And the economist Paul Krugman has won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics. Krugman is a a professor at Princeton University and a columnist at the New York Times. He was praised for his “analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.” During an interview last month on Democracy Now!, Krugman criticized the Bush administration’s initial plan to bail out Wall Street.

Paul Krugman: “The Bush administration came up with a God awful proposal: basically, you know, give us total authority, no checks and balances, and we’ll do — well, we won’t say what. And Democrats in Congress negotiated to something, which, while it’s not something to cheer, is a lot better, and then it appears that House Republicans have blown it up. And this is not good. This just means that we might be — let’s put it this way, even in my worst imaginings, I never thought that Republican ideology would bring us another Great Depression, and now I’m not so sure.” Listen to whole interview