You’ll read it here, see also various (mostly weak) responses in the comments to Alex’s original post. Most of you, including Krugman, are missing Alex’s point. The issue is not that Krugman changed his mind (I’ve done that plenty, Alex too). The issue is that Krugman a) regularly demonizes his opponents, including those who hold Krugman’s old positions, and b) doesn’t work very hard to produce the strongest possible case against his arguments.
Krugman’s response shows that he has changed his mind on debt, and explained why, but Heritage has not. It’s an “I am better than they are” response. That is beside the point, which is about elevating the views of others not oneself. The need to show all the time that one is better or more right than the others is itself harmful to depth, and responding with “but I really am better than them” is just falling into the trap again.
Krugman calls himself a Humean but has he studied and internalized the lessons from Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion? Is it easy to imagine the current Krugman writing rich multi-voiced dialogues which extend both his points and those of his intellectual opponents? Can you imagine the current Krugman writing something sufficiently multi-faceted that you might come away thinking — because of the piece itself — that the opposing point of view was the better one?
Krugman has shown a remarkable and impressive capacity to reinvent himself, more than once. He could reinvent himself again — in a truly Humean direction — and become the most important American public intellectual — and perhaps intellectual — of his time. Or he could keep his current status as a sharp and brilliant someone who has an enormous number of followers but relatively little influence over actual events, and perhaps, like most of us, won’t be read much fifty years from now.
The reality is that neither the early nor the more recent Krugman is especially convincing on debt, and if anything the conjunction between the two shows that switching sides isn’t quite the same thing as changing your mind. The odds are that government spending cuts are not literally budget balance destroyers on net. How about writing a NYRB essay that lays out the short-run negative output gradient to austerity, presents why austerity is considered a serious option nonetheless, discusses catch-up and bounce back effects and their relevant time horizons, analyzes what kinds of policies are actually possible in a 17 (27) nation collective, engages with the best public choice arguments (including Buchanan and Wagner) on a serious level, ponders the merits and demerits of worst case thinking, and ruminates on the nature of leadership in a way which shows some tussling with Thucydides and Churchill? Surely that is within Krugman’s capabilities and if it still comes out Keynesian or left-wing, great, at least someone will have seen those arguments through. Such an essay would stand a far greater chance of influencing me, or other serious readers, or for that matter President Obama. We should hold Krugman to the very high standard of actually expecting that he produce such work. Not many others are capable of it.
There is a kind of hallelujah chorus for Krugman on some of the left-wing economics blogs. The funny thing is, it’s hurting Krugman most of all.
Addendum: Here is a response from Krugman; note he has turned my description of “regularly demonize” to “always demonize.”
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What a trick in order to make it look like there are a lot of comments and increase web traffic, or make something appear HOT.
Of the 189 comments so far, they are from only 73 or fewer individuals.
Not to encourage competition, CBB holds the most comments at 26, and TallDave at 23, followed by 10 by Andrew.
Whose “trick” is it? CBBB is very vocally anti-this blog.
Whose trick: Tyler’s trick.
FROM AMERICAN OXFORD DICT.
always
adverb
1 he’s always late: every time, each time, at all times, all the time, without fail, consistently, invariably, regularly, habitually, unfailingly. ANTONYMS never, seldom, sometimes.
Good grief Tyler is such an idiot
+1
-1
^(The thesaurus, not dictionary section, obviously, on my Oxford American Dictionary app)
My big objection to this is that Heritage is a hack foundation who are given their conclusions and then work backwards from those conclusions to provide support for those conclusions. They are not particularly rigorous or ethical about doing this already largely value destroying work.
Krugman really does have problems with consistency and partisanship. But they are more like the ordinary problems of consistency that people face when they have influence. I think Mankiw suffered from the same disease and that is a better analogy.
It is frequently assumed that civility, nuance, and respect for the ideas of opponents is somehow particularly useful for being taken seriously. i would love to see this studied. I would guess that this is false, and is more an argument based on wish fulfillment than the forces that actually govern the world. The conservative movement has very successfully been driven, not by serious thinkers but by influential clowns. Krugman for all his capacity for serious thought or nuance casts a much smaller shadow than Rush Limbaugh.
This is the comment I wrote on the NYT blog in response to Mr. Krugman’s latest reply:
I worked with lots of good economists when I was an antitrust lawyer at the Federal Trade Commission. In their discussions with me and others, the more respected ones always brought out both sides of any economic argument, and explained why they chose their ultimate position. They had to be very careful, because Fortune 500 companies tended to hire famous economists. And as lawyers we had to be ready to ask probing questions of the companies’ experts.
