RIP JKG

Via Crooked Timber we learn that John Kenneth Galbraith has died. I was just begining to appreciate the writing of the man Gore Vidal once called "that lovable old cynic", having just recently finished A Brief History of Financial Euphoria - which is probably the funniest book written about the intersection of human stupidity with economics. There are fewer and fewer public intellectuals with Galbraith's gifts of wit and clarity (among others), so his passing is doubly tragic because it points out what our culture is sometimes capable of producing - when we let it.