- Krugman And Weiner

There is a really great summary of the monumental errors of prediction that Paul Krugman has made in recent years, over at NRO. It’s a real rogues gallery of lousy market and economic policy calls, and I think it demonstrates pretty well why the people in my world treat him as a laughingstock, even while the media and Hollywood continues to revere him. And while it gives a good accounting of when and how Krugman has been wrong, it doesn’t say anything about why.

There is little doubt that Krugman has fallen from a great intellectual height. He’s gone from revered Nobel Prize winning economist, to low rent left wing attack dog for the NYTimes editorial page. So how does something like that happen? I continue to maintain that it’s for the same reason that Anthony Weiner so recently burst into professional flames – insecurity.

Personal insecurity is the pervasive motivator for all liberal thinking. “I’m a good person because I support ____________.” That self congratulatory statement is the sole personal justification for virtually all liberal policy. Any glance at the policies advocated by either Weiner or Krugman makes that sentiment evident. But their insecurity affects their thinking in other ways too.

In Weiner, a skinny New York Jew whose last name is an adolescent euphemism for the male member, it became a quest to impress women. In Krugman, a person whose earliest writing describes his craving for power and authority but who still ended up in academia because that’s where ‘those who can’t” go, it has become a desperate quest for influence in popular culture.

In effect Krugman has become a person of influence for the mainstream media, because he’s saying things that justify the mainstream media’s biases. At the same time the mainstream media’s biases have provided Krugman with the signals for what he should say if he wants to gain influence. In the end, it’s all because he would rather be powerful than right. But just like Weiner, the fact that he so obviously craves authority, should be more than enough reason to deny it to him.