Niall Ferguson's Blog, page 2

The Blo(g)viation Index

As I’ve been accused (wrongly) of stoking inflation fears, there is such a thing as inflation in intellectual life. This occurs when the supply of words exceeds the demand for them, causing the value of the individual word to collapse. For an example of superfluous verbiage, see Matt O’Brien’s desperate attempt to succeed where Brad DeLong so abjectly failed, i.e. to...

Krugtron the Invincible, Part 3

In my previous two articles, I have shown that Paul Krugman - revered by his acolytes as the Invincible Krugtron - failed to anticipate the financial crisis and wrongly predicted that the single European currency would fall victim to it. I have exploded his claim to intellectual invincibility. Very clearly, he has made at least twice as many major mistakes in his career as the mere two he...

Krugtron the Invincible, Part 2

As I pointed out yesterday, Paul Krugman's right to consign others to the "Always-Wrong Club" , and routinely to insult anyone who dares to disagree with him, is fatally vitiated by his own embarrassingly bad record of commentary on the European phase of the financial crisis. His repeated and erroneous predictions of the European Monetary Union's imminent collapse constitute a...

Krugtron the Invincible, Part 1

It's an ill wind that blows no one any good. The financial crisis that came to a head five years ago with the failure of Lehman Brothers has been especially beneficial to the economist Paul Krugman. In his widely read New York Times column and blog, Krugman regularly boasts that he has been "right" about the crisis and its consequences. "I (and those of like mind)," he wrote in June...