Yeah, as in the New York Times‘ Paul Krugman, the self-admitted liberal economist. If the U.S. auto industry’s failure is inevitable, why should Americans be asked to pump $34 billion+ into the companies? They can’t pull that money out of our collective ass.

Nobel economics prize winner Paul Krugman said Sunday that the beleaguered U.S. auto industry will likely disappear.

“It will do so because of the geographical forces that me and my colleagues have discussed,” the Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist told reporters in Stockholm. “It is no longer sustained by the current economy.”…

Speaking to reporters three days ahead of the Nobel Prize ceremony, Krugman said plans by U.S. lawmakers to bail out the Big Three automakers were a short-term solution, resulting from a “lack of willingness to accept the failure of a large industry in the midst of an economic crisis.”

Again, why should we bail them out if they’re doomed to failure? Sounds like a bad investment to me, and I’m pretty sure that’s how we got into this crisis to begin with.