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Committee Lowers Nobel Prize Award

Snirt writes "The Nobel Committee has chosen to lower this year's Nobel prize winnings by two million kronor ($283,030) due to turbulence in the current economic climate. The prize now stands at 8 million kronor, down from the 10 million of 2011. 'The reason behind this decision is that the financial markets are really unstable and there are reasons to suspect that this turbulence will continue for a while still,' said Lars Heikensten, head of the Nobel Committee, to the TT news agency. 'Long term, we aim to raise the figure, even though we think that the Nobel Prize's value should lie in the prize itself and not the prize money,' he said. While Heikensten admits that it was a 'tough decision' to cut the prize money, he told the news agency that it's not the first time the prize sum has been altered, adding that it has been lowered and raised several times over the past few years."

8 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They are irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The economics "Nobel" is separately administrated, and not funded by the Nobel estate.

  2. Re:They are irrelevant by arth1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are completely irrelevant, at least to people who understand that this is all politics and nothing else. Obama has gotten his for 'peace' and Krugman has gotten his for 'economics'.

    Unlike the other prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded by the Swedish Nobel institute, but by Norway.
    In general, the Swedish prizes are awarded as a recognition for past work, while the Peace Price is just as often meant as an incentive.
    So very different politics are at play.

  3. Re:To republicans maybe by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Informative

    besides that, the Nobel is awarded for a specific piece of work in science or economics. It's not supposed to reward a long illustrious career, it's about a specific piece of work with lasting impact. Granted in physics especially it tends towards people with long illustrious careers.

    Krugman happens to have had a good track record on economic theory. But just as easily he could be a complete trainwreck on macroeconomic theory but have very correctly described one specific phenomena. That would still warrant a nobel prize. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/krugman.html specifically lists what his prize is for.

    I remember a few years ago UBC was looking to hire a nobel in physics. I don't know if they got him, but that's immaterial. His nobel was in some actual physics research, but everything he was doing at that point was about innovation in teaching physics.

    You can write one ground breaking science paper, and then be a complete loon for the rest of your career, as long as that specific paper is sound you can still theoretically be considered.

  4. Re:To republicans maybe by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Informative

    how Krugman's predictions on how the crisis would pan out have been so accurate if he doesn't understand any economics?

    - Krugman couldn't see the crisis coming until he was already IN it, near the collapse, there (2005 and 2006) are people (2002) who predicted (2006) it and explained why it would happen in advance.

    Krugman in fact WANTED a housing bubble, same as him wanting a fucking war with aliens actually, he believes destroying assets, counterfeiting money and creating bubbles is good for economics, he is a charlatan, not an economist. He is one of those 'economists' used to justify the policies of the gov't, regardless of the administration, they use him - he is 'main stream'.

  5. Re:Seems appropriate by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Informative

    So you could have done for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/ and think it's only worth a dollar?

    or:
    for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2010/

    How about "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/

    maybe "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China"." (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2010/)

    Maybe something so fundamentally pointless as "for the development of in vitro fertilization" http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2010/

    or how about something that no one would ever use like ", one half awarded to Charles Kuen Kao "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication", the other half jointly to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor"." http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2009/

    Because you know.. those achievements are low standards. Cutting the prize money is unlikely to matter much. By the time people get it they are either young enough that the real money is in speaking fees and in the huge salary boost they get, or old enough their estate planning is already done and adding more to it is giving money to their kids or charity.

    When you develop a cure for aids, develop a quantum computer that can actually solve a meaningful problem, find a way to replace the government in north korea and china with ones that respect human rights, or lift a couple of billion people out of poverty, then you get to claim the nobel prize is worthless. Until then, you're talking out of your ass.

  6. Re:They are irrelevant by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The so-called Nobel Prize in economics isn't really a Nobel prize like the one say in Chemistry. It's a prize started by the banksters running the Nobel foundation much later. The complete name is something like "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".

    It's shenanigans.

  7. Re:To republicans maybe by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just watched his stupid remarks in that clip: "it's very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy" - fucking retard.

