Krugman is precisely what is wrong with American progressives. He thinks after spending a life watching while nobody left of him was left standing; that after mission accomplished, he would be benighted. The reality is that he has been rendered superfluous. The War is over kid and you were used like a peon.
Like Stiglitz, Paul reminds of a good reform liberal who, after coming back from the crusades, realizes that the war he thought he was fighting was not the war he was actually fighting. That hit home for Stiglitz circa his tour at the world bank. Old Joe has never really recovered. Something opened his eyes at the world bank and suddenly almost all the little tightly written mechanical equations he ever employed seemed to evaporate into thin air.
Earth to planet Paul there is a reason Larry gets the plumbs. Hint: and it is not because he is a better economist than you. Larry understands something your naiveté never will. Economic laws are made by Humans (for Larry men) the rest is commentary. Larry does not speak truth to power so much as he cloisters it in shiny white garb serving up technocratic, but nonetheless, ideological resources ready to hand for power. If Larry gets annoyed sometimes maybe it is not because of principle, maybe it is because he thinks the powers he serves are too deft to their own interests. And that really was the conceit of Keynes.
You behave as you believe: public policy is for the betterment of human kind. Here is what is going to happen Paul; 8-10 years from now you will be proven right and nobody will care. Whatever the configuration of economic and political forces at that time will be they will not give one shit about your sage like prevision.
In short, you will be equally as superfluous as you are now. Here is a clue Paul. Keynes, your hero, was in a very interesting milieu with socialists and communists to his ascendant left and self serving, myopic, reactionary forces to his right. Keynes could under these conditions position himself in the centre: You can’t. Your left flank has long since been burnt.
Sorry my dear comrade you are now the indefensible poll-bearer of the left. So please stop Kvetching and pony-up.
The point is that it would have been much better if the Depression had been ended with massive spending on useful things, on roads and railroads and schools and parks. But the political consensus for spending on a sufficient scale never materialized; we needed Hitler and Hirohito instead.
Gee Paul and why might that be? Why might capitalists prefer fascism and war to useful things? The answer to that question is where the morality play of economics leaves-off and objective political economy begins.
Relentlessly Progressive Political Economy 
Hey there Travis, the only problem is, Krugman’s at the NYT and you’re the twenty-first century Canadian version of Dostoyevsky. Does anyone in the NDP read your stuff these days, or are they too busy cleaning Ignatieff’s house?
As Hegel said, “war is the health of the state.” If only more people knew that for real, and not just in da games. So – maybe there is a place for another kind of morality play, when it comes to war? Objective political economy will begin when… if… but then everyone reading this knows, “faced with fascist barbarism, everyone knows what freedom means.”
Keep on piping it up my friend, we lefties could use more of the real thing,
Colin
“faced with fascist barbarism, everyone knows what freedom means.”
Not when freedom is prone and barbarism parades in his garb.
Alas, laddy, my pipes feel the silence of putrid and nonetheless decadent morn.
Oh and I should add on a brighter note nobody inside the NDP has ever read me. When they pulled my membership card it was for the mistaken belief that I threw some poor local journalist on the street. To be fair I never bothered to contradict the official story. But it was all really just morning glory.
Ha Ha!! LOL. By the way, if you want a career change, Janna is Programs Manager at the Ontario Crafts Council, I am sure she would be happy to sign you up.
best wishes to you, and here’s hoping something new is born from the wet ashes of the NDP….
CC