Krugman sycophancy watch

The good professor is interviewed by the Telegraph (a takedown on the facts of the article by Tim Worstall). The correspondent gushed over him like a lustful Berkeley undergrad. Geez guy, get a room.

Paul Krugman, the brilliant US economist...

With his soft voice and bearded smile, Paul Krugman looks just how a Princeton professor should look....

But throw this 52-year-old American a serious question and he clears his throat, looks you straight in the eye and bats back a ferociously intensive answer. For Krugman is no ordinary academic. He is arguably the most brilliant economist of his generation....

Krugman combines the virtues of a great economist - analytical clarity and profound respect for facts - with none of the usual caution. Talking to him is like sitting in an intellectual wind--tunnel....

Since then this shy man has emerged as one of America's most influential pundits. His reputation is based neither on a PhD thesis on flexible exchange rates nor on his well regarded textbook on economic principles. It stems instead from his grit and pellucid writing style....

Whether the economics profession likes it or not, he is now in the process of joining the very small number of economists in history - like John Maynard Keynes or Milton Friedman - who've combined academic brilliance with genuine popular appeal....

Don Luskin adds:

Paul Krugman is in London, mongering scare stories about how the American economy is being propped up by the housing market which is, in turn, being propped up by Chinese investment in T-bonds. What's propping up the Chinese econony? And what's propping up whatever is propping up the Chinese economy, and what's propping up that?

Which leads to a question I had about the Krugman interview where it states:

He keeps a close eye on the UK, so I ask him about our housing market too. An intake of breath. "Prices here are completely out of whack with the fundamentals," he says. "Across the UK as a whole, they look as over--inflated as in south Florida and California, the most bubblicious parts of the US".

Krugman goes for the kill. "Interest rates here are a bit higher, so there is some room for manoeuvre," he says. "But if this bubble bursts, the UK economy is in very deep trouble."

If the Chinese are propping up the US housing market, then who is propping up the UK housing market?