Stewart to Krugman: $1T Coin Makes Me Look Bad?

Jon Stewart last week swiped at Paul Krugman's $1 trillion coin idea, eliciting a somewhat thin-skinned response from the economist, who told ABC News that "Obviously neither he nor his staff did even five minutes of looking at the financial blogs" and blasted Stewart for "ruining his own brand" with an uninformed stance. The Daily Show host's response last night: "That is my brand." Plus, "if somebody is ruining their brand with a trillion-dollar coin idea, I don't think it's the non-economist."

People tend to "forgive" the show when its "bluntness" matches their own perspective, Stewart notes. "So I stand by our research on the topic, the due diligence, and my ignorant conclusion that a trillion-dollar coin minted to allow the president to circumvent the debt ceiling, however arbitrary that may be, is a stupid f---in' idea." At the National Review, Jonah Goldberg weighs in on the dispute: "Stewart’s response is almost perfectly accurate," he writes. Krugman's just upset because the host is taking aim at the left for a change. (More The Daily Show stories.)