that if someone (Paulson, Bernake, Greenspan, anyone?) had been able enough to heed your warnings and take prescriptive action, and, in the process, deflated the bubble with a minimum of economic pain, then the mavens at BW would—today—be telling us how foolish it was to tighten underwriting requirements or raise interest rates or enforce regulation. And I will wager a Romney ($10K) that their proof would have been, "Look, we didn't have a recession, did we?" Tools and fools, aren't they?

There's no other explanation for Krugman's stunning performance is there, reeling off daily blogs and weekly columns that slice and dice his opponents up like mincemeat, leaving them muttering and stammering from the poetic poison darts Krugman zings effortlessly into their warped claims that would fail an undergraduate.

For another person in another place the freshwater gang would be showering Krugman with the usual platitudes offered up to all winners-take-all they worship based on the usual free market success story.

But not Paul Krugman. He can't possibly be that fluent, that deep and wide, that quick on the draw with a surgical response so precise and minimalist the scapal never leaves a scar after removing every erroneous letter of every word uttered in error.

It has to be market failure. There's no other explanation. If the public only knew what the freshwater gang knew behind that high wall of transaction costs it would never support Krugman with the readership it does.

Of course there is another possible explanation. Krugman may be so good because his opponents are so bad, and every day that goes by they keep pushing up his ratings with duh errors made even worse with demands for responses, even though Krugman is just standing still at a mused idle.

It could happen you know. That's how the freshwater crowd explains all success stories of winners-take-all absent market failure (caused by government of course). Performance is relative and Krugman is not an exception.

Stupid liberals.

Scott Sumner has already filled out this scorecard at his Money Illusion blog.

Not very likely that Business Week or any journamalistic entity will ask that last question until you stp beating the press.

There has been a dust up over US tax rate progressiveness.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/jonathan-chait-is-mean/

A lot of right wingers are piling on Chait. Your take?

It’s always dangerous to put humour into a debate on economics because those low I.Q. Austrians won’t get the joke. Like when Krugman said that spending money protecting ourselves against a non-existent alien invasion would provide stimulus: Austrians thought he meant it seriously.