Crooked Timber Is Having a Contest!

Henry Farrell writes:

The Name of This Band is Exploding Heads: As Kieran notes in comments below, the comments thread to Tyler Cowen’s (perfectly reasonable) Krugman post is pretty hilarious. But given Krugman’s place of pride in the wingnut demonology, I’m sure that this is only a mere scraping of what’s out there on the Internets today. It furthermore occurs to me that someone (i.e. Me) should do a comments thread to collate and conserve the very bestest blogposts and comments on the Vast Nobel Prize Conspiracy.

Also Kathy G.

Here are my first nine:

1. Powerline: Special John Hinderaker 8 August 2005: It must be depressing to be Paul Krugman. No matter how well the economy performs, Krugman’s bitter vendetta against the Bush administration requires him to hunt for the black lining in a sky full of silvery clouds. With the economy now booming, what can Krugman possibly have to complain about? In today’s column, titled That Hissing Sound, Krugman says there is a housing bubble, and it’s about to burst.... There are, of course, obvious differences between houses and stocks. Most people own only one house at a time, and transaction costs make it impractical to buy and sell houses the way you buy and sell stocks. Krugman thinks the fact that James Glassman doesn’t buy the bubble theory is evidence in its favor, but if you read Glassman’s article on the subject, you’ll see that he actually makes some of the same points that Krugman does. But he argues, persuasively in my view, that there is little reason to fear a catastrophic collapse in home prices. Krugman will have to come up with something much better, I think, to cause many others to share his pessimism.

2. Volokh Conpiracy: derut: Excellent. He was a pseudo Nobel prize. That he deserves. As his politics is pseudoscientific. Great. Now I can applaude. I am sure many of you have watched him on cable networks. Has anyone else noticed he seems a little off. He speaks like a mouse and his beady eyes have a strange stare. He looks like if someone droped a glass he would scream.

3. Volokh Conspiracy: EricPWJohnson: Milton Friedmans work completely and totally debunks all of Krugmans – the committee noted Friedmans achievements in advising world leaders and seeing the positive results his theories had when actually used – Krugman was awarded a prize for calling someone stupid since late 2000. Friedman may also win a real Nobel prize in the future in Mathematics – something that Krugman is lacking sorely in his 1911 model T 10 pager with static labor, demand and other – almost impossible to forecast in the real world -variables.

4. Donald Luskin: The Nobel Prize is never posthumous—it is only awarded to living persons. So some great minds such as John Maynard Keynes and Fischer Black never received the prize in Economics. All that has changed. With today’s award to Paul Krugman, the Nobel as gone to an economist who died a decade ago. The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey. And even as a public intellectual, the prize is inappropriate, because never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent. Krugman’s New York Times column drawing on economics is the equivalent of 2006’s Nobelists in Physics, astromers Mather and Smoot, doing a column on astrology—and then, in that column, telling lies about astronomy. But what’s done is done. The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.

5. Daniel Klein: Much of his popular work is disgraceful. He totally omits all these major issues where the economics conclusion goes against the feel-good Democratic Party ethos, which I think he’s really tended to pander to especially since writing for The New York Times. {Note: Background on Daniel Klein: especially his claim that he is opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it was and is bad for African-Americans.}

