http://drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/files/2008/10/certificate.pdf

1. There is no “Nobel Prize” in Economics. The Central Bank of Sweden (their FED) established this prize as a memomorial to the old oil man and dynamite maker. Winners in the sciences roll their eyes over it.

2. Only Woody would think Central Bankers are “Socialist” – in fact look at the market today – up 900 + points after intervention. IDB make the WSJ editorial page look reasonable.

3. I cannot really give credence to a “prize” awarded one year to Milton Friedman and the next to Kenneth Arrow or Paul Samuelson. It would be like awarding the Physics prize to a steady stater like Hoyle and then to Penzias and Wilson the next. Ridiculous.

4. John Nash’s”beautiful mind” won for an equation that led to the Scholes model and Long Term Capital Mgmt. Oh Boy!

5. ut if it makes the little darlings feel good . . . .

To prevent another Savings and Loan debacle, Congress established the Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) within HUD in 1992. OFHEO’s mission is to minimize the chances that two shareholder-owned corporations that are backed by the federal government, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, default on their debts, forcing the taxpayers to make up any shortfalls. Back then, OFHEO records show that these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) together had $194 billion in debts outstanding. By the end of 1998, their debts had exploded to $747 billion. Risks to the taxpayers have risen accordingly. At the rate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are borrowing, their
outstanding debts will exceed the national debt in the next decade. Only OFHEO’s independent judgment stands between taxpayers and a staggering GSE debt burden that falls on the public if the GSEs miscalculate their risk.

Fannie Mae Tried to Defeat OFHEO Before the Agency Made its Views Publicly Known Recently, Fannie Mae took the unusual step of criticizing OFHEO’s proposed agency rule, even before it was published. By law, federal employees must keep their internal discussions over proposed rules secret, raising the question of how the company knew enough to try to preempt what it considered to be “unfair” proposed “risk based capital standards.” The efforts of corporations to bend regulators to their will is not a new story. However, in a surprising slight of its regulator, Fannie Mae began attacking OFHEO’s capital rule even before it was made public. There may be selfish motivations behind their aggressive behavior. The company feared that OFHEO would require Fannie Mae to put up more capital. Investors could be disappointed. Fannie Mae shareholders want to employ maximum financial leverage to maximize their private profits if their calculations prove sound, safe in the knowledge that the government will absorb the1osses if they miscalculate. If Fannie Mae must put up more capital, this action will dilute earnings per share and potentially cause its stock price to fall, harming shareholders. OFHEO’s job is to defend taxpayers, not to further
enrich Fannie Mae shareholders.

Paul Krugman says whistle-blowers “deserve to be celebrated” for their “shocking revelations about how American institutions, from corporations to government agencies, really operate.” Let’s see how America’s most dangerous liberal pundit celebrates me — because I’m going to blow the whistle big-time on how Krugman “really operated” when he briefly served as an economist on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisors for the Reagan administration starting in 1982.

My colleague Bruce Bartlett has liberated a copy of the first page of a smoking-gun memo that Krugman wrote in 1982 with Larry Summers (who would 15 years later be Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton). I’ve already mentioned this memo — titled “The Inflation Time Bomb?” — in my column rebutting Krugman’s most recent attack on Ronald Reagan’s economic record. But now I’ve got the actual memo. And it’s a doozy.

I’ve seen Paul Krugman make lousy predictions about the economy before — lots of times (actually, every time). But until I read this memo, I had no idea that he could be so thoroughly, spectacularly, awesomely, shockingly wrong. And this is no mere Krugman jeremiad on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. This is a document on United States Government letterhead, written in order to guide national economic policy. Thank God Ronald Reagan was smart enough not to believe one word of it.

= = =

And, from Matt Littman at HuffPost:

Paul Krugman is angry. I know that when I read his column, and I have seen him on TV, with that seething look. And he has that beard – people with beards rarely look jovial, unless they’re Santa Claus.

Mostly, people with beards are stern, like Abe Lincoln, revolutionaries, like Fidel Castro, or old, like my grandmother.

…Paul Krugman is an academic economist currently at Princeton University who writes a twice weekly column for the New York Times. As a research economist his body of work and expertise is second to none. …He will most likely receive a Nobel Prize some day and deserve it.

As a political commentator however, his writings do not reveal the same level of rigorous and fair minded analysis. In fact, his column is regularly whining, misleading, shrill, intellectually dishonest, and devoid of serious analysis.

It goes without saying that today’s Nobel winners are selected based upon how much they hate America and attack our system.

Tore Ellingsen, a member of the prize committee, acknowledged that Krugman was an “opinion maker” but added that he was honored on the merits of his economic research, not his political commentary.

Hah! How can he say that with a straight face?

Not a bad prize for someone on the Obama band wagon for a global, socialist economy with the U.S. playing a lesser role–and wrong.