Meet Wild-Man Paul Krugman (And His Cat)
The new New Yorker profile of Paul Krugman is great, and not just for the picture of the New York Times columnist holding his cat. It's also awesome for revealing Krugman as the wildest, effigy-burningiest economist with a Nobel Prize.
Writer Larissa MacFarquhar reveals Krugman's idea of a "good time" is some cathartic arts-and-crafts-and-incineration. The economist's wife, on the couple's election-night party :
"We had two or three TVs set up and we had a little portable outside fire pit and we let people throw in an effigy or whatever they wanted to get rid of for the past eight years. One of our Italian colleagues threw in an effigy of Berlusconi. I put out some coloring paper and markers so that people could write stuff on it and throw it into the fire. People really felt like there was stuff they wanted to shed! I had little hats and party whistles."
Krugman also threw an economics-themed Halloween party. It was likewise off the hook, in the economist sense:
Two guests came as Asian tigers, several came as hedge funds, one woman came as capital, dressed as a column.
Krugman is also quoted calling former Treasury Secretary Don Regan, with whom Krugman served in the Reagan Administration, "not that bright;" and boasting about his love for puns, including this one, which he himself added to a textbook: "Efforts to negotiate a resolution to Europe's banana split had proved fruitless."
