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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):              
                                                              IMG_7112.JPG
  p.138, "Public Intellectuals"                                           
  (Note: I've added paragraph breaks):                                    
                                                                          
  "Paul Krugman ... has criticized Thurow,                  (Sept 2021) 
  even saying that Thurow arguably is 'more      I was just reading the
  deeply rooted in journalism than in            original, and while Krugman
  academia,'[30] a remark to which Krugman's     was critical of Thurow, this
  being hired subsequently as the economic       was not really a big part of
  columnist of the _New York Times_ lends a      it.  It's more like a
  note of irony."                                necessary categorization for
                                                 the overall point Krugman
  "He was not hired by the _Times_ for his       makes about the differences
  record as a prophet."                          of academics and "policy
                                                 entrepreneurs".
  "In a book published in 1990 he had            
  offered as 'the most likely forecast        
  for the U.S. domestic economy in the                                
  1990s ... fairly slow growth, modestly     So Krugman didn't        
  rising incomes for most Americans,         predict the internet.             
  generally good employment performance,     Terrible, eh?            
  [and] a gradual acceleration of                                     
  inflation' to 7 percent.[31]                                       
                                                   
  "He predicted that by 2000 the United          Interesting.  What's
  states would 'have sunk to the number          the actual ranking
  three economic power in the world,'            at this point?
  after Europe and Japan, ..."              
                                                     (I believe Japan is #3.)
  "... and that the world economy would      
  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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