What’s a little misunderstanding among Times-men?
In yesterday’s sunny piece on the bailout, Andrew Ross Sorkin–who has inspired some grumbling around the paper in the past–wrote about pessimist Paul Krugman and that celebrated nay-sayer Nouriel Roubini.
They argued that Wall Street was occupied by the walking dead, and that no matter how much money we threw at the banks, they would eventually topple the system all over again and cause a domino effect worldwide.
“I certainly never said anything like that, and I don’t think Nouriel did either,” Mr. Krugman wrote, in a post titled Andrew Ross Sorkin Owes Several People An Apology.
“I defy Sorkin to find any examples of me calling for a total takeover,” Mr. Krugman wrote. And he ended with this piece of friendly advice:
“If you want to say that the advocates of nationalization were excessively pessimistic about the prospects for a light-touch bank strategy, fine. But caricaturing their position, making it sound far more extreme than it actually was, is definitely not OK.”
