Paul Krugman is Hari Seldon

I was checking news before starting work.
Came across this.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/01/100301fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=all
Article was long .
Then I saw this passage , and stopped for a minute.
Krugman explained that he’d become an economist because of science fiction. When he was a boy, he’d read Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy and become obsessed with the central character, Hari Seldon. Seldon was a “psychohistorian”—a scientist with such a precise understanding of the mechanics of society that he could predict the course of events thousands of years into the future and save mankind from centuries of barbarism. He couldn’t predict individual behavior—that was too hard—but it didn’t matter, because history was determined not by individuals but by laws and hidden forces. “If you read other genres of fiction, you can learn about the way people are and the way society is,” Krugman said to the audience, “but you don’t get very much thinking about why are things the way they are, or what might make them different. What would happen if ?”
What a trubute to the greatest fiction ever written!
Foundation was the book that came to my mind right after the September 11th.I re-read it in those chaotic days.Then I wanted to re-read it during Obama's campaign but did not have the time.When the things settle down at home front, I will go to the basement pick up my 1 dollar set of used foundation paperback series again.