In his new book “End This Depression Now!” (W. W. Norton & Company), he compares Ben Bernanke to the moronic Chance the Gardener in “Being There” — and Bernanke is the man who hired Krugman at Princeton.
Krugman “writes with more vitriol than I find attractive,” writes Harvard economist and fellow Times columnist Greg Mankiw. He treats anyone who disagrees as “a mendacious idiot,” writes George Mason University economist Alex Tabarrok. “Krugman should stop bullying people,” wrote columnist Michael Kinsley.
In short, to use the kind of colorful language the great Nobelist favors, Paul Krugman is a jackass.A friend of ours teaches economics at the university level. Some time ago, he told us that when he joined the department, he replaced the "far-right political textbook" with one that was written by a more "middle-of-the-road" economist; Paul Krugman. Before I could slap my hands over my pie-hole, I blurted "Krugman's about as middle-of-the-road as Glenn Beck!". Oops. The back-and-forth that ensued was watched like a ping-pong match by the people who were privy to this conversation, and the good professor and I were both a bit ruffled (but civil and respectful; neither of us ever raised our voice) as we parted ways. Noah chuckled all the way home.
Our friendship survives with this AF vet and all-around nice guy; we dabble around the fringes of politics, and enjoy talking about a huge scope of other subjects. It gives me hope that regular folks can indeed sit at a kitchen table, find common ground, and negotiate the direction of our country without gouging eyeballs and shrieking ad hominem attacks...we just have to figure out how to jettison the politicians and get the regular folks to pull up a chair.
Here's more evidence to support Smith's assertion that Krugman is a jackass:
ReplyDelete"For the modern American right doesn’t care about deficits, and never did. All that talk about debt was just an excuse for attacking Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps."
Yep. He's not just a jackass; he's batsh*t crazy.
Krugman leads an army of mindless Krugbots. He's a bully and his past massive inconsistencies (as enumerated nicely in Smith's article) serve to undermine him nicely.
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