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KRUGMAN_PREDICTS

                                                   February 14, 2010

  Here we have another of Posner's digs at Paul
  Krugman (it's a weird hobby, I know, but I'm
  collecting these things):

  p.138, "Public Intellectuals"
  (Note: I've added paragraph breaks):
                                                              IMG_7112.JPG
  "Paul Krugman ... has criticized Thurow,
  even saying that Thurow arguably is 'more
  deeply rooted in journalism than in
  academia,'[30] a remark to which Krugman's
  being hired subsequently as the economic
  columnist of the _New York Times_ lends a
  note of irony."

  "He was not hired by the _Times_ for his
  record as a prophet."

  "In a book published in 1990 he had offered
  as 'the most likely forecast for the
  U.S. domestic economy in the 1990s ... fairly          So Krugman didn't
  slow growth, modestly rising incomes for               predict the internet
  most Americans, generally good employment              and housing bubbles
  performance, [and] a gradual acceleration              *before* they
  of inflation' to 7 percent.[31]                        started.

  "He predicted that by 2000 the United
  states would 'have sunk to the number          Interesting.  What's
  three economic power in the world,'            the actual ranking
  after Europe and Japan, ..."                   at this point?
                                                 ("Japan"?  This is an
  "... and that the world economy would          oldie, isn't it.)
  be less unified than it had been in the
  1980s [32]"
                                                 Hm... makes it sound like
                                                 he was suckered by some
                                                 variation of "peak-oil".


Posner's footnotes:

      [30] Paul Krugman, _Peddling Prosperity: Economic
           Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished         (1994: this is
           Expectations_ 249 (1994).                           the revised ed
                                                               of the original
           For other, and, in retrospect, equally ironic       from 1990)
           criticism of economist public intellectuals,
           see id. at 11-15.

      [31] Paul Krugman, _The Age of Diminished Expectations:
           U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s_ 191, 193 (1990)

      [32] Id. at 193-194


  Myself, I don't expect anyone to have a perfect
  record for prophecy-- certainly I don't--
  but if you're going to really study someone's
  record, you do need to look at their successes,
  don't you?

  Did Paul Krugman get *anything* right back
  in 1990? If so, you can't expect to hear
  about it from Posner.

  Notably in the last decade, Paul Krugman
  has done remarkably well, certainly
  compared to anyone else in the "mainstream"
  press.

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