It seems important for him not to see himself as doing what people do on cable who talk about the economy (when he says "CNBC," it's with the greatest contempt).

"I'm not going to change who I am," he says (which, it strikes me, everyone who is in the throes of change says).

So, modesty, embarrassment, ambivalence (the way he talks about Larry Summers strongly indicates he's thought the fame thoughts). But possibly, too, as an economist, he is afraid of the implications of his own potential celebrity. He knows that the nature of the forces moving the economy are softer, stranger, more un-economic than ever before. The science becomes ever more dismal when you add media to it.

The day after Greenspan's timid rate cut last week (we now, I notice, refer to the Fed's Open Market Committee with striking familiarity) and the market's big tumble, Krugman's column was all about perception (he called it psychology, but he meant perception). Confidence. Credibility. Image. There was no math here. Krugman's analysis had entirely to do with show, with symbols, with heroes and villains, stand-up guys and wimps. Greenspan wimped out was the Krugman analysis -- putting him on a par with his nudnik Japanese counterpart. He looked weak. He looked afraid. He failed to do what the drama demanded he do. He disappointed us.

The economy, in other words, is in our heads (Bill Clinton's expansive, reckless, casual economy versus George Bush's stricter, meaner, dressier one).

Krugman's message is not so much that Greenspan has the wrong economics, or the wrong theory, but that he played his part wrong. Greenspan is no longer the confidence builder, no longer the hero. A good economy depended in part on our trust in Alan -- and he is squandering that.

Now, what Krugman is also possibly saying is that Greenspan's fault lies in becoming a media whore (you live by the media, you die by it). And possibly what Krugman is saying to me -- all his demurring -- is that if he ever gets to be Greenspan (or Rubin or Summers or whatever onward-and-upward career path he imagines), he doesn't want to make the same mistake. He doesn't want to become the story. He doesn't believe it has to get personal.

I think Krugman is on his way -- but he has a lot to learn about economics.

E-mail: michael@burnrate.com

Related:

• Archive: “This Media Life”
• Articles by Michael Wolff
• Table of Contents: Apr 2, 2001 issue of New York | Subscribe!