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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Mathematicians and the Prevention of Recessions - Less Wrong
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If I'm understanding my Sumner right, Krugman is just plain wrong about this. Central banks can decrease interest rates, promise to keep future interest rates low, engage in quantitative easing, charge negative interest on reserves, and print physical money and drop it out of helicopters. "There is no zero bound" is a market monetarist slogan and I have to say it sounds a tad plausible from over here.
Plausible enough to overcome the presumption against "printing money is a costless way to solve economic problems"?
As a blanket presumption, that's dumb and you know it.
Certainly printing money is a near costless way to solve economic problems at some times otherwise we wouldn't use money at all. Sumner doesn't advocate printing money at all times and places, he advocates printing or destroying money until there is the correct amount (which he suggests is when NGDP is on-trend).
I think you're confusing "presumption" with "categorial principle" or "axiom" or something. A presumption can be overridden, given sufficient evidence; my question was whether or how strongly EY takes a presumption against it. If you agree with the concept of criminalizing counterfeiting, you agree with that presumption.
Does not follow. Not all moneys arose in a Pareto-optimal fashion, so their use not evidence printing money being costless.
My understanding is that Krugman is not wrong, he just writes correctly but very misleadingly for reasons that are not totally clear.
Oh, I think his reasons are pretty clear. They basically amount to politics.
I found the article "The Deflationist: How Paul Krugman found politics" educational on that point.
Holy crap: that article has "get to the point":fluff ratio of about 5%. I appreciate the link, but just want to warn readers they need to skip past a lot of meandering about scenes from NYC to get the answer to the question.
On this point, I'd just have to chalk it up as "beyond my current expertise". (Part of Krugman's argument is that although "unconventional" monetary policy is possible, political and other considerations make it much harder to do.)