Adopting Tea Party Rhetoric?
Paul Krugman and Andrew Ross Sorkin got into it the other day when Sorkin mischaracterized Krugman's views on the need for large insolvent banks (specifically Citi and BoA) to be taken over by the FDIC (a process that happens every week btw with smaller insolvent banks.) The spat drew the attention of NYTimes Public Editor Clark Hoyt:
[A] full and fair reading of the [Krugman] column [. . .] does not support the notion that he favored nationalizing the entire banking system. [. . .] I sent Sorkin a message telling him that I did not think his citations supported his argument that Krugman had called for nationalizing the entire banking system. In a long written message and two phone conversations, he said he regarded his differences with Krugman as “an issue of semantics” over the meaning of nationalization.
(Emphasis supplied.) Sorkin is right --he has adopted the rhetoric of the Tea Partiers and completely changed the understood meaning of the term "nationalization." Once upon a time, we all understood what nationalization meant. Mexico nationalized its oil industry by taking over ownership. Chile nationalized its copper industry by taking ownership of it. Sorkin chooses the Tea Partier way:
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