Paul Krugman: less controversial, or just less influential?

This post on Paul Krugman and TimesSelect is more about influence than statistics, but this paragraph made it a winner in our book:

Alternative explanations? They exist. One never-forgotten lesson from stats class twenty years ago is that correlation ain’t causation. Perhaps Krugman just hasn’t written a controversial column since September (but … we can’t tell!). Also, absent statistical analysis, we could be seeing patterns where there really aren’t any (but we don’t think so).

True, true.

Not to get off topic, but having a renowned economist who seems to have lost touch with what it means to be a good economist [too many examples to link to] (and btw - how can there even be lefty economists? Of course, in a similar vein, not all lefties have lost touch with reality) lose a little influence isn't such a bad thing in my book. {Sorry for that nasty lump of parentheticals.}