6. Greg Mankiw: To learn more about the newest laureate, you can read... [Daniel Klein's] analysis of his op-ed pieces.

7. Roger Kimball http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/10/13/what-a-way-to-celebrate-columbus-day-or-stockholm-takes-leave-of-its-senses/: But today we have yet another illustration of Marx’s revision of Hegel’s version of the progress of history: things happen as it were twice: first as tragedy (Arafat) then as farce–witness this year’s Nobel Laureate for economics: Paul Krugman. Yes, that Paul Krugman, laughing stock (well, one of them) of The New York Times’s editorial: the anti-capitalist, anti-American town crier whose hysterical maunderings about the economy and American society were embarrassing before they went entirely off the reservation and became merely part of the ambient left-wing static emanating from The New York Times. Krugman is not just a left-wing academic economist. He is a hard-left activist whose only claim on our attention is as a bellwether of a certain species of anti-American demagoguery. Well, one must laugh to keep from crying. Meanwhile, Krugman will be $1.4 million richer–unless, of course, Barack Obama should be elected and start nosing around that “windfall” profit. That is not–not by a long shot–enough to make me wish for an Obama presidency, but it would be a pleasing consolation prize. [UPDATE: It occurs to me on reflection that it would have been much more appropriate had the Nobel Prize Committee, since they were determined to honor a fantasist like Krugman, awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature. I mean, he work is not more unreadable than many recent Nobel Laureates in literature, and it is just as untruthful.]

8. Rob Taylor: How shocking. An American hating Soros toady endorsed by The Communist Party U.S.A. wins the Nobel Prize. It’s almost as if the committee has a political agenda...

9. Jonah Goldberg teamed with an Anonymous Coward: Krugman couldn’t be more different. He routinely fudges facts and, when called on it, refuses to admit error. He never presents both sides of an argument dispassionately and then uses reason and observed experience to discern the truth. He consistently demonizes anyone who doesn’t agree with him. His shrill, hysterical voice trivializes honest differences and invites counter-attack rather than reasoned rebuttal. Plus he’s not even well-informed on many issues that fall outside his academic specializations. I know the Nobel committee doesn’t judge entirely on the basis of someone’s career, but Krugman’s Nobel should make them rethink this. He continues to use his NYTimes column in a way that diminishes the intellectual standards of his field. This does significant, long-run harm to what the Nobel Committee calls “Economic Sciences,” perhaps entirely offsetting the value of Krugman’s academic contributions.

But I want 10!

Nominations for a tenth? I want it to be something really special--totally unhinged.

Comments

[MaryLou]

Cat fight! Hiss Hiss Spttt! The commenters' vitriol is only matched by their ignorance (et tu, Mankiw?)

[abuzer]

It is interesting in a morbid way that they are almost as pissed that he is getting a fat prize as they are that he got the Nobel.

[Ish]

My favorite comes from a disgruntled commenter at Marginal Revolution:

"I hope Brad De Long [sic] wins the next prize so as to discredit it even further. It doesn't seem to be worth much anyway."

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10/paul-krugman-wi.html

[Tapen Sinha]

How about this one
http://cornbeltwayboys.net/2007/10/11/paul-krugman-professional-idiot/

or this one if you want more recent one
http://www.conservatismtoday.com/my_weblog/2008/10/nyt-socialist-economist-paul-krugman-wins-the-nobel-prize.html

[allan_in_upstate]

Andrew Sullivan, a man who is breathing down Doug Feith's neck:

http://www.slate.com/id/2061092/

The one thing that makes me have reservations about Obama is that Sullivan has such a crush on him, and has been so disastrously wrong a judge of character and policy in the past.

[CBBB]

I just don't get these comments - in what universe is Paul Krugman, mild-mannered Princeton Economics professor, a member of the Ultra-HARD Left?

[John Emerson]

Klein's piece has a period feel -- for some people it might have had some plausibility or persuasiveness ten years ago, or even three months ago, but not now.

He and a high proportion of the other demented Krugman critics seem to want people to accept Krugman's Democratic partisanship as sufficient proof that his popular writing is no good. They're comparing Krugman unfavorably to the mythical above-the-battle neutral-scientist model, but unfortunately they themselves are so rabidly partisan that you worry that they're going to bite themselves in their rage.

Mankiw doesn't come off well at all when he links Klein. Mankiw may or may not be not be a typical economist, but I plan to keep saying that he is. It's a pretty nasty, corrupt profession.

[John Emerson]

Many of the Krugman critics, often economists, say something like "I wish he's just write about what he knows about, economics, and not about areas where he's not expert". They actually seem to believe that newspaper columnists normally are expert about the things they write about.

