Monday, the 13th of October: Paul Krugman Day!

Paul Krugman wins Nobel prize for Economics*. That's pretty cool, as I was a big fan of his back when he started writing for the Times in 1999. I even exchanged a couple of emails with him. I have read a couple of his books, which were fairly captivating reading, all the more remarkable considering economics is not close to my field. Back in 2005 or so I pushed him in an email to look into 9/11, talking about the hijacking drills, but he never got beyond writing in one column about how we need to know what really happened that day (9/11). I was always amazed how Krugman wrote a column three days after 9/11, when everyone was still shocked from the death and destruction, and he put the whole thing in reasonable perspective, saying the losses in office space for the WTC were relatively small for the US. He clearly had no idea what the Bush administration would do with 9/11-- although he did suspect there would be some partisan games being played.

Also today-- the stock market goes up 11% (900 for the Dow) on news that the Bush administration might change their response to the financial trouble-- moving to a strategy that was pushed by the Europeans and that Krugman had been a advocate for-- injecting capital in return for part-ownership (equity injections) into banks.

*More here.