Further, the Commission required the lawyers to present both sides to an argument in our briefs to the commissioners, and to admit any weaknesses in our case.
Notice that I said the “more respected ones.” There were exceptions and everyone knew who the ideologues were. And guess what — their views were not as respected because they sang the same tune at every occasion.
I think this is a point for Mr. Krugman to consider. My wife, who also is an economist, notes that the strongest evidentiary statements before a court are those where the economist raises the contrary position and carefully rebuts it.
Perhaps you ought to consider the fact that Mr. Krugman is not an advisor to a government body, he is a columnist, paid to write convincingly about his opinions on matters economic, and his audience is the public, not government officials. Public commentators generally do not present ‘both sides’ evenhandedly.
Blog fights are so cute. It’s like it’s 2003 all over again.
I read Krugman regularly, first because he makes good arguments, and backs them up with real world data. He does not need to make the arguments of his opponents, though he always links to the analysis he is criticising, because those views are omnipresent from those he satirises as the Very Serious People, from my (UK) government, the spokesmen for the major financial institutions, and most of the Press and the BBC too. The purpose of most of his writing is to challenge that consensus, and to expose the shallowness of much of their analysis and the blinkered nature of much of the ideology underlying it. That his reputation as a Cassandra is well justified does not hurt either, and given the variety and regularity of his predictions, that you have to reach back to 2003 to get a bad one is quite a compliment.
Economics is an inexact science, and I am not even an economist, so I wouldn’t presume to make a judgement on who is correct, but one view offers hope, whereas the other only seems to offer almost endless vistas of hardship and decline, so I know which I’d like the world to try. That you wish he would put the opposing side of the argument more strongly is perhaps just a way of saying that it would be nice if he agreed with me more, to have his forensic skills, erudition and eloquence on my side of the argument.
Well tough.
Perhaps it seems to you that he makes good arguments backed by real world data because you never see the strong criticisms.
Such as?
I would like to read any argument as to “why austerity is considered a serious option nonetheless”.
Hmmm. Revealed preference.
Stop by Coordination Problem where you can get links and discussion. For example: http://www.coordinationproblem.org/2011/12/john-papola-on-keynesian-economics-at-forbes.html
As one of the commentators there says, Papolo has a way with words (though his command of numbers and empirical methods seems a bit suspect).
For more serious discussion of the issues I believe you are better off with: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2011/wp11158.pdf
Also, though a bit brief for my tastes, presumably there is some information in these tweets: http://nourielroubiniblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/fiscal-stimulus-positive-multiplier.html
Papola’s only real argument is the example of Estonia, which seems rather iffy. No doubt Estonians are happy to have mandatory social health insurance, though.
The IMF paper would conclude that austerity is not a serious option: “Our main finding that fiscal consolidation is contractionary holds up in cases where one would most expect fiscal consolidation to raise private domestic demand. In particular, even large spending-based fiscal retrenchments are contractionary, as are fiscal consolidations occurring in economies with a high perceived sovereign default risk.”
I agree with you and them: As stated in the IMF abstract “Using this new dataset, our estimates suggest fiscal consolidation has contractionary effects on private domestic demand and GDP. By contrast, estimates based on conventional measures of the fiscal policy stance used in the literature support the expansionary fiscal contractions hypothesis but appear to be biased toward overstating expansionary effects.”
What they are saying [in a calm civil way that bloggers here might applaud], is that arguments for “expansionary austerity” are not based on a good understanding of how to use empirical evidence to support causal claims.
“Expansionary austerity” is a strawman term, the point of austerity is solvency not short-term growth. I don’t think a lot of people are really arguing against the notion spending cuts will tend to be contractionary in the short term (this would almost certainly be true in the GDP numbers, notice, even if it were not actually true, because of how GDP is measured — the eliminated marginal gov’t spending might be so wasteful that actual GDP went up even if measured GDP did not) though they might dispute the multiplier. Krugman looked rather foolish when Ireland posted anemic growth, which he argued was impossible.
In the long run, though, economic growth tends to be correlated with total gov’t spending in a range of GDP greater than 15% but less than 25%. Countries that cut their budgets into that range are probably better off in the long term, generall speaking.
