Paul Krugman, "The Story of Our Time": In God We Trust, But Those Green Pieces of Paper?

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Story of Our Time" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/opinion/krugman-the-story-of-our-time.html?_r=0), Paul Krugman twice declares that the US is in a "depression," "a once-in-three-generations financial crisis," and proffers "a sort of refresher on the nature of our economic woes, and why this remains a very bad time for spending cuts." Krugman explains:

"Let’s start with what may be the most crucial thing to understand: the economy is not like an individual family.

Families earn what they can, and spend as much as they think prudent; spending and earning opportunities are two different things. In the economy as a whole, however, income and spending are interdependent: my spending is your income, and your spending is my income. If both of us slash spending at the same time, both of our incomes will fall too."

Thus, according to Krugman, "this is a time for above-normal government spending, to sustain the economy until the private sector is willing to spend again."

And it's the bad guys who oppose Krugman:

"[P]owerful people don’t want to believe it. Some of them have a visceral sense that suffering is good, that we must pay a price for past sins (even if the sinners then and the sufferers now are very different groups of people). Some of them see the crisis as an opportunity to dismantle the social safety net. And just about everyone in the policy elite takes cues from a wealthy minority that isn’t actually feeling much pain."

Good versus bad? How puerile. Get real, Paul.

There are also those who believe that relative to the size of the US economy, there is too much federal debt outstanding. As observed by Krugman himself in an earlier op-ed (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/opinion/krugman-that-terrible-trillion.html?_r=0), the ratio of debt to G.D.P. is "the best measure of our debt position." US debt is currently more than $16.8 trillion, and gross US debt is some 107% of America's G.D.P. Those "fools" at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office have warned that "U.S. debt is on track to be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy by 2037" (http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/230901-cbo-warns-of-grim-long-term-debt-outlook). Sure, the American Taxpayer Relief Act and the sequester may have delayed "achievement" of that 200% debt to G.D.P. ratio by a few years; however, as acknowledged by the Peterson Foundation (http://www.pgpf.org/Issues/Fiscal-Outlook/2013/01/fiscal-cliff-atra-2012-long-term-analysis.aspx), we're still headed for that astronomical percentage by 2040.

Bottom line, if the federal government takes too many loans premised upon its ability to print additional pieces of green paper declaring "IN GOD WE TRUST" or upon the minting of a platinum coin (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/04/paul-krugman-lust-for-gold-what.html), we can only hope that people will continue to declare their trust in God, as they wheel piles of green paper to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread.