The Old Red Lady of the NYT Vents on Darth Vader’s Vents.

The Old Red Lady of the NYT Vents on Darth Vader’s Vents.

It has been some time since I laid fingers upon the ‘pooter’ key board to work on the literary extravagances of the Old Red Lady[1] of the NYT [The Old Gray Lady], the dowdy Maureen Dowd. She has the privilege and honor to write scripts and other blather for the same ragzine that Walter Duranty made famous and they cherish his Pulitzer Prize even today even though it was written purely as a sophomoric leftist Stalinist apology and a crude and emotional propaganda piece based on lies and worse.[2] Most of the pulverized political slants and other septic echoes from this tome can be safely ignored but occasionally there appears a piece that rates some comment other than a straight-forward tantrum and a ceremonial shredding of the paper.

This hiatus was not for lack of interest in her synthesis of current news snippets, usually replete with stale literary references from years or decades ago, it is because of other pressing interests. But, spurred on with her wit and still wondering if she cooks her hair in a microwave, I have been sufficiently attracted to this piece to comment. Amongst the many faults in the liberal façade there is the recurring image of some great and evil monolith that must be constantly monitored for movement or action and promptly swatted down like a gnat on a slice of chocolate cake. Thus, apart from Ronald Reagan, even the name of former Vice President Richard Cheney rings little bells in dark, dank places and conjures forth demons from the deep whose apparitions stir the rusty innards of the robotic left to action. They then dutifully assume the role of the Hurdy-gurdy grinder’s tune banger machine and turn the old crank to impress those nearby or at least the monkey and his wood nickel. This is so mechanical and predictable.[3] The affront is made more obtuse by the comments from Dick on the workings of several levers of government when he shared power in the Oval Office and thus provides fire and brimstone for the redactors to set the historical record straight and place Dick in his final place.

She begins, after uncivilly abusing some of Dick’s Civil War ancestors, purely for spite, to lob some specific pots of venom:

“Vice’s new memoir, “In My Time,” veers unpleasantly between spin, insisting he was always right, and score-settling, insisting that anyone who opposed him was wrong.

His knife-in-her-teeth daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, helped write the book. The second most famous Liz & Dick combo do such an excellent job of cherry-picking the facts, it makes the cherry-picking on the Iraq war intelligence seem picayune.”[4]-- Darth Vader Vents By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: August 27, 2011 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

The Incident of interest:

“Cheney says that in 2007, he told President Bush, who had already been pulled into diplomacy by Condi Rice: “I believed that an important first step would be to destroy the reactor in the Syrian desert.”

At a session with most of the National Security Council, he made his case for a strike on the reactor. It would enhance America’s tarnished credibility in the Arab world, he argued, (not bothering to mention who tarnished it), and demonstrate the country’s “seriousness.”

“After I finished,” he writes, “the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”-- Darth Vader Vents

This sounds like an abrupt and unpardonable diplomatic sortie that would generate as much rage as attacks like Pearl Harbor or the fire-bombing of Dresden. But, then, it sounds reasonable given what we did in Somalia, Kosovo, Tripoli, Nagasaki and parts of Pakistan.

Given that we just blasted much of Tripoli away hoping to fry Colonel Gadaffi[5], an ally for nearly four decades, it is amusing to wonder how big a deal this would have been. After all, Israel blasted a similar site in Iraq and was quietly congratulated on the effort. Syria’s Assad is now Dictator of the Week and in line for the Mubarak Treatment if they can find some fighters in Syria.

But, the discussion of this option is punctuated with all manner of disjointed gossip and random comingled spittle including the trivial-but treasonous-attack by Cheney’s yellow Lab upon Bush2’s Scottish terrier [Barney] at Camp David. Perhaps in the fevered mind of whoever edited this script [as if anybody controls the output in the NYT] that this even was comparable to scattering some buildings and a little sand in some nuclear facility in Syria.

