were spot on:

"It's hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Paulson's initial response was distorted by ideology. Remember, he works for an administration whose philosophy of government can be summed up as "private good, public bad," which must have made it hard to face up to the need for partial government ownership of the financial sector.

I also wonder how much the Femafication of government under President Bush contributed to Mr. Paulson's fumble. All across the executive branch, knowledgeable professionals have been driven out; there may not have been anyone left at Treasury with the stature and background to tell Mr. Paulson that he wasn't making sense."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/opinio n/13krugman.html?ref=opinion

Can't help but believe the Nobel Prize committee were making a strong statement.

Paul isn't just a great theorist, he also explains the financial stuff to regular people, he's a popular economist too.  And he's for the Democrats.  Hillary listened to him on her health care proposal, and his honor will help convince the establishment that there are solutions to economic problems that do not have to leave out the poor and middle class, that depend on a healthy middle class, and on an educated population.

Let's hear it for universal pre-school?  

Smart People are Democrats.....

Love Paul, even when he was hammering Barack, he's just too good for me to disdain.

This is great news for Democrats and liberals. As the AP describes him (emphasis mine):

Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar, New York Times columnist and unabashed liberal, won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect international trade patterns.

A real, live, unabashed liberal -- my favorite kind of liberal! It's nice to see that other smart people in the world recognize that being a brilliant economist and being a liberal go hand-in-hand.