Not only are newspaper columnists seldom experts about anything they write about, given the generalist nature of their job, it's utterly unreasonable to hope for them to be.

I've frequent heard that criticism of Krugman right here at DeLong's, btw, from fanatical technocrats who don't even agree with Krugman's politics, but just are incapable of conceiving of democratic political discourse.

Krugman's Wiki page has been the site of editing wars, with Luskinites and Obama partisans ganging up on Krugman. Wiki is not a good source for anything controversial.

[John Emerson]

"don't even disagree". Damn.

[otey2]

Luskin really IS the stupidest man alive. Someone needs to tell him that awards such as the Nobel are not taxable income under the IRC.

[Pallet]

How about this lovely post by Russ Roberts at Cafe Hyaek... cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2008/10/krugmans-prize.html

[JeffH]

Wow, number 3 has a special level of idiocy to it, inventing Nobel prizes that don't exist. Sadly the most common story about why there's no Nobel prize in math is almost certainly apocryphal. (See http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/why_no_math.html for that.)

[Fifi]

Of course, via Atrios,
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_10_12_archive.html#2132016518552386921

or

http://www.poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=5589

For the ages:

Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 9/5/2003 1:06:35 PM
Title: Slate publisher's memo re losing staff to NYT
Posted By: Jim Romenesko

TO: Brad Smith
Sr. Vice President, Microsoft Legal & Corporate Affairs

FROM: Cyrus Krohn
Publisher, Slate Magazine

RE: Non-Compete Clause & Contractual Interference

Dear Brad:

As per my voicemail earlier today, I would like to bring to your attention an ongoing problem we're experiencing at Slate.

A prominent East Coast newspaper, The New York Times, has been poaching from Slate, taking key writers and editors invaluable to our evolving franchise. Several years ago I viewed these departures as testament to Slate's reputation within our industry. Being recognized by the media establishment as a breeding ground of top journalists was rewarding. But no longer do I hold these egress offenders in such high regard.

Granted the New York Times has been experiencing talent problems of their own lately, but that's no excuse to "brain drain" us. In my seven years with Slate, I've seen the Times make off with no fewer than five Slatesters. And just last week, they tried to hire away our esteemed editor-in-chief, Jacob Weisberg, according to this item in the New York Post. While the opportunity offered Weisberg was beneath his abilities, I'm thankful he didn't follow his former colleagues.

Our mantra at Slate is to support budding journalists growing in their profession. Should a better opportunity present itself, by all means go forward. But this trend must cease. Our staff are bound by the non-compete clause they signed upon employment, and I was wondering if you could spare some time for Slate now that the DOJ case is behind us? This tortuous contractual interference is beginning to have adverse effects on us.

It's improbable we'll be able to recoup our losses. But just in case, we'd like all of them back except for Paul Krugman.

I appreciate your help and look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Cyrus

['As You Know' Bob]

>"But I want 10!"

#9, 'Jonah Goldberg teamed with an Anonymous Coward' might be dumb enough to count as two.

[capatalistpig]

Say otey2, maybe that should have read stupidest self aggrandized Economist alive. Unlike an Economist, the average layman is not expected to be conversant with IRS rules.

[hack]

I was a little surprised by today's stock market reaction to Krugman's award.

[Sainlob Ghimu]

Surprised? Read PK's column at NYT today.

[Sainlob Ghimu]

Surprised? Read PK's column at NYT today.

[John Emerson]

Unhinged enough?:

"This is not as tragic a moment in western civilization as the sacking of Constantinople in 1453 or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but it suffices as one of those sad moments we will regret over time."

[Jambo]

Those darn "far left" economists! I remember how PK's Slate columns in praise of free trade used to piss off most of the liberals reading them.

[Colin Danby]

#27 at http://crookedtimber.org/2008/10/13/the-name-of-this-band-is-exploding-heads/#comments
has a nice collection.

