In which I Dare to Disagree with Paul Krugman

Usually my opinions line up with Paul Krugman's pretty much 4-square.

I can think of three areas of disagreement.

1) He says WW II ended the Great Depression. I say the output gap was filled before the Pearl Harbor invasion, and the Depression well and truely ended before we ever fired a shot.

2) He thinks expectations are important.  I find that disturbingly close to magical thinking. (OK - haven't yet read the wonkinsh little paper yet, so maybe I'll be convinced otherwise.)

3) He disagrees with Evan Bayh's assesment that Obama erred in promoting health care when he should have been focused on jobs:

Mr. Obama’s problem wasn’t lack of focus; it was lack of audacity. At the start of his administration he settled for an economic plan that was far too weak. He compounded this original sin both by pretending that everything was on track and by adopting the rhetoric of his enemies.

. . . 

I felt a sense of despair during Mr. Obama’s first State of the Union address, in which he declared that “families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.” Not only was this bad economics — right now the government must spend, because the private sector can’t or won’t — it was almost a verbatim repeat of what John Boehner, the soon-to-be House speaker, said when attacking the original stimulus. If the president won’t speak up for his own economic philosophy, who will?

PK errs in his assesment of Obama.  What this illustrates, in bold red capital letters, is that President B. Hoover Obama is not and has never been any kind of true progressive.  He is bright, hard-working, and dedicated, to be sure.   And he does not lack either focus or a willingness to stand up for what he believes in.  What he lacks is the belief - a genuine belief in progressive principles and economics.  When the President talks of austerity he is being sincere.

At at time when we need a President like Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, we get a president like Herbert Hoover, who went to his grave believing that in 1930, he genuinely had the country on the right economic course.

We are so seriously screwed.
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