'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Congrats to Paul Krugman

Huge congratulations on his winning the Nobel Prize for Economics.

It turns out it's for work he did quite a while ago on trade patterns and economic geography. I haven't read the citation yet, but I hope they do mention his role as an exemplary public intellectual here in the US.

I haven't always agreed with him. For example, I thought the support he expressed for the Paulson plan when it was first produced, though very strictly qualified, was still ways too strong. But still, in the MSM he's been the major voice I've been seeing who's been consistently warning of the dangers of CDO's and, especially, CDS's.

Moreover, he also roamed far from the classical 'beat' of an economics writer to write excellent and very sharp warnings of the dangers of the Bushists' rush to war in Iraq. That, at a time when alleged foreign-affairs 'experts' on the NYT's columnists' roll (yes, that's you, Tom Friedman) were giving strong support to the go-to-war project.

Now, I suppose, I should go and read what it was, exactly, that he got this Nobel for...