Fun aside, I'm genuinely surprised by how *hurt* some of these guys are -- I always thought conservatism was about not being a total wuss. They seem pathetically eager for the validation of the prize, and/or distressed that someone who called them rude names got it.

It also shows you different Austrianisms. Cowen and Tabarrok are intellectually confident enough to be unfazed; Boettke gets over his initial "shock and horror" to write a smart (if still pissy) piece for Forbes, others are just inconsolable.

And Jambo is right. Harry Braverman this is not.

[Michael Turner]

I don't get the "ultra left"/"hard left" characterization either. Was Krugman ever a freelance thug for the Spartacist Youth League? Did he ever give sanctuary to Bader-Meinhof gang members? Did he even help Bob Avakian make rent when Bob was holed up in a Paris apartment? Or are all these in some distinct spectral category like "ultra-super-duper-hard-as-diamond left"?

Oh, wait a minute, I DO get it: if, as a liberal, you do not loudly denounce every instance of someone comparing Bush to Hitler, you deserve to be called a Stalinist.

[kire]

Not sure what Lushkin is talking about what with his allusion to low, GWB, capital gains rates. Nobel prizes are included in income, ordinary income except, maybe, if it can be somehow transmogrified into something else. Everything is income; the IRC reads expansively and has been consistently so interpreted. And it's not really the same as "income" as economists understand it. It's more of a common sense (in the legal sense), full measure of the taxing power, thingy. If that helps.

And PK has caught it. Though I don't get the sense he's too concerned about his new tax problem.

[tom f]

I'm now beginning to suspect that Ayers has ghost-written Krugman's work on trade theory.

[Paul J. Reber]

Wait, that's Mankiw approvingly linking to somebody who claims that Krugman only presents one side of the story? Mankiw, who worked from within the Bush admin with nary a peep before or since on the intellectual bankruptcy of his cut taxes and spend policies? Mankiw who calculated the actual growth dividend of a tax rate cut at around 20% of it's cost *iff* it was balanced by spending cuts -- and never publicly denounced the Bush admin's insane commitment to supply-side economics?

That Mankiw is criticizing Krugman for presenting one side of the story? Really? Seems like some weapons-grade irony going on there, to me.

[Tomas]

The only difference between Mankiw and Luskin is that while Luskin has the balls (and lack of brains) to produce his own weaponsgrade teh stupid and wallow in it, Mankiw has someone else make his weaponsgrade teh stupid to wallows in.

Is this profound difference?

[DRR]

No one need be confused about the accusations of hard leftism. These are American Conservatives we're talking about. Anyone who even expresses skepticism that a laissez-faire policy of absolute free markets unfettered by regulation or government public services isn't the best economic policy has to be left wing. So Paul Krugman's politics, which are probably to the right of Paul Samuelson's, is considered a hard leftist. If Edmund Burke were alive today, National Review would accuse him of being a socialist.

[Wakboth]

That's a whole wagonload of bitter grapes. May the idiots choke on them.

(My favorite is probably #3, with the "Nobel prize for Mathematics" thing...)

[Wakboth]

That's a whole wagonload of bitter grapes. May the idiots choke on them.

(My favorite is probably #3, with the "Nobel prize for Mathematics" thing...)

[Jeff]

It seems like a lot of people are criticizing his nobel win because of Paul Krugman's character and not his research. I think if they withheld the blog, NYT column, and tv appearances, I think people would be more comfortable with it. It's cool to read critique his research, but people very rarely do it much less can comprehend his research. They just bitch about who he complains about or who he hangs around.

[Ken Houghton]

I was going to second the nomination of Krohn's Disease(d Mind), but marxbites above is Trying Really Hard.

Otoh, s/he left out the obligatory "Krugman was on the Enron board" flame, so let's still with Krohn's Diseased Mind for #10.

[PQuincy]

No fair counting Jonah Goldberg, even once. He wasn't writing about Krugman, after all. Like always, he was writing about himself.

