments to take on more debt and spend more. Most people, myself included, believe that such a policy merely kicks the can down the road and eventually ends up in catastrophe once the debt becomes unserviceable. But nobody knows when that point arrives. Generally, governments are following Krugman's template. As much as governments are piling on debt, Krugman wants more.