I think Tyler’s post would be much improved if he offered some examples of problematic Krugman posts.
I’m flabbergasted that an economics professor could read Krugman’s 2006 article, his 2011 articles, and conclude that Krugman has changed his mind about debt. He’s never said that debt or deficits don’t matter; even in liquidity traps, he acknowledges that there balance sheet constraints on spending. After all, he has written that the stimulus should have been three times larger than it was — not 20 times or 100 times larger, you know?
His current position boils down to the following: the cheapest way to restore the economy to full capacity is through debt-fueled federal spending. Eventually, the economy will adjust its way there. Only that it might take a decade or two, and in the meantime, we will have lost tens or hundreds of trillions dollars worth of un-produced output, destruction of human capital, and economic suffering. It’s much cheaper to spend a couple of trillion dollars now to get the economy out of the liquidity trap; that money will be repaid plus much more if it works.
He’s fighting against the tendencies of the Very Serious People (as he calls them) to completely ignore this point, largely because they refuse to see past the issue of debt to appreciate that the alternatives are much more costly. That is, they see the avoidance of debt as so paramount in importance that they won’t consider alternatives. To Krugman, the reasons for this ideological blindless are several — some treat economics as a morality play, some are dishonest ideologues, some are hermetically sealed inside a freshwater cocoon, etc. etc. But what all of them have in common is the idea that debt is so important that we cannot risk taking on more of it. And Krugman believes that idea is nonsense.
Now, you can choose to agree or disagree with that theory, but whatever you think of it, it’s the same one that Krugman ascribed to in 1998, in 2003, in 2006, in 2009 and in 2011. His prediction in 2003 based on that theory turned out to be wrong, because he didn’t anticipate the credit bubble. But he identified it in 2006, and his proposed remedy was perfectly consistent with the idea that debt can be the least bad option in a recession. We weren’t in a recession. There’s no inconsistency at all. The fact that Krugman made an errant prediction in 2003 doesn’t mean he’s changed his underlying theoretical framework.
He specifically says he changed his mind
Changed his mind as to the specific effects that deficit spending might have in a full-capacity economy. Never changed his underlying model or theory.
As for the idea that he doesn’t produce the strongest arguments against his own, maybe you should consider his audience. Let me ask you a question. Why do you think that Krugman spends much more time writing about John Cochrane, John Paulson and John Taylor than, say, Scott Sumner? More about the WSJ and Heritage than about Marginal Revolution?
Do you think maybe it has to do with eyeballs and ear lobes? As in: Taylor, Cochrane, Paulson, WSJ and Heritage (either directly or indirectly through proxies) reach many times more people than Sumner and MR? Maybe because the former group has the ears of legislators and politicians, whereas the second group does not?
Krugman writes a blog aimed at the general public. Even his wonkish posts aren’t that wonkish — he disclaims them because some of his readers might find them boring, not because they are incomprehensible to a generally educated non-economist. The people who read Krugman are also reading the WSJ or watching Taylor or Niall Ferguson show up on cable news shows, and Krugman wants to counter those conservative viewpoints. Last I checked, the WSJ wasn’t exactly known for putting their opponents’ best foot forward.
This is honestly the most childish thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe that I’d aspired to be an economist at some point in my life.
So Krugman dispatched two straw men and his fawning readers immediately posted comments consisting of either fulsome praise or ad hominem attacks on Tyler (e.g. that he’s nothing but a hired shill for the Koch brothers). The depressing spectacle reminds one of the personality cult on display during the reign and funereal farce of Kim Jong-il – it’s a shock to the system to realize how many people not only can’t think for themselves but don’t want to think for themselves.
Oh dear. Hume on religion.
You do realize that there are people who think about religion a lot who have found Hume unsatisfactory?
Start with Peter Brown’s The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Hume was SUCH a Protestant Briton of the 18th century that he didn’t understand “religion” in a particularly sophisticated way.
Is it the only one to regularly demonize ? I really thought demonization was a cultural mark.
Tyler,
grow some hair on your chest you bald headed nerd. There’s no substantial difference between regularly and always. Furthermore, what you ask of him you yourself have never done in such a thorough manner, ass.
Wrong on both counts.
Elaborate bitch.
I won’t focus on how Krugman is the quintessential modern-day apparatchik, or on whether his snide and arrogant posturing makes him likable or even bearable.
Instead, I just want to ask you guys what in frack’s sake makes him worthy of such attention and discussion (besides the above)?