[Nathanael Nerode]

Did anyone catch the extra special display of ignorance in #3? There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics!

[JFred]

Looking for the worst of the internet is much easier than shooting a fish in a barrel. Doing it in an election year makes it easier than eating a fish sandwich in bed.

[Jeet Heer]

We have a winner. William "Bill" Anderson in Forbes:

Today's announcement that Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics, although not earth shattering, indicates that outright political partisanship is not a deterrent to winning. This is not as tragic a moment in western civilization as the sacking of Constantinople in 1453 or the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, but it suffices as one of those sad moments we will regret over time.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/13/krugman-nobel-economics-oped-cx_wla_1013anderson.html

[eyelessgame]

[quote]The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.[/quote]

That is the distilled essential nugget of conservative dementia. They do not understand that the point of a tax is that it is compulsory - that it is only effective because everyone must participate. There is an underlying projective narcissism: "if higher taxes will save the country, why don't you voluntarily pay higher taxes than you owe (and thus save the country yourself)?" The conservative does not understand a non-narcissistic mind - does not comprehend that I am able to distinguish my personal choices from collective behavior. He does not get that if I (or Krugman) were to pay, say, an extra 5% of my income to the government, it has no detectable effect on the national deficit; only if everyone (or some large subset of the owners of wealth, in any case) pays their 5% does the budget balance.

It's narcissism, fundamentally, and the concommitant inability to see others as non-narcissists.

[Walt]

To be fair to Krugman, if somebody droped a glass, I would probably scream too. Only the aliens of Tau Ceti 3 drope glasses, and it's a well-known fact that they regard human flesh a delicacy.

[Gerald Prante]

Milton Friedman was involved in political controversy at the time of his Nobel announcement, yet nobody (even say Galbraith, Samuelson or other left-leaning economists) within the economics community can really say he didn't deserve the prize at that moment in time.

[pgl]

I tried in an email to suggest to Goldberg that his Cornerite post would have had more credibility had the name of the Anonymous Coward been revealed. Goldberg replied to the email but still no name. I guess Momma's Boy didn't get the simple point.

[PeonInChief]

I'm almost ready to issue a "Certificate of Non-Socialism" for Krugman. After all, the poor guy once shilled for Enron. But it's interesting that his Nobel, along with that of Milton Friedman in 1976, bookends a period in economic history and policy--and the policy should have a stake driven through its heart (a line stolen from Dean Baker).

[Rex]

How about this one? I know it's supposed to be comedy, but it's still pretty dumb.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=6950

Krugman Could Turn into Massive Douchebag, Colleagues Fear
Co-workers Brace Themselves for Post-Nobel Effects

[obzzy observer]

What the Nobel committee has passed across to us is that globalisation is still beneficial despites what present prospect of increased autarky/protectionism worldwide suggests. As Prof. Krugman himself admitted during the BBC interview yesterday, what the policy markers must keep eyes on is the demerits of globalisation. Finacial globalisation's merits are obvious despites the present shortcoming. Prof. Stliglitz,after winning his prize, started denouncing globalisation. And that has not removed the intellectual prowess he is made of. To me,the award to Krugman is a expression of benefits of free trade. Prof Krugman with all objectivity deserves the award. Congrats, Prof.

NB: Soonest, Prof Delong will clinch his.

[Larry Kaufmann]

[700 words and yet no *substantive* critique of Krugman?

I confess that I have always been puzzled about just what the Kaus, Luskin, Sullivan, McArdle, Goldberg critique of Krugman is: he seems, in retrospect, to have been batting above 90% in his criticisms of the Bush administration.]

Hey guys - Sorry I'm late to the party, but just thought you'd like to know that I'm the anonymous correspondent that Jonah Goldberg linked to in the Corner. But Prof DeLong, or anyone else on this thread, should really think twice before calling someone a coward just because he sent a friendly message to a journalist (although, I'm guessing, not a favorite journalist of this crowd). On-line columnists as a rule keep their e-mail correspondence anonymous, both as a courtesy and to protect others’ privacy. It’s similar to the anonymous comments left on any number of blogs, including this one - in fact, my e-mail was even more private, since comments here are clearly intended for public consumption whereas that wasn't necessarily my intention.

