krug starts his column out with : 'i often complain, with reason, about x.' which is a nice rhetorical flourish wherein his agreement with himself begins to constitute a consensus. but i really think, with ample justification, that what's happening in europe tends to undermine those doctrines on which krugman agrees with krugman. i'm not sure how you can exactly be an actual economist while also being this much of a partisan hack. the reason the european situation challenges the krug approach is because krugman has been an extreme cheerleader for government debt. now he's an extreme opponent of 'austerity measures.' but even the socialist government in spain has had to face the music in some form: you just can't manufacture money and give everybody everything. krugman refutes those 'republicans' who think that defaulting on the debt would be 'no big deal' (i'm not sure who he means, actually), while if i understand him he's also saying that the right approach to debt-well-beyond gdp in the eu is to force creditors to take 'haircuts': to accept less than they lent etc. that is default, bankruptcy, etc. i think krugman's position is actually this: keep borrowing. raise the debt ceiling beyond infinity. you can always ditch out later. but if anyone stated it that way who had actual responsibility, no one would buy government securities, and we'd spin into bankruptcy instantaneously. if you really think that austerity programs etc are just right-wing capitalist opportunism, then i'd say: increase taxes and borrowing, and see what actually does happen to your economy. well, they already have in europe.
even an anti-capitalist, i think, can see that a government that literally spends more than the whole economy produces is in the long run impossible. really, we'll all learn this the hard way, i suspect.
