Krugman!

Well, I guess my first entry will be on this piece, written by New York Times columnist (and Nobel-winning economist!) Paul Krugman. Krugman is one of my favorite writers, and a great thinker.

I definitely agree with his assessment of the current economic dilemma - how else are we going to pull ourselves out of this other than aggressive fiscal spending? The Fed's cut earlier today - to the lowest level ever - was quite a symbol of the state we're in. This government needs to get the economy going, and I really hope Obama goes for it all. Take this opportunity to take care of a lot of our other problems - dependency on oil, failing infrastructure, and so on. Put the country to work, stimulate working class wages, reduce carbon emissions - we need anything we can get, with the outlook looking pretty grim at the moment.

Krugman's article focuses on Germany's stubborness to coordinate with the European fiscal aid, and it's really hard to believe. Especially this -

Last week Ifo, a highly respected research institute, warned that Germany will soon be facing its worst economic crisis since the 1940s. If and when this happens, Mrs. Merkel and her ministers will surely reconsider their position.

That's the Nazi era we're talking about - quite shocking. It's just really sad that we've gotten to this point, driven by the greed of the rich and the absurd deregulation allowing it (yeah, Gramm, Citi, etc). And not acting to stop the bleeding is going to have massive reprecussions. Please, conservatives, drop these absurd clingings to "balanced budgets" and "responsible spending". If we don't spend now, we're going to pay so much more later.

Anyways, ughhhh. That's all I can say right now. Later, I'll have something on Krugman's most recent book, which I'm just about done with.