Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize

Is it coincidence that a brilliant economist who’s a Bush administration critic won in an election year?

"All those Paul Krugman haters out there" have something new to complain about, said Frank James in The Swamp. The Princeton professor and New York Times columnist has won a Nobel Prize in economics for his groundbreaking work on trade patterns. Krugman is one of the Bush administration's "most persistent liberal critics," and this should serve as a reminder that he's also "one of the smartest."

OK, so Krugman is "highly respected by credible economists," said Kevin D. Williamson in National Review Online. But the timing—choosing a "predictably angry liberal" near the election that will decide Bush's successor—raises the question of whether "the award was largely political."

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