Niall FergusonBloombergTV

Niall Ferguson was just on BloombergTV discussing his controversial Newsweek piece, which raked Obama over the coals for the weak economy.

In response to critics who slammed him on the facts of his big story slamming Obama, he just says that the "liberal blogosphere" is engaged in "nit-picking" in the name of fact-checking and using "tried and true" methods for shutting down critics.

Paul Krugman, he says, is being "disingenuous" regarding a specific point about healthcare spending, and on Andrew Sullivan (who also lobbed a monstrous criticism from The Daily Beast), Ferguson says he just doesn't understand the issues at hand.

Ferguson is trying to step back and say it's really not about the facts at all, and instead about Obama's leadership, but host Erik Schatzker is not letting him off the hook so easily, and he put up this quote from the original Newsweek showing that the critique really is about failure ot live up to details.


In response, Ferguson is going very vague again, saying it's really all about leadership and not having a long-term plan.

Asked how the economy would be if Romney and Ryan had won in 2009, Ferguson says we would have had a tax cut strategy, rather than a spending one, and that we wouldn't have wasted so much time on the Affordable Care Act.

Schatzker ended by dropping a bomb on Ferguson, asking him if he considered the fact by writing this piece he'd be blowing his reputation as an academic.

Eric SchatzkerBloombergTV

Ferugson responds:

"I don't think you can claim this undermines my academic reputation."

He also specifically called out Matthew O'Brien at The Atlantic for saying that his "fact check" didn't identify a single error.

Very good interview. The big winner was Eric Schatzker.