Paul Krugman: Pundit. Author. Economist?

["John Gelles" <indexed-savings@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's Monday, September 29th.  I turned 78.  My younger
son, Franklin D. (named for a president), for my birthday
gave me Paul Krugman's "The Great Unraveling".  Then
I listened to P.K.'s  most recent lectures by real-audio at
http://www.pkarchive.org/

        Krugman gave and gives me a pain in the neck.

Paul Krugman sees Bush and his cabinet as authors
of a radical agenda: an agenda to reduce the cost of
government -- by punching big holes in the American
safety net -- while simultaneously personally profiting
from an increase in government spending to buy a New
American Century in which military supremacy is theirs
forever and a day.

Bush's game plan is low taxes and low interest, liquidity
ensured by Greenspan's central bank, a return to military
Keynesianism, and humorless confrontation of all who
have other ideas.

The Achilles heel of Bush's plan is a jobless recovery
and recognition by voters that we are short changing
our environment, infrastructure, workforce and future
industrial power -- by staying in the race to the bottom
-- a race for which neither market fundamentalists nor
Krugman have a clue how to turn around.

Krugman sees America's foreign debt and need to fight
inflation with imports as vulnerabilities that will soon
lower the dollar and may later sharply deflate stocks and
real estate (or maybe not -- he offers a disclaimer in all
matters of market timing). He certainly sees the Bush
strategy as unraveling in the face of political opposition
and scandalous economic behavior.

Krugman may be more right than wrong.

        Between Greenspan's liquidity and low interest,
and Bush's opportunity to rebuild American infrastructure
and heavy industrial might-- as it reforms taxes, education
and health insurance-- the prospects for the New American
Century and global growth and peace are excellent.

        But there is the great temptation to miss all opportunity
and lose both the domestic political contest and the economic
challenge from lower-cost producers abroad. Multi-national
corporations may rent the Congress to reduce our domestic
workforce to a pathetic shadow of what it once was.

        Bush can play Teddy Roosevelt and "build the canal".
Or he may play Herbert Hoover-- and be as helpless as his
enemies think he is.

        Krugman sounds the alarm. Not as loud as the alarm
of 9/11/2001.  Krugman will sell books.  What will Bush
buy or sell?  Whatever it is, it deserves the best effort and
advice of every economist worth his salt.  And this nation
deserves another TR-- not another Hoover.

John Gelles