Anderson on Krugman

I had written earlier about Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, the distinction between macro- and micro-economists, and how that manifests itself in terms of politics and faith in government.

Now, William Anderson crushes Krugman at LewRockwell.com from a different angle.

...an intellectual event matched only by the sacking of Constantinople in 1453, the Swedish central bank has announced that Krugman will take his place alongside F.A. Hayek and others as the Nobel laureate. Now, the bank announced that the prize was for Krugman’s semi-discombobulated trade theories, not his incoherent, Keynesian columns that he writes for the Democratic Party, er, the editorial page of the New York Times.

Now, before going on, I must say that most of the people who have received the Nobel in economics actually were economists; this is the first time I have seen a pure political operative receive the prize. However, there is precedence for this outrage: last year, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his crackpot movie on Global Warming; this year Gore preaches violence against those who might have different thoughts or who might be economic competitors of his own bankrolled "new technologies."

(If any executive were to call for violence to shut down his competitors, he would be vulnerable to being charged under the RICO statutes; Gore, of course, receives a free pass. That is what a Nobel can do.)

Thus, armed with his Nobel, Krugman almost surely will be able to set forth with his own crackpot economic "theories" and ride this prize to a high position in the upcoming Obama administration. Because he has been front-and-center in the latest debate on the meltdown in financial markets, perhaps it is time to see what Mr. Nobel believes will be our economic salvation.

What better place to start than with today’s column in which he praises the British government for nationalizing the country’s banks?...

As with so many other Krugman howlers, it is hard to know where to begin....However, Krugman saves the best for last. The problem, he declares, is that the Bush administration is too free-market oriented to be able to solve this crisis...

Henry Paulson might be a lot of things, but a clone of Ron Paul is not one of them.

So, Krugman continues to peddle his snake oil, but today he gets to do it as the Nobel Laureate instead of just another partisan hack. Nonetheless, having a Nobel will enhance his stature as a guy who supposedly knows something. However, just as the peace prize does not make Al Gore a man of peace, neither does the Nobel Prize in Economics make Paul Krugman an economist....

Paul Krugman is not an economist. His colleagues in the economics profession and the editorial board of the Times may call him an economist, but that does not make him one.

This is harsh criticism, I realize, so I must explain my views in full. Yes, Krugman has a Ph.D. from MIT in economics, but his writings, both popular and academic, demonstrate that he does not believe in laws of economics. Instead, like most folks with socialist leanings, he believes that the state is both omniscient and omnipotent and simply by fiat can eliminate those pesky little problems caused by scarcity.

Whether it is the discussion of medical care or the nation’s financial system, Krugman believes that the state through edicts and the use of force can eliminate scarcity, a point of view he has not changed throughout the years. The Nobel Laureate, in the end, is just another statist hack and nothing else.