Paul Krugman is a Nobel-Prize winning economist and world-famous blogger. According to a new article, you can add self-described loner to that list as well.
In a New York magazine profile, "What's Left of the Left," Krugman, author of the New York Times' highly-influential blog, "The Conscience of a Liberal", is described as a "lonely man" that had trouble naming a single friend that could be interviewed to provide the author with a better understanding of one of America's most famous liberals.
Asked to describe himself, Krugman, who allegedly avoids eye contact with colleagues in the elevator, quickly points to his own solitary characteristics: “Loner. Ordinarily shy. Shy with individuals.”
The portrayal differs somewhat from the March 2010 profile by the New Yorker in which a relatively-content Krugman allows the public into his life and mariage with fellow economist Robin Wells. “I think he’s happy,” his friend Craig Murphy said at the time. “A much happier person now than when we first met him."
The New York profile's author, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, instead, contrasts Krugman with his bombastic former classmate at Harvard graduate school: Larry Summers, ex-director of Obama's National Economic Council.
“Let’s put it this way,” Krugman says when describing the difference between the two. “When things go crazy, my instinct is to go radical on policy, and Larry’s is to be a little more cautious.” Summers, in return, took aim at Krugman as "the guy in the bleachers who always demands the fake kick, the triple-reverse, the long bomb, or the big trade," without ever getting in the game.
Krugman has previously said his wife pushed him to remain true to his gut, denouncing filibusters and holding strong to his belief that that Obama's health-care bill needed a public option.
In an interview with New York, Krugman describes his first years blogging for the NYT as "a radicalizing experience," primarily because of wading through the Bush administration's economic policy closer than ever before. Krugman says he discovered a world in which the president of the United States could say something "demonstrably false" and no one would say anything.
"That was pretty awesome," he said.