In any event, I don't know why pgl or anyone else thinks the credibility of my remarks depends on knowing my name - they stand on their own and should be evaluated that way. But if anyone wants to see what I said in full, rather than the negative part that was selectively posted here, go to the Corner and check it out.

For the record, I have tremendous respect for Krugman's academic contributions - I even suggested in the Corner post that his international finance work was perhaps more original and intriguing than his international trade stuff, which several other prominent economists were doing around the same time. But I was lamenting the fact that there is such a disconnect between the tone and rigor of Krugman's academic work and his popular columns, and I contrasted this with the earlier work of Milton Friedman. Friedman's Newsweek columns were a straightforward extension of his academic research, and they retained a kind of professorial tone. Even if you disagreed with what he said, most readers would come away having learned something. Friedman's columns also showed the broader public what it was like to think like an economist when analyzing public policy.

I just don't think that's the case with Krugman, and the comments here tend to bear that out. I think a lot of people read Krugman looking for validation of their pre-existing opinions (sometimes known as prejudices) and someone to stick it to their political opponents/enemies, rather than the place to look for an objective and dispassionate analysis. That's the problem. There are so few good economic columnists out there, and so much economic illiteracy, that we could use someone with real academic chops who can pick up where Friedman left off - and I don't care where that person would come down on the issues, as long as all sides are presented fairly and analyzed impartially.

So - I'm sure pgl is wondering - do I have any standing to even voice these opinions? I really don't need to defend myself, and it would look silly and self-serving to try, but let me just say that I read plenty of Krugman's stuff getting my PhD in international economics (studying under Prof Bob Baldwin, a leader in an earlier generation of economists in international trade theory and empirical research, and solidly left of center to boot). If anyone wants to attack me as a hack or hater or whatever passes for intelligence on this blog, feel free - it's Prof DeLong's site, but I know the truth and so do scores of colleagues and clients I've worked with in the 15 years since grad school. I'm no coward, but I'm also no fan of Krugman's NYT work.

Have a nice day fellas

[Aaron]

Just read Larry's comment which, like Jonah's comment above is also entirely free of substance. Thanks for contributing nothing.

Also "anonymous coward" is a standard blog description for people who wish to publish anonymously. checkout slashdot.org for mass usage.

[Bernard Yomtov]

I don't think this contest is entirely fair, Brad.

You need to have separate categories for professional idiots like Goldberg and amateurs like the commenters you cite.

[Tom Richards]

I call no. 2 in the list as Nigel Molesworth - see http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/intro.htm

[Economics of Contempt]

Here's a good one, including these choice quotes from Don Boudreaux:

"[M]ore than a few take issue with, as does George Mason University economics department chief Donald J. Boudreaux, giving 'the most celebrated credential in economics to a man who routinely issues policy recommendations in apparent ignorance of bedrock truths' of his discipline.

Someone who regularly 'commits elementary errors' when discussing economics 'ought not to be take seriously,' he says."

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_593296.html

Austrians really do live in their own little world, don't they?

[Texas Aggie]

Volokh Conspiracy somehow thinks that Milton Friedman's positions that contradict Mr. Krugman should be accepted as the gospel. Remember that the monetary theory that "won" Friedman the Nobel was tried by the Treasury Dept and then rejected because it is flawed and didn't work. The only thing that Friedman is remembered for is his injunction that greed is good and that the only focus of a CEO is to earn money for the stockholders. We can see now just how efficacious that injunction is. Even one of Friedman's main disciples, Alan Greenspan, has blamed the greed of Wall St. CEO's for the present problems. When will people stop idolizing Friedman? Milton is to economics as George is to good government.