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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
In the wake of Enron founder Ken Lay’s death, Mark Steyn reminds us that NYT columnist Paul Krugman received $50,000 for serving on Enron’s advisory board:
Fifty-thousand dollars is a high price to pay even for prestigious nothing. It’s 10,000 more than the median household income of the United States, never mind all those little folks the Prof feels so badly for. The man who sneers at the malign influence of Enron money on Republican politicians – or, as he calls them “the people Enron put in the White House”- has received more money from Enron than any member of the House of Representatives. If he were in the Senate, where 71 of 100 members have been endowed with Enron moolah, he would rank in that crowded field as the third biggest beneficiary of the company’s generosity.
The above was written in 2002. Krugman is still on staff at the NYT.
- Are we really sure that Krugman did “nothing” for Enron? Considering the company’s ultimate fate, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some bad economic advice was part of the mix.Posted by paco on 2006 07 06 at 12:13 PM • permalink
- #1 paco
Are we really sure that Krugman did “nothing” for Enron? Considering the company’s ultimate fate, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some bad economic advice was part of the mix.
No kidding. The connection ought to be obvious. Why he wasn’t named as an unindicted co-conspirator is a mystery.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 07 06 at 12:26 PM • permalink
- ushie,
Did they before he was hidden behind the Wall? I mainly know of him from seeing many of his howlers exposed by bloggers.
Posted by Major John on 2006 07 06 at 02:21 PM • permalink
- He wrote this for Fortune Magazing for $50k
“”The retreat of business bureaucracy in the face of the market was brought home to me recently when I joined the advisory board at Enron–a company formed in the ‘80s by the merger of two pipeline operators. In the old days energy companies tried to be as vertically integrated as possible: to own the hydrocarbons in the ground, the gas pump, and everything in between. And Enron does own gas fields, pipelines, and utilities. But it is not, and does not try to be, vertically integrated: It buys and sells gas both at the wellhead and the destination, leases pipeline (and electrical-transmission) capacity both to and from other companies, buys and sells electricity, and in general acts more like a broker and market maker than a traditional corporation. It’s sort of like the difference between your father’s bank, which took money from its regular depositors and lent it out to its regular customers, and Goldman Sachs. Sure enough, the company’s pride and joy is a room filled with hundreds of casually dressed men and women staring at computer screens and barking into telephones, where cubic feet and ”The retreat of business bureaucracy in the face of the market was brought home to me recently when I joined the advisory board at Enron–a company formed in the ‘80s by the merger of two pipeline operators. In the old days energy companies tried to be as vertically integrated as possible: to own the hydrocarbons in the ground, the gas pump, and everything in between. And Enron does own gas fields, pipelines, and utilities. But it is not, and does not try to be, vertically integrated: It buys and sells gas both at the wellhead and the destination, leases pipeline (and electrical-transmission) capacity both to and from other companies, buys and sells electricity, and in general acts more like a broker and market maker than a traditional corporation. It’s sort of like the difference between your father’s bank, which took money from its regular depositors and lent it out to its regular customers, and Goldman Sachs. Sure enough, the company’s pride and joy is a room filled with hundreds of casually dressed men and women staring at computer screens and barking into telephones, where cubic feet and megawatts are traded and packaged as if they were financial derivatives. (Instead of CNBC, though, the television screens on the floor show the Weather Channel.) The whole scene looks as if it had been constructed to illustrate the end of the corporation as we knew it.”.
(Instead of CNBC, though, the television screens on the floor show the Weather Channel.) The whole scene looks as if it had been constructed to illustrate the end of the corporation as we knew it.””I got this from Andrew Sullivan’s archives. It used to be on a web site at MIT. But it has somehow been deleted.
- In his own small way, Paul Krugman help destroy the retirement nest eggs of the thousands and thousands of people by doing what he was paid to do – look the other way.Posted by perfectsense on 2006 07 06 at 04:29 PM • permalink
- #7 Believe it or not, they did. He was a well regarded international economist, I suppose he still is, and wrote various academic books on the subject. This was before he went crazy and started writing for the NYT. Perhaps when he realized that a Nobel in economics was out of his reach he decided to shoot for a Pulitzer? And for this you have to shoot pretty far left.Posted by Not My Problem on 2006 07 06 at 06:34 PM • permalink
- iowahawk
I have it on first hand (OK, OK 101st hand) knowledge that Krugman is THIS kind of person..
If someone offered you a ‘49 Cadillac for 120 bucks, would you turn it down? If your answer is “yes,” please click your browser’s back button and leave in an orderly fashion because I really don’t want your type reading my blog.
- Ross, why is Dawkins relevant here? He is actually teaching in line with his field of specialist knowledge, and
He is doing creationists a huge favour, by attempting to get them to ground beliefs. If you believe, and the evidence is against your belief, you need to say ‘Hell, I believe whatever the evidence says’. Not bamboozle the punters, or deceive yourself with clutched straws such as dislikeing the person’s manner who tells you the truth.
- O/T – I can’t make sense of this report in today’s The Age about the retirement of the head of the Uniting Church (for the benefit of US readers the Uniting Church was cobbled together from the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches in the 1960s – a compromise that pandered to the lowest common denominator in each religion):
“With dreadful irony, cereal ignorance shows what happens when serial ignorance takes the place of truth and justice.”
Then —
He also said Australia was “sucking dry” its Pacific and regional neighbours to maintain its own lifestyle.
What a tool. He must have forgotten the millions in aid we give the black fellas in the islands, and which they traditionally piss up against a wall.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 07 06 at 10:05 PM • permalink
- Who knows, maybe Krugman will have a heart attack too.Posted by G Hamid USA on 2006 07 06 at 11:41 PM • permalink
- I thought of Dawkins as soon as I read TallDave’s Chomsky line.
ChrisPer: It’s Dawkins’s other stuff that Ross was referring to. He’s quite the loony leftist when he’s not writing about selfish genes.
Posted by Brian O’Connell on 2006 07 06 at 11:58 PM • permalink
- #8—It is no surprise whatsoever that people whose reality is free of all fact are not embarrassed when facts like this bubble up.
I know some people who fit this description to a T – If it’s yours, may I borrow the line, or do I need to pay you for it???
Thank you for giving me the first smile of my day!
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