What do you get when you put 3 Nobel-prize winning economists in one room with an economic situation to comment upon?

Four opinions.

Really. This is why economics as a "science" is so disputable. If there are "laws" that allow control, these are laws describing human action (the same stuff Von Mises wrote so well about). And as an attempted control is applied, the humans will act ... a little differently. Or not.

Krugman's point, and the "war means a bad economy", is to a big extent that the productive wealth-creating capacity is being wasted in a war.

The "war is good for the economy" school note a typical expansion in gov't expenditure increasing war industry employment and employment security in general (except for the relatively few soldiers). I suspect the increased security feelings, leading to greater consumer confidence, even dominate the direct employment influences.

And like so many pro-con situations with humans, there is truth on both sides, but the weighting of each factor, in this situation, is not fully known.

Adjustments due to terrorism will certainly create some frictional "waste" that wasn't in the economy before. But the price of oil, and how it changes, will be a bigger determinant. And I notice that none of the links was willing to clearly state the direction of the price of the oil -- surely a simpler issue than the direction of the entire US economy.

But that's part of what makes the art of economics so continuously interesting.

And Dubya talking about economics, and helping the economy by stomping on Saddam -- kinda funny. But, while not point-less, what IS the point?