DEBT FREE AT LAST?….For all the folks coming over from Dan Drezner’s site wondering what he was talking about, the subject at hand is Paul Krugman. In his column on Tuesday he wrote:
With war looming, it’s time to be prepared. So last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage. It means higher monthly payments, but I’m terrified about what will happen to interest rates once financial markets wake up to the implications of skyrocketing budget deficits.
Krugman’s column prompted a longish exhange between Mickey Kaus and Brad DeLong about whether we should be worried about inflation or deflation (answer: both), but I thought there was a far more important question at stake here.
This essay on Krugman’s personal website indicates that he lives in a nice house, “though it’s not a mansion,” and that between his salary, his wife’s salary, his book royalties, his speaking fees, and his income from the New York Times, he makes a lot of money. And before he started his Times column he made even more, likely in the close range of $1 million a year or so.
So my question is: why the hell does Paul Krugman have a mortgage? Why doesn’t he just pay the damn thing off?
UPDATE: Krugman also says he has two cats. We want pictures!
