10 Oct 2013

Niall Ferguson’s 3-Part Critique of Krugman

Krugman 4 Comments

I think Ferguson misses the mark on a lot of these, but there were 3 or 4 gems in here that I hadn’t known about. (I’ll blog them separately so as not to lose track of them.) Anywhere, here are the links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

My favorite paragraph of the series, from Part 3:

For too long, Paul Krugman has exploited his authority as an award-winning economist and his power as a New York Times columnist to heap opprobrium on anyone who ventures to disagree with him. Along the way, he has acquired a claque of like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O’Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers. Krugman and his acolytes evidently relish the viciousness of their attacks, priding themselves on the crassness of their language. But I should like to know what qualifies a figure like Matt O’Brien to call anyone a “disingenuous idiot”? What exactly are his credentials? 35,550 tweets? How does he essentially differ from the cranks who, before the Internet, had to vent their spleen by writing letters in green ink?

4 Responses to “Niall Ferguson’s 3-Part Critique of Krugman”

  1. Craig Yirush says:

    I’m curious – in what ways does Ferguson miss the mark?

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Craig, I don’t want to go back over his stuff, but it was things like him objecting to something Krugman had said as due to factor X, and Ferguson coming back and saying no it was due to factor Y. This isn’t really a gotcha thing, you would have to already believe Krugman was wrong to endorse Ferguson’s critique. It’s not like catching Krugman saying, “The euro is going to collapse” and then it doesn’t, which is a demonstrably false prediction.

  2. Ken B says:

    Bonus! Ferguson uses the word claque; you heard it here first!

    (Let me be clear. I mean that gaggle of regulars here who mob dissentient voices crying troll, liar, statist.)

  3. Harmony says:

    Hey, Bob , big fan we would love too see you also come up with a similar in short time…it will start a chain reaction of sorts and Krugtron will become fallible. Pretty please with sugar on top. You can easily fill in the gaps where NF missed. It’s time, sombody gave Krugtron a proper takedown.

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