Story of the day: Rock star economist?!?

It's not ordinary circumstances when you see an economist on the cover of a major news magazine. Not even a Nobel prize-winning one. But with the economy in the tank and the whirlwind on Wall Street the talk of the day, it was time that Paul Krugman would get his due. A columnist for the New York Times, a professor at Princeton University, a TV presence on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and an author to boot, it's hard to believe the man has time for anything. And instead of living in spotlights like a lot of recent political types can be (including the totally not-ready-for-primetime Tim Geithner), Krugman's work seems to be more of the guy who walks around with the "end is near" signs if that man were sane and business-savvy.

The Newsweek article does try to trump up the difference between him and the administration, while the real concern is that he thinks we are just going half-way from where we really should be going.

Krugman is not likely to show up in an administration job in part because he has a noble—but not government-career-enhancing—history of speaking truth to power. With dry humor, he once told a friend the story of attending an economic summit in Little Rock after Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. As the friend recounted the story to NEWSWEEK, "Clinton asked Paul, 'Can we have a balanced budget and health-care reform?'—essentially, can we have it all? And Paul said, 'No, you have to be disciplined. You have to make choices.' Then Paul says to me (deadpan), 'That was the wrong answer.' Then Clinton turns to Laura Tyson and asks the same questions, and she says, 'Yes, it's all possible, you have your cake and eat it too.' And then [Paul] says, 'That was the right answer'." (Tyson became chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers; she did not respond to requests to comment.) Krugman confirmed the story to NEWSWEEK WITH a smile. "I'm more tolerant now," he says. But at the time, he was bitter that he was kept out of the Clinton administration.

Like Howard Dean, the most thoughtful members of our team are seemingly shut out. Read the whole article here. And in honor of Paul, here goes...