MEGAN MCARDLE: Don’t be too impressed with Krugman’s predictive powers:

What is so strange about this belief–aside from the collective hyperlocal amnesia that prevents them from remembering that yes, even the great Paul Krugman has made some bloomers in his time–is that the examples of his Nostradamus-like powers are not, in fact, at all special. Chief among them–the sort of Ur prediction upon which he has apparently made his reputation–is “calling” the housing bubble in 2003.

Contra the fuzzy recollections of his readers, this is not an example of unusual foresight unparalleled in the world of journalism. I called the housing bubble a full year earlier than he did, in 2002. The Economist was writing about the global housing bubble even earlier than that, thanks to Pam Woodall’s fearsome analytic talents.

This is obviously not a sign that I am possessed of near-superhuman foresight, because while I foresaw the collapse, I did not foresee it leading to a run on the money markets, or any of the other specific events of 2008. Neither, as far as I am aware, did Paul Krugman. Nor, for that matter, Nouriel Roubini, who was predicting a crisis, to be sure, but a completely different crisis from the one we actually got, one that would be triggered by America’s persistent current account deficits and dollar devaluation.

So far, none of the people who have urged me to recognize Krugman’s superior analytic abilities on the grounds that he called the housing bubble, have changed their minds and agreed with me when I informed them that I “called” it even earlier than their sage. Nor have they switched their allegiance to The Economist, which has been quite sharp about Krugman in its time.

I get the feeling that Krugman himself rather encourages this touching faith in his unusual forecasting abilities.

I once had a lot of respect for Krugman as an economist.