Paul Krugman, "The Timidity Trap": I Dare You. I Double Dare You.

Surely you remember how, back in the beginning of 2013, Paul Krugman declared, in response to a "notion" advanced by a Guardian columnist, that he was not interested in becoming Obama's Treasury Secretary, because he had more influence writing op-eds for The New York Times (see: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/the-outside-man/). We are now left to wonder whether Krugman might have been considered for the job, had it not been for his audacious decision to decline the position before it was ever offered. We'll never know.

In any event, in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Timidity Trap" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/opinion/krugman-the-timidity-trap.html?_r=0), Krugman derides Obama, one of the "good guys" who "never seem willing to go all-in on their beliefs," for his half-hearted economic policy. Krugman writes:

"The classic example is the Obama stimulus, which was obviously underpowered given the economy’s dire straits. That’s not 20/20 hindsight. Some of us warned right from the beginning that the plan would be inadequate — and that because it was being oversold, the persistence of high unemployment would end up discrediting the whole idea of stimulus in the public mind. And so it proved."

Gee, what a pity that Krugman was not made Treasury Secretary. He could have doubled down on Obama's stimulus, providing us with more Solyndras, while taking America's debt, now at an unsustainable $17.5 trillion, to the stratosphere.

Go ahead, Paul. Tell Obama, whose second term is a bust, that you've changed your mind, and if he's willing, you're willing - to replace Jack Lew and to take spending to a new level in order to revive an economy that is treading water.

I dare you. I double dare you.