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.
Then there's the language in which Dr. Krugman sends out his jeremiads. It
is, in a word, hilarious-if unintentionally so. He's got to be the country'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.
I've saved my favorite Krugmanism of all time for those occasions when I may
need a bit of cheering up:
"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. Try to visualize those chickens that
didn't hatch coming home to roost, if you can stop laughing. Why, that's
almost Zen, like the sound of one hand clapping. His reference to the
national nest egg is just lagniappe.
I can't wait to read the professor's next jeremiad about the imminent Crash;
the economy can always use a little help, and so can the nation's sense of
humor.
Cheers.
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