For years I could never tell the difference between Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner. Part of it was that their last names both began with a ‘K’ but mostly it was because they both wrote quasi-populist economics columns that slammed Republicans and free markets with equal relish and were almost indistinguishable in their nastiness and faulty logic. When Krugman went to the New York Times and elevated his profile (and diminished his academic street cred) it became easier to tell the two apart. But two pieces on the Times op/ed page about the recent blackout – Krugman’s here and Kuttner’s here – rehash the same lame arguments against their phony boogeymen: “the market” and “deregulation.” Kuttner’s is the nastier of the two, and he went so far as to compare classical liberal economics and markets with suicidal Islamic fanatics.
When the blackout hit on Thursday, many of us first thought of terrorists. What hit us may be equally dangerous. We are hostage to a delusional view of economics that allowed much of the Northeast to go dark without an enemy lifting a finger.”
Northwestern University’s Lynne Kiesling has spent the last several days doing the media rounds tirelessly helping to explain why the blackout happened and why the Kuttner/Krugman scourge of “deregulation” is a red herring. She would be surprised to know she’s “equally dangerous” to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but unlike Krugman and Kuttner, she eschews their humorlessness, so she’ll probably let it slide off her back. If you actually want to understand what is happening with the electricity grid and markets, read Kiesling, or read today’s <a href=http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106125512725645600-search,00.html?collection=wsjie/30day&vql_string=melloan(article-body)>definitive piece from the Wall Street Journal’s George Melloan.