People who hold top positions in the Obama administration, or any administration, hold those positions in part because of their ability to convey the administration's position to the media. In other words, they are not always entirely honest with the media. This means that when they want to discredit a prominent critic of the administration, like Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman, they might say (off the record) that they "think" he is naive. Do these people without names really think that Krugman is naive? The reporter does not know what these people without names think. The reporter commits a huge journalistic sin when the reporter tells readers that Obama officials "think he [Krugman] is naive, that his idea of bank nationalization is not going to work." While it is possible that Obama officials actually think that Krugman is naive there are other plausible explanations for their behavior and comments. For example, the Obama administration is closely tied to many top Wall Street executives. It is possible that it is designing its bank policy to serve the interests of Wall Street rather than the country as a whole, as has been argued by people like MIT professor Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the IMF. If the Obama administration is actually designing its financial policies to serve the interests of Wall Street, it is unlikely that its top officials would ever admit to this fact. It is far more likely that they would make anonymous complaints to reporters that the people who make such allegations are "naive."
--Dean Baker
