Today's economics nobel prize winner praises Brown

The New York Times' Paul Krugman, who has been awarded Nobel Prize for Economics in the last hour, has written this paen of praise to Mr Brown in yesterday's paper.

When Henry Paulson, the U.S. Treasury secretary, announced his plan for a $700 billion financial bailout, he rejected this obvious path, saying, “That’s what you do when you have failure.” Instead, he called for government purchases of toxic mortgage-backed securities, based on the theory that ... actually, it never was clear what his theory was.

Meanwhile, the British government went straight to the heart of the problem — and moved to address it with stunning speed.

What's interesting is the way much of the praise in the article implictly goes to the UK civil service - Krugman attacks President Bush for driving out independent knowledgeable civil servants across government who might ask awkward questions and replacing them with political appointees.

I also wonder how much the Femafication of government under President Bush contributed to Mr. Paulson’s fumble. All across the executive branch, knowledgeable professionals have been driven out; there may not have been anyone left at Treasury with the stature and background to tell Mr. Paulson that he wasn’t making sense.