EDITORIALS : Mr. Happiness himself
Posted on Tuesday, April 24, 2007
WHEN THE news came last week that the stock market had reached a record high, we thought we heard the strangest sound in the background: quiet sobbing. It took a while before its source came to us: Of course ! That had to be the New York Times ’ man in the economy and all-around pundit, Paul Krugman, crying in his beer. Though given today’s economy, he’s probably drinking the best single-malt Scotch on the market. But nothing seems to depress him like good news. He’s been predicting an economic collapse for so long that it cheers just to think of him as the stock market sets new records and the unemployment rate keeps dropping below low, and good economic news keeps piling up. Meanwhile, the sage of W. 43 rd St. keeps warning that The End Is Near. Think Woody Allen doing Shakespearean tragedy.
For just a moment there, when the stock market had its big hiccup so long ago—back in February, which now seems several winters ago—Dr. Krugman could scarcely contain his glee. He was Mr. Happiness himself. At last his hour had come ! He immediately dashed off a fantasy dated February 27, 2008, in which he looked back—with ill-concealed satisfaction—at the dire fate he’d long foreseen for the American economy.
His happy vision began: “The great market meltdown of 2007 began exactly a year ago, with a 9 percent fall in the Shanghai market, followed by a 416-point slide in the Dow. ’’ That classic of a column foresaw disaster by now: “ For a couple of months after the shock of Feb. 27, markets oscillated wildly, soaring on bits of apparent good news, then plunging again. But by late spring, it was clear that the self-reinforcing cycle of complacency had given way to a self-reinforcing cycle of anxiety....” Translation: Come on, disaster ! This is a guy who lives for a repeat of 1929.
Not till the end of that column did Dr. Krugman hedge his doomsday scenario in case the American economy rebounded. And rebound it did. Fast but not furious. Just steadily. Prosperity has become almost routine. And poor Paul Krugman has lapsed into a resentful funk. He seems to have fallen silent on the subject of The Great Meltdown of 2007—much like a professional mourner who keeps waiting for the big funeral that never comes.
Not since Stan Laurel has sadness been so funny. Here our expert—he teaches economics somewhere in the Ivy league, doesn’t he?—was fully expecting to be followed by a whole herd of bears into the biggest sell-off since the dot. com bubble burst, and what happened was... pretty much nothing. Just another, undramatic recovery. Dang.
It’s not just Dr. Krugman’s recurrent prophecies of another Crash that impress—he’s been making those since our memories runneth not to the contrarybut the uncanny effect he has on the market. He no sooner predicts disaster than the dawgone thing goes sky-high again, breaking all records. Like the hoofer who’s told to play Sophocles but can’t stop doing musical comedy. The more Professor Eeyore says the economy is going to Hell, the more heavenly it gets. Can that pattern be just a coincidence ? The Dow seems to surge whenever it sees “Paul Krugman” in a by-line. It’s an almost a Pavlovian reaction by now. Surely another dip will come—we still believe in the business cycle as an article of faith and experience—but Paul Krugman’s magic touch keeps upsetting it, turning every down into still another unstoppable up. It’s positively unnatural. The man is a kind of walking, talking, and, best of all, writing version of Al Capp’s poor little jinx of a character, Joe Btfsplk—only in reverse, leaving not disaster but good fortune wherever he goes. The New York Stock Exchange ought to put him on retainer, If only Paul Krugman would just keep writing about the coming End of It All, prosperity might be assured. HEN THERE’S the language Dr.
Krugman uses, or rather facsimile thereof. He’s the world’s leading practitioner of purple-as-a-bad-bruise prose. Mrs. Malaprop might have spoken like that if only she’d had a Ph. D. in the dismal science. We’ve saved our favorite Krugmanism of all time, and keep it handy for those times when we need cheering up. Sort of like a bedside copy of James Thurber’s stories, or S. J. Perelman’s essays. Only those gentlemen set out to be funny. What required wit and artistry on their part, Paul Krugman seems to achieve effortlessly, indeed unintentionally. As in our favorite Krugmanism, which we’re happy to share: “And when the chickens that didn’t hatch come home to roost, we will rue the days when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg.” As prose, that’s a lot of poultry. We clipped that one out for future reference. Reading it mellows the temper and lends perspective after a rough day. It beats the heck out of any cocktail. Read it again. And see if you can stop laughing. We keep trying to visualize those chickens that didn’t hatch coming home to roost, but it’s quite beyond us. Like the sound of one hand clapping. It’s almost Zen. The reference to the national nest egg is just lagniappe. One needn’t disagree with Dr. Krugman’s dour outlook to appreciate his (awful ) way with a phrase. He’ll turn it every way but loose.
There hasn’t been a master of the Irish Bull so glib since Sir Boyle Roche himself. That posturing 18 th Century parliamentarian inspired the whole genre by committing such rhetorical flourishes as his claim that “the cup of Irish misfortunes has been overflowing for centuries, and it’s not full yet.” We’d put Paul Krugman’s best work up against Sir Boyle’s any time, and very much look forward to reading the professor’s next jeremiad about the imminent Crash; the economy can always use a boost.
Cheers.
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