Paul Krugman - Nobel Economics 2008

This just in..

Paul Krugman of Princeton University wins the Nobel Prize in Economics for the year 2008 "for his analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity".

Congratulation Paul, as much as you and I differ on politics (you hating Obama), we still agree on one thing...free trade, free trade for the dumb! :-). I am a regular reader of your NY Times columns. I have also read some of your books. I admire the way you write without jargon so non-intellectual people like me can understand the complex world of economics. You are easily the most popular economist ever to win a Nobel!

Blame it on the PC :)

"The whole thing, starting with the subprime, is the fault of the computer. I was just talking to a banker the other day, and not that long ago, 20 years ago, an investment banking house, let’s say, Lehman Brothers, when it got a package of mortgages, they would go through every mortgage, every single one, and they’d throw out the ones that just seemed absurd, they just wouldn’t accept them. Things used to arrive on paper. Today things arrive on a screen, and a screen is back lit, and one of the biggest pains in the neck is trying to read something dully written and complicated on a computer screen. It will drive you nuts—I mean, try it sometime. Now they say, ‘Oh, to hell with it,’ and they just accept the whole package. And if it hadn’t been for that, they’d be going over each loan. What’s happened is the backward march of technology."

-- Tom Wolfe