Re: In defence of Krugman and against Alexander Cockburn: choice of targets

[Bill Lear <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday, October 31, 2003 at 04:07:09 (+0100) Jurriaan Bendien writes:
>Alexander Cockburn, whom I traditionally respect and admire, now writes:
>
>"Krugman is a press agent, a busker, for Clintonomics. For him as for so
>many others on the liberal side, the world only went bad in January, 2001.
>If a Democrat, pretty much any Democrat conventional enough to win Wall
>Street's approval, takes over again, maybe in 2005, the world will get
>better again."
>
>The question that needs to be asked is what we achieve by polemically
>writing off Krugman and calling him nasty names. Krugman is a very learned
>left-liberal economist capable of very good critical inquiry into the US
>economy and suggesting positive alternatives. ...

Krugman is not "left-liberal".  He is a neo-liberal, appearing in
sharp distinction to the hard-core right-wingers that dominate public
policy presently.  His critical inquiry is pretty shallow, consisting
mostly of currently calling Bush and his gang on their blatant
falsehoods.  When Clintonomics was ruling, he put out drivel about the
"Self-Organizing Economy".  Your ideas about criticizing Krugman to
"bring them over to our side", whatever "our side" may be, is utter
nonsense.  Krugman isn't going to change his mind about his version of
neoliberalism any more than Bush is.


Bill