More prattle:

“Vice gleefully predicted that his memoir would have “heads exploding all over Washington.” But his book is a bore. He doesn’t even mention how in high school he used to hold the water buckets to douse the fiery batons of his girlfriend Lynne, champion twirler.”--Darth Vader Vents

But to get down and dirty and to the point we read this:

“Finishing the book with an account of the 2010 operation to put in a battery-operated pump that helps his heart push blood through his body, he recounts the prolonged, vivid dream about a beautiful place in Italy he had during the weeks he was unconscious.

“It was in the countryside, a little north of Rome, and it really seemed I was there,” he writes. “I can still describe the villa where I passed the time, the little stone paths I walked to get coffee or a batch of newspapers.”

“Caesar and his cappuccino.”-- Darth Vader Vents

I am wondering what happened to the editorial staff when a spiteful piece like this was cobbled out of scraps from the cutting room floors and assembled into some wandering poison dart-tossing tirade upon the jots and titles of some new book. Maureen must be just cranking out fodder for one of her associates and needed a fluff piece to fill in some empty spaces here and there. It is rare that one reads a screed like this that is absent even a modicum of pertinent facts and consists almost entirely of dramatic spite.

This appears to signal a new low [or a new high?] for the Walter Duranty Papers -- whose spinning machines disgorge vast quantities of something that passes for truth in some quarters.

rycK [a 5^th generation Californian in exile]

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

---

[1] The Old Red Lady from the Old Gray Lady Instructs us in Slogans, Obscure Literary References and Clichés.http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/03/02/the_old_red_lady_from_the_old_gray_lady_instructs_us_in_slogans,_obscure_literary_references_and_clich%c3%a9s.thtml

The Old Red Lady of the Old Gray Lady Comments on Losers: Clinton and Kim

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/08/05/the_old_red_lady_of_the_old_gray_lady_comments_on_losers_clinton_and_kim.thtml

The Old Red Lady of the Old Gray Lady Howls at the Moon. Palin has Rattled Her Cage Door.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/07/06/the_old_red_lady_of_the_old_gray_lady_howls_at_the_moon_palin_has_rattled_her_cage_door.thtml

Quoth the Old Red Lady of the NYT: Mirror Mirror on the Wall! Do I see My Party and Myself in My Writings?

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/11/04/quoth_the_old_red_lady_of_the_nyt_mirror_mirror_on_the_wall!___do_i_see_my_party_and_myself_in_my_writings.thtml

[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[3] I refuse to insult Pavlov’s dog here.

[4] Darth Vader Vents By MAUREEN DOWD OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: August 27, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/dowd-darth-vader-vents.html?_r=1[Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

[5]Colonel Gaddafi's political obituary: the end of the 'Brother Leader' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8726974/Colonel-Gaddafis-political-obituary-the-end-of-the-Brother-Leader.html

Hijacking the Hijacked Crisis According to Paul Krugman

Hijacking the Hijacked Crisis According to Paul Krugman

Abstract: Paul Krugman grinds his old rusty axe and calls for more government spending and forgiveness of mortgage debt so as to buy more votes and hopefully save Obama’s presidency and reputation. This is all so much reboiled tripe.

As we peruse the hallowed pages of the near-bankrupt NYT—aka the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]--a turn-of-the-crank Marxian puppet stage where kinky intermezzos and grand opera ring until the wall paper curls, we must always be alert for true political designs and other odd bits of propaganda that are thoughtfully woven into the fabric of the average op-ed piece presented before us. As is tautologically universal in the Paul Krugman essays[3], his propaganda pieces frequently begin with a crisis and broadcast the urgent need for the expedition for the ‘facts’ so the guilty can readily be identified. The solutions, as always, depend on higher taxes and more government spending and this harangue habitually pacifies the local left-liberal to the point of boredom for the reason that they are already part of the game and know the score. The rest of us know this is just progressive politics.

