Arnon Grunberg

Cranks

Common sense

Paul Krugman in today’s Times: ‘Lately, for example, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has gone beyond its long-term preference for the economic ideas of “charlatans and cranks” — as one of former President George W. Bush’s chief economic advisers famously put it — to a general denigration of hard thinking about matters economic. Pay no attention to “fancy theories” that conflict with “common sense,” the Journal tells us. Because why should anyone imagine that you need more than gut feelings to analyze things like financial crises and recessions?’

I guess, this is exactly what populism is all about – the belief that we don’t need more than gut feeling.