I still don't see the big deal. The people who hand out Nobel prizes aren't supposed to have opinions? Where is that written? And who cares?

People who receive Nobel prizes aren't supposed to have opinions? They are supposed to research every sentence and carefully remove every hint of slanted words?

If that is the standard, then they need to revoke a lot of other Nobel prizes.

I guess they haven't been handing out Nobels on the Frostburg campus lately.

The author of the article creates the straw man that division between good economic policy and bad is always Democratic/Republican. And another straw man that all deregulation is the same.

Regarding his reference to the Teamsters, I'd also add that the entire history of the Teamsters' dalliance with the Republican Party in the late 20th Century hasn't been fully told. The Teamsters of Jimmy Hoffa pere were in the Republican camp in large part because of Robert Kennedy's war against crime in that union. It was Nixon who pardoned Hoffa, and whose FBI couldn't find Hoffa's body, or his killer. As I recall, maybe it was in From The President's Desk (a book of letters by Nixon while President), the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund was slipping money to GHW Bush for a political race, maybe his first try for the Senate.

The Central States Pension was a slush fund and it was used to help buy up Las Vegas too.

you'd think this guy might bother to get his facts straight:

"Given that the first New Deal ensured double-digit unemployment until the end of 1941, one would think competent economists would not support laws that restrict output, criminalize entrepreneurship, and keep unemployment levels in the stratosphere."

Or the blatant misrepresentation of Krugman's position:

"And there is that little $700 billion bond issue to buy worthless securities (something Krugman endorsed)."

Ummm, I know a little about Frostburg (not attended it), and I must say - charitably - that it's not a hotbed of intellectual thought. I don't think making Associate Professor is a particularly high hurdle. And after reading this piece I must say I'm not impressed either with his grasp of the facts or with his argument. In fact, I'm not clear on what he's trying to say, other than "Krugman bad".

Why 'SOCIALISM' brings apoplexy to these FORBES.COM types is beyond me. If they tried it, they may even like it! Wonder, if they started a prize, would they give it to a TOTALLY NON-PARTISAN economist ( if that is even possible--I do not know )? It is incomprehensible to me that people start shuddering at the mention of 'nationalisation' and 'socialism'.

Myself, I'm not so impressed with Krugman. However I don't see his award as being about partisanship so much as a sheepish kinda-sorta corrective to their earlier prize to Milton Freidman, given how Freidmanism has worked out.

I dunno. I think I sense a little...hmmm...bitterness?

Yeah, I think that's it.

Chard? You're not Swiss, are you?

And the example of airline deregulation under Carter is relevant how? Was there a Great Economic Meltdown of 1980 that I somehow missed?

Baldie McEagle: EXACTLY! No doubt, George and Dick(et. al.) OWN this one! (beauty of it all is, they ain't done yet, there's more to come)

Haha! I've been following some of the rending of garments over Krugman's Nobel win, but that might be the funniest yet.

Its Istanbul not Constantinople.

Yeah, NOW it is.

Actually, it always was. Kind of. Istanbul is a corruption of istin polis which supposedly means "the city," which in that age was not New York city, but - the city. Constantine graciously bestowed his name on the city when he moved his capital there but the people, ignorant plebes that they were, kept calling it "the city." When the Ottomans took over they decided to stop honoring Constantine.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it until I hear a better one.

Slightly off topic, but I found this great quote by Joan Robinson (an economist who should have won the Nobel Prize but didn't)--

"the purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

Yeah Frostburg guy! Boo Krugman! Me, I'm still pissed that the Nobel Committee didn't think about Krugman's ties to William Ayers. That really is the most important thing one should ever consider in making any decision. Krugman has ties to Obama, who has ties to Ayers, and that should disqualify him from being selected for anything, ever -- from a Nobel Prize to a pickup basketball team. Their failure to consider this just shows how partisan and biased the Swedes are. Why do they hate us? Why do they pal around with terrorist-lovers? Why won't the media spend all of their time talking about Krugman's ties to Ayers?