Remember the Sports Illustrated jinx?  Athletes that appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated often saw their performance drop off sharply.  I wonder if the same applies to Paul Krugman?  Here’s a Krugman post from 2013, trashing the Irish economic model:

The one sense in which Ireland has made some progress is that it has somewhat reassured bond investors that its population will continue to sullenly acquiesce in austerity; as a result, Irish 10-year rates, while still at a large premium, are now 60-80 basis points below those of Italy and Spain.

But the repeated invocation of Ireland as a role model has gotten to be a sick joke.

I’m not sure the Irish feel “sullen” about the 9.2% RGDP growth announced last week:

Notice that Ireland’s dramatic turnaround began almost immediately after Krugman’s August 2013 post.  The post was entitled:

Ireland Is The Success Story Of The Future, And Always Will Be

So what type of economic model does Krugman like?

Just to be clear, I think Brazil is going pretty well, and has had good leadership. But why exactly is Brazil an impressive “BRIC” while Argentina is always disparaged? Actually, we know why — but it doesn’t speak well for the state of economics reporting.

I first wrote this post on the day when Lula was indicted for corruption, and his successor is now threatened with impeachment for the same.  In fairness, I would not expect Krugman to be aware of the political intricacies of Brazil.  I’m more interested in his views of economic policy.  So how has Brazil’s economy done since the May 2012 post, under that “good leadership”?

Yikes, that’s almost the mirror image of Ireland.  While Ireland is already richer than Germany (In GDP/person, perhaps not GNP), and growing at a much faster rate, Brazil is now poorer than China, and declining as fast as China is growing.

Argentina also slowed sharply after Krugman’s post, indeed the slowdown was already underway in 2013, but he relied on the 2012 data, when growth was still strong.  Fortunately they have a new government, which is beginning to institute some reforms.

PS.  Another irony; didn’t the “country of the future” joke that Krugman applied to Ireland, originally apply to Brazil?