I am SO pleased...

[akirlu]

...that Paul Krugman has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize* for Economics. Not least because he's a lucid and interesting writer when explaining his theories to lay audiences, a skill that is no doubt ancillary to winning the prize, but certainly to be valued among the vast crowd of dismally abstruse dismal scientists.

*Yes, technically the prize in Economics is not one of the awards set up by Alfred Nobel's will, but rather established in 1966 by the Swedish central bank as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, but whatever. They post the announcement on the www.nobelprize.org and I say it's spinach, and quacks like a duck besides.

Comments

[greenshadows.livejournal.com]

I'm very happy for him, too. Been reading his stuff and largely agreeing for years; also he's a regular on Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow's shows these days, as lucid a speaker as he is a writer.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've long regarded Professor Krugman as a rare voice of sanity in a weirdly insane political landscape, and generally admire and appreciate his political commentary both in print and on the tube. One of the things I do appreciate about having finally given in to the evile blandishments of (virtually free) cable television is that I can finally watch Olbermann and Jon Stewart and, these days, Rachel Maddow.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Same here. He also strikes me as being the sane voice of a "science" that is oft dominated by a certain type of thinker.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I dunno if 'dominated' is really true. Remember that the McCain campaign published a list of 100 economists who agree with McCain on the economy, and the list turned out to be only 90 names long. In other words, despite their efforts, the campaign couldn't come up with 90 economists who were willing to agree with them in public.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. Perhaps "vocal" is what I'm thinking of. :) Or at least the right leaning portions of the Blogosphere tend to quote the same bunch.

Remember tax cuts are magic :)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they're noisy buggers. Though I think you bias your own sample by throwing yourself into the briarpatch on a regular basis. If you spent more time reading Duncan Black and Brad DeLong, you might not feel quite so besieged by the yammering nutbirds.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought that good news, as well. I was even tempted to leave a congratulatory comment on his NY Times blog, but then noticed he'd already gotten 1873 comments. So I skipped it.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had a similar impulse to send a note to his Princeton e-mail address, but decided not to clog his filters more than already done. But I feel an implausibly proprietary smugness over his laurel -- Paul Krugman, the people's economist!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

He's taking part soon in a Crooked Timber seminar about Charlie Stross' work. Maybe there'll be more room for congrats there.