Obi-Wan Krugman

Ever since I watched Paul Krugman's highly entertaining talk he gave last year at Google about the ensuing financial crisis than I began to read his NYT column regularly. So it was a pleasant surprise to learn this year's Nobel Economic Prize is awarded to Mr Krugman this past Monday, amid the downward spiral of economics calamity now, which made this particular recognition acutely poignant (or even vindictive for like minded Bush-Republican critics). If you never watch it, here it is:



The best lines of this talk:

"(Fed's bailing out Wall Street firms) gives you a feeling of re-arranging deck chairs on Titantic"
"we now have fair trade with China: they sell us poisoned toys and we sell them fraudulent securities"

BTW, if you are like me watching my retirement fund melt away fast in the past weeks and still confused by what the heck is liquidity, solvency, MBS, CDO, moral hazard, debt deflation, TED spread, you can certainly hit wikipedia for answer, but the best explanation about this mess we are in that I've read (technically, heard) so far is from NPR's "this giant pool of money" (here is its transcript)

BTW, Obi-Wan Krugman also have this to say on America's another bubble health care crisis and actually have some nice words about Taiwan's health care system (see also here in his blog)

Update: Charlie Rose interviewed Krugman on PBS at Oct 23