Paul Krugman says its 1938 all over again.*

I recognized that that was a bad thing.  I recognized that was bad because that was on the eve of World War II. And because Paul Krugman always says things are bad. But I didn’t know exactly what Paul Krugman meant this time so I read his article.

It’s 1938 all over again because…well its Mr. Krugman’s quote so let him explain why:

“Here’s the situation.  The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis.  The president’s policies limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high.  More action is clearly needed.  Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.”

That was the situation in 1938, you see, after FDR, in 1937, eschewed even more government spending to lift the country out of the depression.  It’s the same now, Krugman says.

I don’t know, maybe it is.  Paul Krugman does his writing in The New York Times, I do my writing in Public Occurrences.  That’s a gravitas gap.  Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize in economics;  I can't even balance my checkbook. I’m like Mickey’s father in Hannah and her Sisters.  Asked why, if there is a God, there were Nazis, the father replies, “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis?  I don’t know how the can opener works.”  I don’t know how can openers work either.

John Kenneth Galbraith labeled economics “the dismal science.”  The label stuck. The label stuck because there is a relentless negativism in economics. It’s more dismal then science.

Paul Krugman, like John Kenneth Galbraith, is also a Democrat.  I too am a Democrat but, like with can openers, only because I couldn’t even figure out how to change to Independent (I tried). A Democratic economist is a very dismal thing indeed.

Paul Krugman has a very dismal view of Republicans. His previous column, on the prospect of a partial Republican takeover of Congress, was titled “It’s Witch-Hunt Season,” and he wrote in anticipation of that Armageddon, “This is going to be very, very ugly.”  And maybe it will, I don’t know that either.

But I do have more faith in America, even in Republican America, than that, even if, as I believe, faith is often used as a crutch for the unintelligent and uneducated. That would be me too.

It’s just my sense that the sum of Economist+Democrat=over-pessimism in Mr. Krugman’s case, that maybe if he took a break his mood, and his outlook, would improve.  Maybe he should take Gail’s advice to Mickey in Hannah and her Sisters,

“Maybe you need a few weeks in Bermuda or something.  Or go to a whorehouse!  No?”

*August 29 column.