    Depressed economy with his recipe - counterfeit as much currency as possible and finance gov't spending that way (and taxes and borrowing, but print print print) - that's how you get inflation, that's what inflation is.

    In the 70s USA was exactly in that situation for 10 years - huge inflation (gold going from 35 to 800 etc.) and a recession or depression, whatever the official definition spin is - the production capacity is falling so fast that people are losing jobs and even all the printing doesn't lower the wages fast enough to make it worthwhile keeping them employed.

    What do you think 0 or negative interest rates are in relation to the employment? How do you think Federal reserve (with Krugman's ideology) is supposed to 'increase employment'? Do you KNOW HOW? Inflation - it means that the REAL WAGES ARE FALLING.

    So the fucking gov't is printing money so that the real wages are falling, and that is what its fucking solution is - lower the wages of employees.

    Well fuck me sideways, first they implement fucking retarded minimum wage laws and various welfare programs (and years of EI is also welfare) and then they want to keep people employed by lowering their real wages.

    The people are not good at understanding that it's not the number on the dollar bill that counts, it is what it can buy, the equivalent purchasing power of that dollar is NOT stable, it depends on various things, but when gov't prints, it depends heavily on all that inflation, the purchasing power is destroyed by gov't.

    Now, Krugman will tell you that gov't must hire and keep all sorts of people hired with all that FAKE money and taxes, and what does that do?

    It doesn't allow the economy to restructure the debts it is in, that's first.

    Second, it doesn't allow the economy to reduce the amount it's spending on gov't, and that amount has to be reduced. Gov't is a luxury, not an essential of some sort. The bigger the gov't the bigger the luxury, and somebody is PAYING for that luxury, and it's the productivity of the economy that is suffering.

    Third, it steals purchasing power from the private sector, misallocates the resources to the public sector, and look at the trade deficits - record high trade deficits for 15 or 20 years now, right? What is it, 54 billion USD a month? That means that US economy is that unproductive, it consumes 54 Billion USD / month MORE than it produces. Why is that? Because:

    Fourth, inflation destroys savings and savings are investment capital. Investment capital is destroyed by the inflation and investment capital leaves.

    That's why the US is in this crisis today, it's because the dollar is fake, it's because in 1971 the dollar was defaulted on completely and since then everybody who had any savings and investment in production capacity moved their savings and investment in production capacity out of the country.

    Krugman's solution? MORE OF THAT SAME THING THAT CAUSED THE DESTRUCTION IN THE FIRST PLACE.

    Yeah, and if the bail out didn't work, in Krugman's world it means it wasn't big enough.

    The 800 Billion USD of bail outs? Not big enough by Krugman. He wanted it to be another 2 or 3 hundred billion. As if that would have done the trick - fixing economy with fake money doesn't work, because fake money does not equal real investments.

    Real investments cannot happen with fake money, because fake money is only good for gambling and not for productive capacity, because inflation is faster than any return on any real business. That's why the bubbles are inflated and burst, the next one is in dollars and bonds.

    You won't hear that from Krugman. But if you listen to that clip, you'll hear that an alien invasion would be good, because it would create fake demand. He is for a war like spending.

    Krugman believes that WWII was the key to ending the Great Depression, as if all that employment making bombs a

  8. Re:To republicans maybe by roman_mir · · Score: 2, Informative

    CPI? You are serious, aren't you? CPI?

    It's been a long time since 1970s, and they have redrawn the way they measure that pathetic index in so many ways, it is absolutely irrelevant. They are going to pass more measures this year to make it smaller, they are saying even now it 'overstates inflation'.

    If inflation is measured the way they used to during Nixon, it would be anywhere between 11 and 15%, and it's been there for a couple of decades.

    Of-course there are plenty of my comments, where I show simple examples of inflation based on commodity prices, I don't need to redo that, I can just link to one of them.

    As to my world view - at least I have one and I base my decisions on my world view, that's how I do business, that's how I invest my money.