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Samizdata quote of the day “Befitting his ideology, Krugman has only one policy to propose, regardless of topic: Transfer more resources from the discipline and dynamism of markets to the inefficiency and cronyism of government. Government-run health care. Government-controlled banks. Government bailouts. High taxes. High spending. Krugman wants it all, just like in Europe (which, in 2008, he called “the comeback continent”). And Krugman has no problems denying economic science and current events to advocate it.”
– Fred Douglass, on the NYT columnist and supposed Harvard economist. For what it is worth, I have never taken Krugman all that seriously since he became a hired attack dog for the Dems. A pity, since some of his writings on trade, for example, are excellent.
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Is it fair to say,… owes his soul to the company store?
I agree with your assessment of Krugman. But “…supposed Harvard economist…”? He isn’t a harvard economist?
I do not doubt he went to Harvard but he is only supposedly an ‘economist’ 🙂
A strong case could be made that the field he espouses relates to economics in much the same way astrology relates to astronomy.
Krugman teaches at Princeton, not Harvard (and as far as I can tell has never had any connection with Harvard). Still, perhaps the word “supposed” was intended to modify “economist”!
Of course, that’s not entirely fair, either, as Krugman does have a Nobel Prize in Economics, and although Nobel Prizes clearly aren’t what they used to be (witness the anticipatory award to the meritless empty suit Barack Obama), from what I’ve read Krugman’s contributions in his area of real expertise (international trade) have been substantial and the Nobel warranted. Unfortunately, that does nothing to qualify him as an expert on anything else, which can be conclusively proven by reading any of the drivel he regularly produces for the NYT.
Krugman is the one who, after Hurricane Katrina, intoned to his readers that such-and-such a Navy hospital ship had been operating off the coast of Louisiana “without patients”. Readers were invited to draw the obvious inference, that ChimpHitlerMcTurkeyBurton had diverted the helicopters necessary to transport patients shipward for some nefarious purpose of his own.
What Krugman forgot is that it was not the coast of Somalia this ship was lying off, it was the coast of the United States. However good the ship may be — it was actually an amphibious assault ship, not a hospital ship — there are better medical facilities on shore. Using those helicopters to transport patients to the ship — a dubious enterprise — would make them unavailable for any other mission, such as transporting safe drinking water to stranded people on shore (which, I believe, is what they actually were used for). As an economist, Krugman should have understood this instantly. But no, he chose to make silly insinuations about the Bush administration instead.
A talentless hack.
Krugman was an economist, and in truth a good one. He then chose to be a New York Times columnist, which is entirely incompatible with being a good economist. I find it hard to imagine he is unaware of this, as this would require truly astonishing levels of self-delusion. But who knows.
Yes the prizes are getting mostly handed out to statists these days (but then that is not a surprise when one considers who decides who gets the prizes).
As for Paul Krugman – note that how ever many TRILLIONS of Dollars Barack Obama spends Krugman says it is “not enough”, this is important.
For when the policy fails (which it will) Paul Krugman will be able to say “Keynesianism has not been refuted – I told you he should have spent more money”.
One note of interest – Karl Marx himself despised this “spend more money and we will all be better off” credit bubble ism (as Hunter Lewis is fond of pointing out Karl Marx was, savagely, mocking what came to be called Keynesianism, years before Keynes was even born).
It is only in the 1940’s that such writers as Maurice Dobb and Pierro Straffa try and combine Marxism and Keynesianism.
Krugman can be counted on to support any program the Administration desires even if it is the same spending morass that Dems criticized under Bush. He is simply a partisan hack who whores his “knowledge and Nobel prize” for effect…
Michael – that’s a bit harsh claiming you can’t be a good economist if you’re a columnist for the NY times! What’s that based on anyway? 🙂
Read here and confirm your suspicions.
(Link)
Laird, WRT the Nobel prize, I did a little digging when Obama received his and it turns out that while nearly all the Nobel prizes are paneled by experts in the field, the peace prize is paneled by a bunch of left wing and, nearly to a person, Marxist politicians. So while the peace prize’s name is mud, and by association, it tarnishes the others, it’s actually not as bad as all that.
Of course, a panel of “expert” economists is bound to be loaded with Keynsians but that’s more a flaw of the field rather than the Nobel prize concept itself.
Richard, if you re-read my post you’ll see that I wasn’t denigrating Krugman’s Nobel (althought I did take a swipe at Nobel Prizes in general), merely his writings in other areas. But you’re correct: Nobel Prizes in “serious” topics (i.e., all but the Peace Prize) are generally meritorious. Unfortunately, it’s the Peace Prize which gets the most publicity, and thus tarnishes all the others.
Hi laird, I got what you were saying and was responding to the comment about the nobel prizes and nothing to do with Krugman.
At least for awhile in the 1930’s the New York Times did not just have J.M. Keynes (justifying every crack brained spending scheme and other intervention he could think of) and Walter Duranty (trying to cover up the murder of TENS OF MILLIONS of people by the socialists in the Soviet Union), it also had some good writers.
For example there was Henry Hazlitt who (like Anderson) pointed out that the real cause of the Depression was great, Federal Reserve created, credit money boom of the late 1920’s and how EVERY INTERVENTION BY HOOVER AND ROOSEVELT MADE THINGS WORSE.
mezzrow – perhaps the New Yorker magazine will print an article on the TRUTH about the Great Depression? No – I did not think it would.
Any more than the New York Times would employ a man like Henry Hazlitt today – after all he did not go to college.