Krugman Unleashed
The Economist Who Stopped Being Polite
The New York Times made Paul Krugman famous. It also made him bland. By his last year there, every column ran through a meat grinder of editorial caution. "Extremely intrusive," he called it. Three levels of editors, all of them allergic to clarity. Everything came out soft. Balanced. Harmless. The paper of record wanted an economist who explained things without making anyone uncomfortable.
Krugman wanted to tell the truth. Those stopped being the same thing.
He left in December 2024. By year's end, nearly half a million people had followed him to Substack. They weren't paying for balance. They were paying for the Krugman the Times kept muzzling—the one who'd been right about everything and was finally done being polite about it.
The gloves came off fast.
"Trump Is Stupid, Erratic and Weak." That was a headline. His headline. Not a quote from critics. Not buried in paragraph twelve. The headline. He called the administration delusional, said Trump lives in an autocratic bubble where nobody dares tell him he's wrong because telling him he's wrong ends careers. He wrote about Trump throwing a Great Gatsby party at Mar-a-Lago during the government shutdown—champagne coupes and showgirls while 42 million Americans faced losing their food assistance. The theme was "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody." Apparently nobody at Mar-a-Lago finished the novel.
Trump fired back. Called Krugman a "Deranged BUM" on Truth Social.
Krugman added it to his bio.
That's the move. That's the whole thing right there. A Nobel laureate getting called a bum by a man who thinks tariffs are paid by foreigners, and instead of issuing a dignified statement, he updates his profile. Seventy-two years old and still knows how to throw a punch.
He earned it. He was right about Iraq—said the economic justifications were garbage and the war would be a catastrophe. Everyone who mattered ignored him. He was right. He was right about austerity after 2008—said cutting spending during a recession was malpractice dressed as fiscal responsibility. Europe tried it anyway, watched their economies flatline, and pretended they'd never heard of him. He was right about Trump in 2016, laid out exactly what would happen to institutions and norms and the basic machinery of governance. Got called hysterical. Got called partisan. Got called an elitist by people who think expertise is just snobbery with a degree.
He was right about all of it.
Twenty-five years of charts and data and careful explanation. Twenty-five years of treating bad-faith arguments like legitimate disagreement. Twenty-five years of the Times telling him to be fair to people who weren't being fair to anyone.
It didn't work. The country elected Trump anyway. Twice.
So Krugman stopped pretending.
Now he writes that the United States is no longer a functioning democracy. Says it flat, no hedging, no "critics say" weaseling. He told Public Notice there's a "high likelihood" of a growth recession, and that "the thing that's extra damaging now is the craziness." Craziness. That's a Nobel laureate's clinical assessment. Not hysteria. Diagnosis.
His critics whine that he's become partisan. As if describing reality is partisan. As if noting that tariffs cause inflation is taking sides. As if pointing out that firing inspectors general is authoritarian behavior is somehow unfair to authoritarians. They want him neutral. Neutral between truth and lies. Neutral between competence and chaos. Neutral between democracy and whatever the hell this is becoming.
He's not interested anymore.
Most people mellow into irrelevance at seventy-two. Take the emeritus title. Write careful memoirs that offend no one. Cash the speaking fees and disappear into a comfortable fog of retrospection. Krugman looked at the smoldering wreckage of everything he'd warned about and decided mellowing was complicity. The Times wanted diplomacy. Substack lets him call a bum a bum.
Turns out honesty has a market. Who knew.
The polite version didn't work. Decades of careful, measured, responsible explanation got us here—got us Trump and tariffs and a Supreme Court that thinks bribery is fine as long as you call it a gift. Politeness was just permission for the liars to keep lying.
So he stopped being polite. Added "Deranged BUM" to his bio. And kept writing.
Good for him.
