Hungary, The Public Relations Offensive

Long and boring. Oh, and noone cares about you KLS, you are simply bothersome but not important. I liked this comment under the original:) "Did Krugman even read this?" "They say things that are technically accurate but misleading." "questions my qualifications" You are a sociologist with a PhD not a lawyer. "Why is Fidesz ramping up such a strong defense now?" Because there was no time for rebuttal at the "joint committee of the Congress in Washington." And so on. "technically accurate but misleading" Bottom line: you don't like this country, you never mentioned anything positive about Hungary in Krugman's blog. Then why do you care?

Hungary and public relations offensive? Really? Just by curiosity, who is offensive towards whom? The very first freely elected government of Hungary, led by the late József Antall, was already called fascist and anti-Semitic! Come on! We are literally bombarded by the likes of Scheppele, apprently the home grown liberals have a dire need of foreign support, before they wanish by popular vote? We Hungarians are amazingly tolerant toward minorities, what other explication can be given to the fact of tolerating such people as Surányi, Simor, Bajnai, Veres, Kóka, to name a few, for the list just goes on...The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Economist and all the left-liberal western media can suck it, we barely survived 8 disastrous years of socialist-liberal rampage, we miraculously avoided national bankruptcy, elections came, and your servants lost. Who was lecturing us on diversity, on plurality, on the Holy Free Market and all the usual neo-ultra-liberal panels? The last 20 or so years produced what? That we live as if it was still 1975, because our purchasing power stagnated, due to some $240 billion (!) interests we paid on the communist piled up $12 billion dept, yet we are indebted as never before? We became a nation that can not even feed itself, much less support its own people. One doesn't need to be a supporter of the present 2/3 majority to realize, that all the good will and friendly advise you gave us during all these long years, are poison and are aimed at our total colonization and enslavement. Thanks but no thanks. Scheppele & Co., stay put, do not come here! Leave us alone, forget us! We had just about enough of you!

Another comment for Scheppele's other article http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/guest-post-the-dependence-of-the-central-bank/#more-34285 I am glad to know that Ms Scheppele is now fully competent in economic matters as well as being a professor of Sociology. Unfortunately as short as the above post is, some misinformation again managed to leak through. "Then, when that attempt was pushed back by substantial pressure from the EU and the European Central Bank, he enlarged the Monetary Council and packed it with his own people, naming four in March 2011 and another two last month." -Scheppele writes about Fidesz. The only problem is that the enlargement of the monetary council in order to gain influence was done by the previous, MSZP-SZDSZ government. The government made up by the same parties, that Scheppele was the advisor to. In other words, Scheppele's politcal side did something questionable (under the Gyurcsany government they enlarged the monatery council from 3 people to 7 giving them an instant majority), and she accuses her political opposition of the exact same thing. A brutally dishonest tactic if you ask me. The Fidesz government could appoint exactly four people in March 2011, because that is when their terms ran out. Ironically these were the same people that the MSZP-SZDSZ put in place to gain their instant majority, when THEY couldn't be botheret to wait out term-ends. Something that the Orban government did in both the monetary council, and with regards to the governor of the central bank.

Since the comment section limitations do not allow for a full rebuttal of this schameful propaganda piece, let me just focus on one thing: " I lived in Hungary full-time between 1994 and 1998, working as a researcher at the Constitutional Court, where I learned Hungarian constitutional law as it was being made. I was involved in the 1995-1996 constitutional drafting effort, as an expert advisor to the parliamentary committee drafting the text. " WHY is it that crucial pieces of information are missing here? Which parties were in power during the 1994-1998 period? Were they MSZP and it's little partner SZDSZ? (think Republican party and Tea Party) As such why are these party names missing from the text? Is it because they are the current opposition parties as well, and being an advisor to the MSZP-SZDSZ parties suggest less then complete independence ? Using an political analogy from the US: Would you trust a foriegner, who was an advisor to the Republican party and the Tee party, who then travels home and writes in a blog that the Democratic party (currently in power just as Fidesz in Hungary), is a lawless regime, which is dismantling democracy, uses drones to assassinate at will, abuses the poor opposition and generally just horrible people. And yes their leader is a tyrant, who lacks a real mandate, and didn't even win by that much. How easy would it be to find biased opinions about the US? Not even abroad... Please just do a google search on "lawless obama regime"