United Liberty

This weekend, MoveOn.org pushed a petition written by economic policy expert actor Danny Glover asking President Barack Obama to appoint Paul Krugman to serve as the next Treasury Secretary. The petition, which has garnered nearly 200,000 signatures, states, “Press speculation has centered on candidates likely to support the Wall Street agenda of cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits and other domestic spending rather than government policies to create jobs.”

“We want President Obama to nominate Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who opposes austerity and wants the government to focus on creating jobs.”

While one may not put it past Obama to make such an appointment, there is next to no chance that Krugman would win confirmation from the Senate. If you though Timothy Geither has been worthless in his role as Treasury Secretary, Krugman would be a disaster, based on things he’s said since President Obama has been in office.

Here’s a sample of The Crazy™ from Krugman:

• Perpetual stimulus spending
• Believes in monetizing debt (he used to be against that)
• Death and destruction are apparently a good thing
• Nevermind the Laffer Curve, taxes on the rich should be raised to 91%
• Hackery for the Obama Administration and Democratic Party
• Wants to start a trade war with China
• Likes the idea of death panels to deal with Medicare
• Cherry-picks data to fit his preconceived point

Yeah, this is such a bad idea that even Krugman is opposed to it:

Krugman says while he’s “flattered” by the petition, he thinks he has more influence as an op-ed columnist for The New York Times — and describes himself as the “World’s Worst Administrator” in a blog post responding to the petition.

“It would mean taking me out of a quasi-official job that I believe I’m good at and putting me into one I’d be bad at,” Krugman writes, after saying “there’s not a chance that I would be confirmed.”

Krugman would be bad, but not just because he’s a bad administration. It’s because he’s bat shit crazy.