Hah. The GP comment was flagged, so I couldn't read it, and I hadn't read the article... but just from your question, I thought to myself "...must be Krugman?"

Hah. The GP comment was flagged, so I couldn't read it, and I hadn't read the article... but just from your question, I thought to myself "...must be Krugman?" Yep. Krugman is my illustrative example of the phenomenon of an intelligent, highly educated, Nobel-winning scientist, who is still notable for how often he's wrong. Clearly wrong, often even in his own field. I don't even understand how that's possible. Do I only see the specific subset of articles where he's wrong? Has he been so poisoned by partisanship that he's totally lost his grounding? Is economics just voodoo? Is there some base philosophical underpinning to all his thought that is so different from mine that what constitutes reasonable thought is completely different? I don't mean this to be an attack on the man. More just pointing out that... he puzzles me.