This is one of the few public persona’s that are beyond wrong, they’re simply over-rated. A nothing that shouts like it’s something.
I’m dumbfounded that the Libertarians are asking for civility and seriousness here. Somehow you’ve exported this philosophy around the world and it has created radio shows where libertarians call in doing their impressions of the intellectually handicapped expressing liberal views. Then when everyone is disgusted, they scream that political correctness has gone mad.
What has this got to do with the debate? About as much as Krugman’s Humean credentials have to do with Ricardian Equivalence.
“where libertarians call in doing their impressions of the intellectually handicapped expressing liberal views. ” Agreed, liberals sound intellectually handicapped enough without any help.
This seems like the right place to ask this question – can people recommend the best blog/op-ed/material to read that presents an economic view contrary to Krugman’s?
Please – solid economic arguments and presenting an alternate, consistent world view – not just an “anti Krugman” site.
I find Mankiw quite readable. Who else?
I guess Sumner although personally I think he’s living in la-la land.
As for Austrians, that ‘Krugman in Wonderland’ blog is awful and Bob Murphy isn’t much better. Maybe Jon Catalan?
http://www.economicthought.net/blog/
Cafe Hayek is among the best, imho. They also produced the Keynes-Hayek videos which are very entertaining and reasonably substantive.
Arnold Kling is also very good. His book is a must-read on our health care situation.
Cafe Hayek: dear god no. That place is best summed up with this image:
http://i.imgur.com/7WYPi.png
And the Keynes-Hayek videos were pretty poor, along with the subsequent debates. Not the kind of thinking that should be put into the spotlight if we want to raise the standard of debate.
Tyler, you undercut your own response by noting that he changed “regularly” to “always” but not noting that you said Krugman has a need to he is better “all the time” within a few dozen words. You recharacterized your argument without even having to take a breath.
You may also want to examine the hypothesis that many pundits don’t find Krugman persuasive because it is in their economic interest not to. I believe the sociologist Samuel Clemens has published on this subject.
Easy! Robert P. Murphy:
http://mises.org/daily/5086/Caught-Krugmans-Shifting-Arguments
http://mises.org/daily/4993/My-Reply-to-Krugman-on-Austrian-BusinessCycle-Theory
http://mises.org/daily/5781/Is-Debt-Necessary-for-Recovery
I think Dr. Krugman is honestly searching for the truth while attempting to push policy in a direction that is best for everybody in the country, rich, poor, middle-class. I find the fact that his blog repeatedly and consistently directs his readers to the actual writings of his critics is a sign of that search. I don’t think he is going to convince many of the other side because (as he frequently proves) most have based their opinions on fictions and would suffer enormously from cognitive dissonance if they decided to see the truth. I loved reading all these comments. I especially find it humorous to read the comments of those that speak from almost pure ignorance of both history and the facts.
He does not direct his readers to the strong critiques, only the ones he thinks he can smack down.
If we need not fear the debt, why tax the people? One would be much more popular lifting that oppressive burden from our shoulders.
Oh, you don’t think that will work? Why not, if there’s no problem with debt?
Could you explain your reasoning here?
Now, this has been a depressing thread to read.
So Krugman thinks it’s ok to be an arrogant jerk because he’s always right and he’s honest about always being right? I think there’s a t.v. show about this called House. Seriously, Krugman gives professors a bad name. I would be embarrassed to associate with him even if I agreed with him just because of his childish behavior. Tyler and Alex are much better ambassadors for the academic profession. They’re adults.
Tyler’s posting is pretty awful. Looks like a lot of muddled logic and asserting that Krugman is gulity of unjustified attacks by making unjustified attacks himself.
The problem with Economics is that the progressives look at data and models with a critical eye and conservative economists just go on faith that all Alfred Marshall needed was a little tweak here and there. And of course, that critique of mercantilist national policies means that all national governments will automatically make the wrong choices.
It is a position always looking for arguments in said favor.
Good point, everyone who agrees with you is a true scientist and everyone disagreeing with you is an evil liar.
You claim that Krugman “a) regularly demonizes his opponents, including those who hold Krugman’s old positions, and b) doesn’t work very hard to produce the strongest possible case against his arguments.”
In response to a), please note that accusing many (not all) opponents of making absurd claims/arguments or arguing in bad faith (or both) counts as demonization only if the accusations are, in fact, unfair. Are they?
