Niall Ferguson Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson: Why Paul Krugman should never be taken seriously again

It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good. The financial crisis that came to a head five years ago with the failure of Lehman Brothers has been especially beneficial to the economist Paul Krugman. In his widely read New York Times column and blog, Krugman regularly boasts that he has been ‘right’ about the crisis and its consequences. As he wrote in June last year:

‘I (and those of like mind) have been right about everything.’

Those who dare to disagree with him — myself included — he denounces as members of the ‘Always-Wrong Club.

He wrote back in April:

‘Maybe I actually am right and maybe the other side actually does contain a remarkable number of knaves and fools. … Look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible!’

original

Voltron. See the Krugman resemblance? He does

That last allusion is to the 1980s science fiction superhero, Voltron (right).

Written by
Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist

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