RANDOM THOTS

What follows are verbatim quotes from Paul Krugman’s article today in the New York Times.

“Yes, there are big failings in Greece’s economy, its politics and no doubt its society.”
“Greece does indeed have a lot of corruption and a lot of tax evasion, and the Greek government has had a habit of living beyond its means.”
“Beyond that, Greek labor productivity is low by European standards — about 25 percent below the European Union average.”

From that Krugman concludes:

“But those failings aren’t what caused the crisis that is tearing Greece apart…”
“The Germans and the European Central Bank [must] realize that they’re the ones who need to change their behavior, spending more and, yes, accepting higher inflation…Greece will basically go down in history as the victim of other people’s hubris.”

In Krugman’s world, wherever that is, if a nation is ridden with corruption, allows extensive tax evasion and has a habit of living beyond its means for years, then when the money runs out it’s someone elses fault. With thinking like that the man could become president of the United States.

And then the economist turned journalist asks why the U.S. doesn’t have “the kind of severe regional crises now afflicting Europe?” His answer is “that we have a strong central government, and the activities of this government in effect provide automatic bailouts to states that get in trouble.”

So the reason America remains on a relatively sound footing is because we support failures automatically.