In response to b), I wasn’t aware that it was Krugman’s responsibility to try to make convincing arguments against his own arguments, and I wonder if that’s a standard you’re prepared to hold everyone to (including yourself).
However, perhaps you are appealing to the philosophical concept of ‘charity’, which is that you ought to make the best possible interpretation of your opponent’s arguments before attacking them. But again this amounts to a complaint that he characterizes his opponants’ arguments unfairly, which again leads to the question, well, does he? Where are some examples of this unfairness? After all, ‘negative’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘unfair’.
Before there were many female columnists, pundits used to belong to a branch of the male prostitute’s union. What Cowen is complaining about in Krugman is essentially a breach of union rules. Krugman refuses to extend professional courtesy to the hired punks that infest the op/ed pages and economics departments of the nation. He’s a sociological freak, a guy who has a prestige academic position and (literally) golden credentials and therefore writes what he believes. The notion that he’s some sort of mercenary is the sheerest projection—the New York Times was obviously highly embarrassed when Krugman didn’t turn out to be the muttering professor they’d expected.
None of this has anything to do with Thucydides.
Eh, it was worth a shot. He’s very smart and erudite but he figured it all out a long time ago. Pity. I don’t think he really grokked the gushing praise implicit in your request. In retrospect, mebbe you want to take some of it back.
Why do people like Cowen or Tabarrok or TallDave et. al. engage in Hobbesian antics and then expect to be treated ‘civilly’, as it is defined by their lights? If they think they’ve been treated disrespectfully, well, how do they think others view their extremely disrespectful behaviour?
Note how this works: you have to treat them civilly by their lights, but that courtesy is not reciprocated. Complain that they’re being egregiously disrespectful and this lot will say that no, that’s not so, according to their personal codes of conduct.
Really thought that link was going to a “nasty, brutish, and short” reference, SoV; I was pleasantly surprised to learn I was mistaken. Chucklesnort.
Wow. You’re seriously unable to recognize the difference in civility between Cowen and Krugman? Please, point me to a column where Tyler characterizes the Obama admin as “crazy” or a “banana republic.”
Even Krugman understands he’s being unpleasant. Like Coulter, he’s not doing it by accident.
I’m not sure what to make of your link, but if you’re taking it as a disrespectful personal attack when people don’t acknowledge how obviously right you are… well, I guess that explains quite a bit, actually.
At any rate your own behavior was well hashed out at Megan’s as being notably unpleasant.
You’re the guy (since you mentioned McMegan’s) that refused to acknowledge that the majority of people wanting to raise taxes on people making over a million dollars a year was a moderate position. IIRC, because “you didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
You’re also the guy who said that Saddam did so have WMD’s. And yes, refusing to admit that you’re wrong while at the same time claiming you just want to have a “good-faith discussion” is extremely uncivil. As alluded to in the strip..
But you’re nothing and no one cares what you think because you obviously don’t care what others think.; you do, however, serve admirably as a stalking horse for all those wights who claim that Krugman is being rude.
Oh good, you’re going to share your various hallucinations about me! Since you also thought I was a conservative, this should be fun.
You can ask the Kurds whether Saddam had WMDs, they actually have pretty strong opinions on the subject, not to mention some melted faces. See, that’s a perfect example of how you don’t seem to understand that other people can have different opinions in good faith.
I assume you noticed when Megan switched to Disqus I started getting massive recommendations. Not that I’d claim it “makes me someone” but it’s always nice to see that others care what I think. I’m certainly obscure, and quite happy that way, but apparently not quite no one — on the Reason cruise (to my surprise) my blogging was actually recognized by some of the editors, not really that surprising I suppose since I was linked fairly regularly by Instapundit, who is probably the Internet’s best-known libertarian.
What part of “I don’t care what you think” don’t you understand?
You keep insisting that Saddam had WMD and you obviously have no intention of ever admitting you were wrong.
Your acknowledging that you were wrong being the (very generous) ground floor for considering you remotely credible or worth wasting my time on, that’s it. End of story.
Yes, I know. How :”Krugman” of me
That’s all. You’re dismissed.
Saddam clearly did have WMD, this is simply a factual statement that is very well-documented. What no one is entirely sure of is what happened to them between 1991 and 2003. Theories abound; they may have been destroyed by Desert Fox or by the regime, Saddam may have moved them to Syria (as North Korea did) similar to how he moved his air force to Iran in 1991, they could be buried in Anbar somewhere. Certainly we did not find the expected stockpiles, but it is quite certain they did exist at one time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermath_of_the_2003_Iraq_War
But unlike you, I don’t immediately assume your statement is made in bad faith, even though I believe it to be very obviously factually incorrect. That’s why I, like Tyler and Alex, am a more reasonable and civil person than you and Krugman.
