On Monday it was announced that Paul Krugman has won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his work on trade patterns and the geography of economic activity.
Paul Krugman is also a columnist for the New York Times, and in his Monday column he endorsed Gordon Brown’s £500 billion rescue plan for the British banking industry, contrasting it favourably with the American Government’s scheme.
He wrote “Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the Exchequer … have defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up.” He praised the British Government for having acted with “stunning speed” to address the financial crisis, again contrasting Mr Brown’s efforts with those of the US Treasury.
“This combination of clarity and decisiveness hasn’t been matched by any other Western government, least of all our own,” he wrote.
“Luckily for the world economy …. Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense …. And they may have shown us the way through this crisis.”
Since Monday the USA has followed the British example of injecting money directly into the banks as fresh capital and several other European countries have announced similar plans.
It is of course too early to know how effective these measures will be in solving the current global economic crisis, but Gordon Browne has clearly demonstrated that other world leaders are willing to follow his example.
Now that recognised economic expert Paul Krugman has highlighted that Gordon Brown acted swiftly and decisively are we likely to see apologies from those less able politicians and media hacks for their remarks in recent months about Gordon being a ditherer? Probably not, that would take courage*, doubtful if we will ever see articles about the courage of armchair political writers in the right wing British press!
Link to Paul Krugman’s New York Times article
* Link to article “digby-jones-thanks-gordon-brown-for-showing-courage” 3 Oct 2008
* Link to article “EU-treaty-Leaders-praise-Gordon-Brown’s-courage” 19 June 2008
