The Nobel Award for Political Hackery Goes To: The Nobel People.

As longtime readers will know well, I have never been impressed with Paul Krugman, except in the extreme negative. As an example a comment from a few months ago:

I‘ll open this by saying that by rights, and in a sane world, Paul Krugman should be hammered flat on economics, and drummed from his perch at the New York Times. However, let’s admit this isn’t a sane world, and Krugman and the New York Times deserve each other.

…

The only thing that keeps Krugman in the Tofu is the GED’s that still think he’s impressive. Most other folks, not so much. Of course there’s the hard left that worships on his altar, but they’d worship anything that mouthed what they want to hear. Krugman certainly does that. In both cases, Krugman knows where his target audience is, and writes to them. But the relationship between Krugman and truth is non-exsistant.

Of course, now over the weekend, the leftists posing as economists got together and tagged Krugman with the Nobel prize for economics. Billy points out this morning that it’s not really a Nobel prize at all, by way of a link to Skip Oliva.

That point said and aside, it does strike me, though, that the recent traditions at Nobel are being kept by this offshoot. Find the farthest left crackpot, and laud him as some sort of visionary. We saw it for example, with Al Gore.  You may recall I had a few choice words for that nonsense, as well, as has David, both listed here.

Jonah correctly points out that the defense of the man by his fans has always taken on a certain quality of crazy.  It boils down to, as he says “I’ve always found his columns persuasive so his academic work must be right too.” Well, it may well be that such columns prove persuasive to those who lean that way already and are disinclined to do the actual research work.

It seems to me this comes down to practical application, if nothing else. Our current economic situation… the direct result of the socialism Krugman pushes in his written work,  came upon us unmarked and unheralded by Krugman. Shouldn’t someone of such vission have seen this big a wave coming?  The sheer impact of the thing would seem require at least an ‘oops’ from the man, after the fact.  Now, as a rule, I tend to not read Krugman, anymore, so it’s possible that he’s addressed these current concerns, and I’ve missed it. But I will for the moment and barring proof otherwise, assume I’m not in error, here, and say he’s not so much as made mention of the whole thing in public, and if he has, he’s certainly not laid the problem at the feet of socialism as we have here at BitsBlog.

So, what can be said of an economist who misses predicting an economic event the size of the recent crashes? Perhaps given that the crashes are the direct result of policies he pushes, one might say he was a political  hack. Look at the BitsBlog link from last August, and you may note I did more than just that. But looking at the recent list of Nobel recipiants, we’re left with the idea that leftist political hacks are exactly the type of inDUHvidual who seems to get honored as a matter of routine by the Nobel people.

What, in turn, then, does that say about the Nobel people?