We don't know how good an economist Krugman is because his ideas are summarily dismissed by even democrats. There is a reason for that!
Well, you do seem to forget that Krugman has one more Nobel Prize in Economics than either of us do. That counts for a helluva lot more than nothing. As for his ideas being summarily dismissed, some evidence pleased. If you mean by virtue of his academic position, well I hate to disabuse you on that one but he's a fairly mainstream economist, and a genuinely prestigious one at that. He's taken very, very seriously. Check the quote from his wikipedia page at the bottom of this post.
So you have hitched your horse to Krugman and I have hitched mine to Obama's.
Obama's not an economist. He's a politician. Different worlds with different logics. Take the stimulus stuff for an example. Larry Summers and whatshername, the Berkeley economist, both argued for the level of stimulus Krugman argued for. But Summers, ever more the practical guy, pulled back. Not because he disagreed with the economics but because he thought it was politically impossible. And the lower numbers might work.
Thing is no real economist in power has ever prescribed to Krugmans extreme ideology so we'll never know just how wrong he is. So far Obama has done pretty good. Not great but pretty good.
You are, of course, aware that Krugman was involved in the Reagan administration. From wikipedia:
"Krugman joined the faculty of MIT in 1979. From 1982 to 1983, Krugman spent a year working at the Reagan White House as a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers. He rejoined MIT as a full professor in 1984. Krugman has also taught at Stanford, Yale, and the London School of Economics. [34]"
You might also note this entry in his wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org
"Krugman is known in academia for his work on international economics (including trade theory, economic geography, and international finance), [10] [11] liquidity traps, and currency crises. He is the 20th most widely cited economist in the world today [12] and is ranked among the most influential academic thinkers in the US. [13]" |
