[Editor’s Note: We will keep our readers apprised of developments in the exchange between Paul Krugman and The Cobden Centre regular Ralph Benko.]
Professor Paul Krugman, in his New York Times blog last week, says my most recent column, about him, is “funny and scary.” Last week’s column here inferred that Prof. Krugman is leaving Princeton in quiet disgrace. It drew pretty wide attention.
It also drew over 150 comments. Many commentators merrily berated me. (Comes with the territory.) The column, quite flatteringly, even drew a riposte from Prof. Krugman himself, in hisTimes blog, entitled Fantasies of Personal Destruction:
A correspondent directs me to a piece in Forbes about yours truly that is both funny and scary.
Yep, scurrying away with my tail between my legs, I am, disgraced for policy views shared only by crazy people like the IMF’s chief economist (pdf).
One thing I’ve noticed, though, is how many people on the right are drawn to power fantasies in which liberals aren’t just proved wrong and driven from office, but personally destroyed. Does anyone else remember this bit from the O’Reilly scandal?
“Look at Al Franken, one day he’s going to get a knock on his door and life as he’s known it will change forever,” O’Reilly said. “That day will happen, trust me. . . . Ailes knows very powerful people and this goes all the way to the top.”
And people wonder why I don’t treat all of this as a gentlemanly conversation.
English: Paul Krugman at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Prof. Krugman’s prestige, and the immense influence provided him by the New York Times, gives his opinions enormous political weight. What he writes has impact in liberal, and Democratic, quarters. Yet he by no means is infallible.
The critique this columnist offered drew on commentaries by figures of real stature. One of these is Niall Ferguson, economic historian, Harvard professor (and Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University). The other commentary came from Paul Volcker who made a disparaging comment fairly interpreted as aimed at Prof. Krugman.
What’s really odd about Prof. Krugman’s Fantasies of Personal Destruction is its abrupt segue into likening my critique to a statement made by someone this columnist never met to someone this columnist never met. What could have motivated this non sequitur?
Perhaps some psychological force is at work? Prof. Krugman, echoing a clever critique by Keynes, himself has invoked Freud as key to understanding proponents of the gold standard. Freud,speculating on subconscious associations between excrement and money, referenced the Babylonian doctrine that “gold is the feces of Hell.” Thus, implies Prof. Krugman, proponents of a gold standard are stuck in an infantile “anal-retentiveness.”
Keynes, perhaps not getting it quite right, alludes to Freud in Auri Sacra Fames(September 1930):
Dr. Freud relates that there are peculiar reasons deep in our subconsciousness why gold in particular should satisfy strong instincts and serve as a symbol.
It presumably is this to which Prof. Krugman obscurely alludes in a blog entitled The She-Devil of Constitution Avenue:
I’ve been saying for a long time that we aren’t having a rational argument over economic policy, that the inflationista position is driven by politics and psychology rather than anything the other side would recognize as analysis. But this really proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt; if you really want to understand what’s going on here, the Austrian you need to read isn’t Friedrich Hayek or Ludwig von Mises, it’s Sigmund Freud.”
Put aside the demonstrable fact of Prof. Krugman’s consistently sloppy conflation of gold investors and gold standard proponents. Put aside his failure to engage with the arguments of the many gold standard proponents not predicting imminent virulent inflation. (Such as this writer.)
Eruditely ridiculing gold proponents as, well, full of s*** is clever. It likely will tickle those readers who find monkeys flinging poo at each other hilarious. Ridicule is much easier, and cheaper, than grappling with scholarly analyses such as that from the Bank of England which provided, in 2011, Financial Stability Paper No. 13, a genuinely interesting critique of the real world performance of fiduciary currency.
That paper is a rigorous analysis of the empirical performance of the fiduciary Federal Reserve Note standard in comparison to the Bretton Woods gold-exchange standard and the classical gold standard. It does not, at least not explicitly, advocate for either predecessor standard. It simply assesses that the Federal Reserve Note standard in practice has proved substantially worse than its predecessors (and calls for the exploration of a rule-based system). A thoughtful response by Prof. Krugman to this paper would be far more interesting, and edifying, than sly scatological insults.
One of the wittier of the commentators to last week’s column accused me of impudence. Guilty as charged. This writer confesses to having committed, in broad daylight, an act of lèse-majesté against the Great and Imperious Krugman. My critics are right to point out that this columnist is a minor figure. Still, do consider: the counsels of integrity to Pinocchio by the tiny Talking Cricket proved, in the end, well founded. One, also, could wish that more of Prof. Krugman’s defenders would tender more persuasive arguments (say, fact-based) than their many variants of “How dare you!”
In responding to my column Prof. Krugman states that “many people on the right are drawn to power fantasies in which liberals aren’t just proved wrong and driven from office, but personally destroyed.” Given Prof. Krugman’s vilification of his adversaries this could be dismissed as rich with irony. Yet there may be more to say.
Prof. Krugman has introduced the great Sigmund Freud into the conversation. Thus it might be fair to say that his consistently rude denigration of his adversaries appears to be what Freud called “projection” (“in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others“).
Consider Prof. Krugman’s public admission that he does not regularly read that which he presumes to criticize. Prof. Krugman states forthrightly:
Some have asked if there aren’t conservative sites I read regularly. Well, no.
Carefully reading one’s opponents’ arguments is not a requisite in life. Yet critiquing arguments one has not thoroughly assimilated is lazy, louche, intellectually slovenly, and — one might fairly infer — unacceptably beneath the standards of, say, Princeton University.
Prof. Krugman dismisses me as “funny and scary.” My several columns pointing out the errors of fact and unsupportable interpretations in his op-eds had been — and surely again will fall — beneath his notice. Still, inaccurately presenting that which one is criticizing is just bad journalism. Readers should be able to rely on editors to assure that a columnist is shooting straight.
As many of my commentators correctly point out I do not command (nor do I presume to deserve) the elite social status of Prof. Krugman. Yet had Prof. Krugman taken even a moment to aim before he fired he could have discovered a right winger who has offered many respectful words, and, when warranted, praise for Barack Obama,Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, George Soros, MoveOn.org, and Occupy Wall Street (among others with whom he has disagreements). There’s no agenda of “personal destruction.”
If Prof. Krugman had dug a little deeper he might have discovered that my columns routinely are informed by The New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, theAtlantic Monthly, and, yes, the New York Times, all of which I read regularly, usually with pleasure. He would discover that my use of them is not, by and large, to ridicule but to learn and, when in disagreement, to present their claims fairly and dispute them honestly.
Scary stuff? Prof. Krugman, if you find the words of this extremely minor pixel-stained wretch “scary” … what does that say? Perhaps speaking truth to power is scary … to those with power? Yet let me speak a little truth to the powerful, and indispensable,New York Times.
The Nobel Prize in Economics is one of the greatest laurels bestowed in that field. Should Prof. Krugman be permitted to rest on this laurel? Joseph Pulitzer’s directive still applies: “Put it before them… above all, accurately….”
It is not the purpose of this column to see Paul Krugman driven from his virtual office within the paragovernmental New York Times. This columnist makes only a modest call for the Times to assign an editor to fact check his work and help him refrain from reckless disregard for the truth.
