Smacking Niall

Niall Ferguson names and shames me.

Amusing come back from Matthew Yglesias, who Niall Ferguson chose to drag into his feud with Paul Krugman:

The historian Niall Ferguson has decided for some reason to drag your humble blogger into his feud with Paul Krugman:

For too long, Paul Krugman has exploited his authority as an award-winning economist and his power as a New York Times columnist to heap opprobrium on anyone who ventures to disagree with him. Along the way, he has acquired a claque of like-minded bloggers who play a sinister game of tag with him, endorsing his attacks and adding vitriol of their own. I would like to name and shame in this context Dean Baker, Josh Barro, Brad DeLong, Matthew O'Brien, Noah Smith, Matthew Yglesias and Justin Wolfers. Krugman and his acolytes evidently relish the viciousness of their attacks, priding themselves on the crassness of their language.

In my case I'm genuinely unaware of a situation in which I employed crass language to amplify a Paul Krugman attack on Ferguson, though I certainly have had occasion to disagree with Ferguson when he misstates Mitt Romney's educational credentials or blames Barack Obama for rapid Chinese economic growth or says J.M. Keynes was a bad economist because he was gay. Ferguson might want to consider a meta-rational approach in which he wonders if the range of people who disagree with him about such matters doesn't possibly reflect Ferguson's own wrongness rather than the vast reach of the Krugman conspiracy.

Update:  Krugman refers us to a couple of other "acolytes" who have responded.  The one where Josh Barro reviews some of the things he has said about Ferguson is pretty funny.  

They seem to be pretty keen on Ferguson at Catallaxy threads.   I should have known that would mean that he has indeed said many stupid things about economics in the last few years, apart from the "Keynes was gay and therefore a crap economist" theory.