Paul Krugman Doesn’t Understand The 2008 Financial Crisis.
Neither does Kevin Drum — everything he now writes about the financial crisis, NAFTA and trade is either wrong, misleading or an outright and obvious lie.
Hillary Clinton-itis is an chronic and persistent infection whose symptoms include extreme historical retrograde amnesia, disconnection from reality, frequent hallucinations and the tendency to now ignore past shenanigans of an entire class of financial parasites because the status quo might be altered a bit.
It is mostly indicated in older white males, but its etiology being unknown sometimes it appears inexplicably in younger white females. Though the disease is currently untreatable, post-election trauma care such as intensive cognitive behavioral therapy after said candidate turns out to be a Goldman Sachs myrmidon with warmonger tendencies no different than her predecessor and his predecessor can ameliorate and sometimes even completely reverse the effects.
At this time little to no research funding is directed at this life-altering ailment, and further treatments are not expected.
Didn’t want to write this in the post as it was getting too long for something relatively boring.
Immediate disproof of Drum’s NAFTA contention: German auto jobs have stayed in Germany.
Also, it’s usually beneficial to have a manufacturing sector tightly coupled — that means all suppliers, etc., in a relatively small area. This keeps knowledge close, allows easier innovation. One of the reasons German manufacturers are so successful.
The US threw that away and it can probably never recover (even if manufacturing jobs weren’t going to all robots, which they will).
But the idea that NAFTA somehow saved American jobs and/or the auto industry is fucking ludicrous.