Monday, October 13, 2008

The end of the Reagan/Thatcher revolution?

Thanks to the economic crisis, I hope we won't have to worry about the Reagan/Thatcher philosophy of political economy that resulted in the likes of Grover Nyquist and Tom DeLay. What a national nightmare that DeLay caused! Everything from closing access to Democratic representatives in the House, to personally overseeing mid-Census redistricting in Texas. Simply awful. Whatever intellectual merits the conservatives (not Republicans!) might have had, all we need is a poster of Nyquist and DeLay to make anybody run the other way.

Krugman's Nobel might well be the proverbial final nail. Reading some of the commentaries from the market-fundamentalist economists, including Mankiw himself, it appears that they are hopping mad that Krugman received the prize. My own suspicion is that they know that it will be years before they can regain the influence to shape intellectual fashions in economics. Or in social science, for that matter.

No, I have no false notions that this will lead to some big time leftist political policies. No Hugo Chavez, thank you very much. But, we might make some much needed corrections to the ultra-right approaches that preferred subsidies for the rich and cried against subsidies for the poor.

BTW, a reminder again that this is not a prize that is one of the original Nobel Prizes. In economics, it is an award in Nobel's memory, and the money for it comes not from Nobel's TNT wealth. The official name for the award is: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

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