Have a nice day
Paul Krugman #MasterofStrawmen
“Krugman has shown a remarkable and impressive capacity to reinvent himself, more than once. He could reinvent himself again … and become the most important American public intellectual … of his time.”
Uhhh, yeah—he already is. Richard Dawkins might rate the conversation and probably was ahead a decade ago, and Chomsky will probably always get votes, but it’s Krugman, and by none too close a margin. I think what you actually mean is he could become the sort of public intellectual that conservatives could acknowledge without much gnashing of teeth. That, sadly, is never going to happen.
Your Addendum, with its imprecise use of quotation marks, implies that Krugman misquoted you when, in fact, he paraphrased what you stated in your previous column. If you really feel the need to quibble over such a minor matter, I must wonder if you are engaging in a battle egos, more than anything else.
Tyler Cowen defender of adversarial relations and competition in everything: “Can’t we all just get along?” Sorry, but by your own definition, that’s not my job, or yours either.
If you brought a knife to a gun fight that’s your problem. It’s just business, not science.
Actually, I think the complaint is more that he’s bringing a bag of poop to a board meeting.
thanx for deleting my comment you fucking pussy
“Krugman has shown a remarkable and impressive capacity to reinvent himself, more than once. He could reinvent himself again…”
Julien Benda wrote a really great book called The Treason of Intellectuals and he said that we have a choice in life. We can serve privilege and power or we can serve justice and truth. And those of us who commit to serving justice and truth, the more we make concessions to those who serve privilege and power, the more we dilute the possibilities of justice and truth.
While I’m sure he’s flattered by the invite, Krugman has obviously gone with the justice and truth thing.
Nope, he went for privilege and power.
Second, there are people writing about economic issues who are a lot less confrontational than I am; how often do you hear about them? This is not a game, and it is also not a dinner party; you have to be clear and forceful to get heard at all.
Why don’t you practice some of that civility you think would be so good for Krugman? Or is that like so many other conservative nostrums – good for other people to take, but not something they’ll personally swallow themselves?
Yes, how dare I uncivilly quote Krugman’s own words. For shame!
Also, I’m not a conservative, and you are well-known as one of the least civil people around the intertubes, so thanks for breaking my irony meter. Those.things aren’t free, you know.
TallDave, would you mind explaining to us all HOW the statement you quote shows that Krugman ‘went for priviledge and power’? Inquiring minds need to know…
I would also point out that, as an ad hominem attack on Krugman’s integrity, this claim is somewhat ironic coming from someone who has been busily complaining that Krugman unfairly attacks the integrity of others – without, I would add, actually demonstrating that he has made unfair attacks of this kind. Saying that Krugman has treated some people’s statements with derision is not enough, you must show that he has actually misrepresented what those people said, and that you and Tyler have thus far failed to do…not that you have even tried very hard. How disappointing….
Tyler Cowen sucks Nobel Laureate cock. Worse than Krugman, and Krugman is a piece of shit.
“regularly”
“Customary; usual; normal” – not too far from always…
“Regularly”
“Customary; usual; normal” – not too far from “always”
You seem to be doing a bit of demonising yourself here yourself Tyler. As an occasional business reader of Krugman’s blog (and yours) I seldom see him resort to ad homs (although he does imply them occasionally) despite often blatantly inaccurate pieces of propagandizing by various conservative economists not to mention the politicians. I’m often surprised by his reticence but put it down to a sort of 11th commandment amongst academics. In this latest little hoo ha about Cochrane one of his critics ended up making an abject apology to him and Delong. And for the record Krugman IS one of the leading public intellectuals in the US. The Economist rated him one of the most influential economists in the US and as someone mentions above in a peer review he’s rated in the top 20 so by any measure he’s hardly invisible or lacking in credibility. I don’t agree with some of his political interpretations and doomsday scenarios but there’s no doubt his fundamental analysis of most economic issues is fairly close to the mark. Let’s face it he’s been far prescient than the school of thought with which you are generally associated and this tends to make him a target of a small crowd of either crank bloggers or some startlingly ill informed financial/economic journalists.
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