We begin with the tautological quest for more taxes, higher spending and bigger government—the Krugman troika and strict boundaries to Paul Krugman’s narrow political knowledge, his rote, repetitive and focused training.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

The Crisis:

“For more than a year and a half — ever since President Obama chose to make deficits, not jobs, the central focus of the 2010 State of the Union address — we’ve had a public conversation that has been dominated by budget concerns, while almost ignoring unemployment. The supposedly urgent need to reduce deficits has so dominated the discourse that on Monday, in the midst of a market panic, Mr. Obama devoted most of his remarks to the deficit rather than to the clear and present danger of renewed recession.”-- The Hijacked Crisis By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 11, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/opinion/the-hijacked-crisis.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Here, we detect some flack flung in the direction of one of Obama’s political planks and that is the notion that he must steer this ship on a narrow course that includes fiscal responsibility. Below is a structured speech given by the Treasury Secretary who hears his master’s voice and barks accordingly.

We hear of cutting deficits by Obama and his minions from 2009:

“In his speech, Geithner renewed pledges that the Obama administration would cut its huge fiscal deficits and promised "very disciplined" future spending, possibly including reintroduction of pay-as-you-go budget rules instead of nonstop borrowing.

"We have the deepest and most liquid markets for risk-free assets in the world. We're committed to bring our fiscal deficits down over time to a sustainable level.

"We believe in a strong dollar ...and we're going to make sure that we repair and reform the financial system so that we sustain confidence," he said.”[4]-- Geithner Monday June 1, 2009

Gee, do we see some conflict here? Of Obama’s many false promises, this one is the biggest of all the lies. Where did pay-as-you-go budget rules go?

Who is wrong here?? More misdirection follows:

“What made this so bizarre was the fact that markets were signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem.”-- The Hijacked Crisis By PAUL KRUGMAN

This is not true. The markets are reacting to debt problems like the kind we got from wasting our money on such phony social programs as the CRA:

This market turbulence [world wide and initiated by the US and the EU] is a result of Congressional ‘affordable housing’ programs for ‘the poor’ and similar Nanny State Socialism in the collapsing EU and cost us probably $10-15 trillion already. It has cost the EU members about the same fraction of their GDP. This ‘affordable housing’ was some obvious social mandate and Congress passed the CRA [Community Reinvestment Act][5][6] that resulted in AAA rated 2007 subprime mortgage bundles descending only 28 cents on the dollar.[7] Lower rated bundles are less than 5 cents on the dollar. Good bye. We shall hear echoes of this disaster later in this Krugman op-ed. This debt must result in massive and destructive defaults of one form or another:

From the Sage of Omaha:

“Every country that has denominated its debt in its own currency and has found itself with uncomfortable amounts of debt relative to the rest of the world, in the end they inflate,” Buffett explains. That becomes a tax on everybody that has fixed dollar investments.”[8]--Buffett Sees Massive Inflation to Handle Staggering Debt. Monday, May 4, 2009 By Dan Weil [Emphasis is mine in all quotes]

But, what does Krugman say? Let us get emotional!

“For the fact is that right now the economy desperately needs a short-run fix. When you’re bleeding profusely from an open wound, you want a doctor who binds that wound up, not a doctor who lectures you on the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle as you get older. When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability.”--The Hijacked Crisis By PAUL KRUGMAN

More emotion!

“What would a real response to our problems involve? First of all, it would involve more, not less, government spending for the time being — with mass unemployment and incredibly low borrowing costs, we should be rebuilding our schools, our roads, our water systems and more. It would involve aggressive moves to reduce household debt via mortgage forgiveness and refinancing. And it would involve an all-out effort by the Federal Reserve to get the economy moving, with the deliberate goal of generating higher inflation to help alleviate debt problems.

The usual suspects will, of course, denounce such ideas as irresponsible. But you know what’s really irresponsible? Hijacking the debate over a crisis to push for the same things you were advocating before the crisis, and letting the economy continue to bleed.”-- The Hijacked Crisis By PAUL KRUGMAN

We should employ ‘mortgage forgiveness’ for illegal aliens and those with criminal backgrounds and poor or nonexistent credit ratings? And, who would take the hit for such programs? Oh! Yes! The evil banks.

