Paul Krugman Scolds Jon Stewart for Platinum Coin Coverage
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Goh Seng Chong/Bloomberg(NEW YORK) — In a “This Week” web exclusive, New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman sounded off on Comedy Central host Jon Stewart’s dismissive take on minting a platinum trillion dollar coin as a debt ceiling quick fix.
“It is a funny thing. But you want to be funny from a point of view of understanding what the issues are. There’s a reason we’ve gotten to this place,” Krugman said of Stewart’s “Daily Show” coverage of the platinum coin issue, which Krugman criticized as “intellectual laziness” in a recent blog post. “Obviously neither he nor his staff did even five minutes of looking at the financial blogs. Lots of people think it’s a bad idea. Lots of people think it’s a good idea. But it’s not just, ‘Oh, those idiots.’
“Part of the point about Stewart…is that he’s funny, but that the show is actually better informed than most of our public discussion. The idea is that the show is like an especially good episode of the roundtable on ‘This Week’, but in the form of jokes. But when he just turns it into dumb, “I don’t know nothing, but those people look dumb to me,” he’s ruining his brand.”
Krugman, who appeared on the “This Week” roundtable Sunday, discussed Stewart’s platinum coin coverage while answering viewer questions from Facebook for an “All Politics is Social” web segment.
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