October 10, 2013

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough fired off another shot in an ongoing battle with the New York Times' Paul Krugman.

Scarborough said Thursday that a public editor at the New York Times considers Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman's work to be an ongoing "nightmare."

During a segment on "Morning Joe," Niall Ferguson, Historian and former John McCain adviser joined Scarborough to pile on Krugman. Ferguson said that Krugman lacks "humility, honesty and civility."

"And there's no accountability," Ferguson said. "No one seems to edit that blog at the New York Times. And it's time that somebody called him out. People are afraid of him. I'm not."

Scarborough then recalled a conversation he had with a Times editor following his televised debate with Krugman earlier this year. (Here's Alex Pareene's take.)

"I actually won't tell you which public editor it was but one of the public editors of the New York Times told me off the record after my debate that their biggest nightmare was his column every week," Scarborough said.

Krugman admitted was not at his best in that showdown, taking to his blog before the debate aired to acknowledge that he "wasn’t prepared for Joe Scarborough’s slipperiness."

NIALL FERGUSON: Krugman’s key claims is that we should have done a much bigger stimulus, three times of the size of the one we did in 2009 and there would have been no down side risk to the credit worthiness of the United States. I don’t think that claim is plausible, and the reason I don’t think it’s plausible is that it’s not testable. It’s based on his models, his beloved models. No, these are not the kind of models you’re thinking of Harold these are economic models. I have to say, these models were so — these models –

HAROLD FORD: He knows my wife.

FERGUSON: I’m sorry, there shouldn’t be levity in this discussion. I’m serious. These models failed to predict the financial crisis. They were really wrong about that. I show that in my Huffington Post article on the second day, and they were totally wrong on the Euro, totally wrong.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: The third of the third part series on “Krugtron the Invincible” just came out.

FERGUSON: That’s what he calls himself.

SCARBOROUGH: He does call himself that, anyway you got to read that.

HAROLD FORD: He calls himself that?

FERGUSON: Yeah, he glories. You see it’s the hubris of it. But I’m here to tell him in public exchange, in public discussion there needs be humility, honesty and civility. That’s all. And that’s what he lacks. And there’s no accountability. Nobody seems to edit that blog in the New York Times and it’s high time that somebody call him out. People are afraid of him. I’m not.

I generally avoid anything with Obama-hating Narcissistic Niall Ferguson, but he had to go tag-teaming Paul Krugman with Fox News Lite host Joe Scarborough...so let's take a little trip down the memory hole with Niall.

Follow me below the fold for more...

Recall this horrid 2012 election season Newsweek cover story, Ferguson's "Why We Need a New President." Among many of the not-so-bright and flat-out false statement in the article, there's this:

"The president has broken his promises, and Romney-Ryan's path to prosperity is our only hope."

Luckily, no one gave a fig what Ferguson thought then, either.

Unfortunately for Ferguson, his efforts to highlight all of the promises the president has broken with an array of figures and charts -- his beloved figure and charts -- failed spectacularly.

Paul Krugman called Ferguson out for his "Unethical Commentary":

There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says:

"The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period."

Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report (pdf) knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit — because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.

Ferguson's rebuttal, was basically 'I wasn't wrong, just misleading!'

Economist Brad DeLong had the bestest commentary with regards to Ferguson's ACA claim:

"Fire his ass. Fire his ass from Newsweek, and the Daily Beast. Convene a committee at Harvard to examine whether he has the moral character to teach at a university. There is a limit, somewhere. And Ferguson has gone beyond it."

Ferguson's own Newsweek colleague Andrew Sullivan called his "old and good friend" out for his "glaring omissions" and "sleight of hand." Sullivan promises, "More to come. The piece is sadly so ridden with errors and elisions and non-sequiturs it will require a few more posts."

James Fallows at The Atlantic wrote "As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize."

The 2012 election is over, Niall Ferguson, get over it. Instead of your hate-filled, obsessive tirades, go out in search of your own "humility, honesty and civility."

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