Paul Krugman Says the 170 Policy Experts Who Support Sanders’ Wall Street Reforms Are Unserious

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman burnished his reputation as an irrelevant pundit on Wednesday when he effectively judged as unserious 170 economic and financial policy experts who support the Wall Street reforms of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald provides the necessary context:

For years, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has repeatedly complained about the D.C. orthodoxy-enforcing tactic of labeling only those who subscribe to Washington pieties as “Very Serious People,” or “VSPs.” It’s a term Krugman borrowed (with credit) from the liberal blogger Atrios, who first coined it to illustrate how Iraq War opponents were instantly marginalized in establishment discourse and only war advocates were deemed to be Serious. Krugman mockingly uses it so often that the New York Times created a special tag for the term. The primary purpose of the “VSP” tactic is to malign anyone who dissents from D.C. establishment pieties as non-Serious or un-Serious, thus demeaning the person as someone who can (and should) be ignored as residing on the fringe, unworthy of engagement or a real platform regardless of the merits of their position.

On Wednesday, Greenwald continues, Krugman performed “one of the purest and most noxious examples of this tactic,” unironically proclaiming in his column that all “serious” policy experts “lean Hillary”:

Meanwhile, the Sanders skepticism of the wonks continues: Paul Starr lays out the case. As far as I can tell, every serious progressive policy expert on either health care or financial reform who has weighed in on the primary seems to lean Hillary.

Greenwald cites Dean Baker’s reaction to Krugman. Baker is a co-founder and co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research whom Krugman has cited as an expert in financial reform and economic policy:

Paul Krugman Revokes Credentials of Those Who Don’t Support Clinton. …

Oh well, so much for those of us backing or leaning towards Sanders. I guess we just have to turn to that old Washington saying, “better right than expert.” In other words, it’s better to rely on people who have a track record of being right than the people who have the best credentials.

With the appropriate sarcasm, Greenwald continues:

As so often happens, those who fancy themselves dissident gate-crashers (which apparently can include someone who is a Nobel Prize-winning tenured economics professor, at Princeton until somewhat recently; an advisory board member of the nation’s largest corporations; and effectively, a life-tenured New York Times columnist) quickly assume the role of vigilantly guarding the gate once they realize they were admitted all along. So congratulations to Paul Krugman on his power of decreeing who is a Serious Expert and announcing that the label applies only to those who want Hillary Clinton be the next president, but not Bernie Sanders.

To any of you Sanders supporters who previously believed that you possessed serious policy expertise, such as Dean Baker; or former Clinton Labor Secretary and Professor of Economic Policy Robert Reich (who yesterday wrote that “Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have”); or the 170 policy experts who signed a letter endorsing Sanders’ financial reform plan over Clinton’s: sorry, but you must now know that you are not Serious at all. The Very Serious Columnist has spoken. He has a Seriousness Club, and you’re not in it. If you want to be eligible, you need to support the presidential candidate of the Serious establishment, led by Paul Krugman.

View the letter and names of the experts who endorse Sanders’ financial policies here.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/paul_krugman_says_the_170_policy_experts_who_support_sanders_wall_street_re/