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Canning
Krugman
Why Paul Krugman should be fired. (It’s not the reason you
think.)
By
NR Editors
From the February 11, 2002, issue of National
Review
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 ack
when economist Paul Krugman was on an advisory board of Enron's, he
wrote an article for Fortune that lauded the company —
and mentioned that he was on the board, though not that he got $50,000
for his services. When he became a columnist for the New York Times,
Krugman left the board. He now flays Enron for practicing a corrupt
"crony capitalism" and the Bush administration for "dissembling"
about its ties to Enron. Should the Times can Krugman because
he lacks journalistic ethics? No. These sins — failure to disclose
relevant information, hypocrisy — seem fairly petty. The Times
should end his column for other reasons. It's repetitive and predictable:
Krugman seems to have only three or four column ideas (tax cuts are
bad, private accounts in Social Security are bad, Republicans are
bad). It's intellectually thuggish: Krugman caricatures opponents,
falsely presents his opinions as "cold, hard fact" accepted
by all his fellow economists, and attributes all disagreement with
him to crankiness and dishonesty. He has become, to some extent, a
partisan hack, willing to make abrupt 180-degree turns if necessary
to criticize President Bush. Finally, he's a mediocre writer at best,
even making allowances for his being an economist. That companies
like Enron go bankrupt is a sign that markets work. The canning of
a lousy columnist would be another. |
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