NY Times business columnist Ben Stein has penned some real stinkers, but this past Sunday’s column may just be his worst yet.
First, Brad DeLong explains Stein’s basic misunderstanding of fundamental principles of unemployment and economic growth, and then observes of Stein’s confusion:

It’s a misconception like… like… like this: “Dear Dr. Gridlock: I took my foot off the accelerator three second ago. Why is the car still going 60? Why doesn’t the car instantaneously stop when I take my foot off the accelerator?”
So if only Ben Stein would stop calling himself an economist, it would brighten my day, so I pray for it.
Note that I no longer prayer for competent editors at the New York Times who would exercise even a little quality control. Of that I have despaired.

Then, Felix Salmon proceeds to eviscerate the remainder of Stein’s column, including Stein’s populist call for a WalMart in Midtown of New York City:

A Wal-Mart in Midtown? Maybe we could tear down Rockefeller Center and build one there. Or repurpose the Central Park Zoo as a big-box retailer; the Sheep Meadow could be the parking lot. Obviously we’d need to give Wal-Mart the space rent-free, or for maybe no more than a buck or two a foot, because that’s how the company can offer us its everyday low prices. But doing so would surely be worthwhile: “every New Yorker needs food and paper towels.” I only wonder how we’ve all managed to cope until now.

Finally, in regard to another topic that Stein has addressed in his column, the bidding competition for Houston-based freight logistics company EGL, Inc that was noted here last week continued over the past weekend:

The bidding war continues for EGL Inc.
Over the weekend, both EGL Chief Executive Officer James Crane and CEVA Group PLC, an affiliate of New York-based Apollo Management LP, upped the ante on their offers for the company. [. . .]
On May 11, Crane amended his offer to $45 per share in cash.
On May 12, CEVA countered with $46 per share in cash, and on May 13, EGL’s special committee determined that the revised proposal from the CEVA group was a superior proposal as defined in the merger agreement.
The committee has given Crane’s group until May 16 to make another offer.

EGL’s stock was trading at $29.76 a share when EGL chairman and CEO Jim Crane made his original management led, private equity-backed offer to take the company private. Sounds like a good deal for EGL shareholders, eh? Not according to Ben, who said the following about such buyouts in his Times column earlier this year:

[M]anagement buyouts are great for management. But by every standard I can see, they are yet another sad sign of how our corporate trustees have lost their moral compass. The time for them to stop is long overdue. If the stockholders have hired you and pay your wage to manage their assets, your job is to do that for themónot to buy them out at fire-sale prices and turn around and make billions that rightfully belong to them. The management buyout is a sad and infuriating avatar of a decadent age.

To which I commented at the time:

My anecdotal experience is that a good sign to hold on to one’s pocket book firmly is when someone tells you that it is better to have fewer bidders competing to purchase something. Indeed, my sense is that a management-led, private equity-financed play for a public company is usually just as likely to spur competing offers for the company as it is an attempt to lowball the public company’s shareholders. When the folks who know the most about a company’s business show that kind of confidence in the value of the company, that sends a strong signal to the market that more value can be made. Such confidence tends to be contagious.

Has there ever been a Times columnist as far out of their league as Stein?
Update: Don’t miss Larry Ribstein’s post regarding the Times editors’ decision to hire Stein, which includes this wry observation:

Is this why the Times needs a governance structure that insulates its managers from markets?