Paul Krugman is Depressed Today

This is from his blog at the New York Times:

I’m finding it hard to read about politics these days. I still don’t think people in the administration understand the magnitude of the catastrophe their excessive caution has created. I keep waiting for Obama to do something, something, to shake things up; but it never seems to happen.

Here’s what I wrote in February 2009... It’s pretty rich that now the usual suspects are accusing me of having shared the administration’s optimism. But that’s a trivial point; the important thing is that all signs are that the next few years will be a combination of economic stagnation and political witch-hunt.

This is going to be almost inconceivably ugly.

What Krugman wrote in February 2009 was an essay on America's failure to rise to the occasion of a huge economic crisis. The stimulus package was too small. The government was doing too little.

What hit me in today's post was the first paragraph: Krugman's sense that the government is utterly clueless. I have the same impression. It's nice to be in good company.

And the last two lines of his post really hit me.

Note a day later:

Compare this to the previous post, which is Grace Lee Boggs at the age of 95, still full of energy. I am a great fan of Krugman. His gift for popular writing about economics is remarkable, and he seems to be a decent man. But he doesn't think outside the box, and that (I suspect) encourages despair.

This are disturbing times, and we really do need to think in unconventional ways.