We might as well watch paint dry that continue to read this propaganda from the left. We also need to note that all of the EU have abandoned the ‘stimulus’ fever from the failed legacy of Keynes and his fast-spending lackeys. The only people now following the tax and spend route are the liberal Democrats. The election is near so we can fix a lot of this.

rycK [a 5^th generation Californian in exile]

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

---

[1] The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Babbles about Israel and Hamas

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/01/06/the_babbling_brooks_of_the_nyt_babbles_about_israel_and_hamas.thtml

[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[3] Krugman Searches for His Own Truth in an Irish Mirror. He Reflects upon the Mirror and Finds Himself as Originator of the Eternal Solution. Tax and Spend.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/03/09/krugman_searches_for_his_own_truth_in_an_irish_mirror_he_reflects_upon_the_mirror_and_finds_himself_as_originator_of_the_eternal_solution_tax_and_spend.thtml

[4] http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSPEK14475620090601

[5] “Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.^[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers^[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul^[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.^[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.^[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.^[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.^[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

[7] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6179033/Lehman-is-a-footnote-in-the-great-East-West-globalisation-crisis.html

[8] Buffett Sees Massive Inflation to Handle Staggering Debt. Monday, May 4, 2009 2:34 PM By: Dan Weil http://moneynews.newsmax.com/headlines/warren_buffett/2009/05/04/210480.html?s=al&promo_code=7F1D-1

Mysterious Math Emanating from the Conscience of a Liberal

Mysterious Math Emanating from the Conscience of a Liberal

Abstract: We can search the cosmos for invariant processes such as the grand celestial movements of our moon and bright stars and ground our best predictions on the historical stability of their repetitive state. Few things can perform in such a predictable manner on this planet, except, we must note, for certain political platitudes that are strewn about unaltered for decades in defense of foul and phony government and to aid the eternal quest for money from others. Today we add more proof that the so-called economist Paul Krugman is something of a lessor stature when compared to a one-trick pony: All he ever does is bawl for higher taxes, more spending and bigger government. Some things are cast in prehistoric stone. Proof follows below.

Generally, in propaganda exercises of the basest sort, it is permissible to ignite enticing political flames with the conclusion boldly stated up front and then use the remaining text to amplify the original assumption thus providing a ‘proof’ that the initial argument was sound. This forms the tightest ring of circular logic that such techniques can devise as long as no probing questions are allowed. An example bursts forth in the latest Opinion Pages of the New York Times as of 8.06.11:

“Amid all the debt hysteria, it’s worth taking a look at the actual arithmetic here — because what this arithmetic says is that the size of the deficit in the next year or two hardly matters for the US fiscal position — and in fact the size over the next decade is barely significant.”-- The Arithmetic of Near-term Deficits and Debt By Paul Krugman August 6, 2011, 12:00 PM [1][Emphasis is mine in all quotes unless specifically stated otherwise.]

Properly inaugurating this screed with ‘defined facts’ is a stale but acceptable method of initiating a propaganda piece. The NYT excels in this practice since Walter Duranty taught them how to do this and garnered some Pulitzer Prize and wild applause from the Communists and the simple for his lies.

The word tautological must be expanded in scope and depth to accommodate most of the hackneyed scribbles and coached mental gyrations of the near-financially bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers.[2] To suggest that there is but a short stack of soiled, but politically sanctified clichés, to guide the ‘writers’ in their written works in the Opinion section of this ragzine is to offer too much latitude to those who are intellectually and morally chained in such a narrow media latrine. Words like drone or stooge must be intercalated with the revised context of tautology to describe what passes for thought in this section. This will become self-evident shortly.

So, we continue on in search of the hard facts:

“Start with interest rates. What matters for debt sustainability is the real interest rate, since what matters is keeping real debt, not nominal debt, from growing. (World War II debt never got paid off, it just eroded in real terms to the point where it was trivial). As of yesterday, the US government could lock in 30-year bonds at a real interest rate of 1.25%. That means that a trillion dollars in extra debt would mean $12.5 billion a year in additional real interest payments.

Meanwhile, the CBO estimates potential real GDP in 2021 at about $18 trillion in 2005 dollars, or around $19 trillion in 2011 dollars.”-- The Arithmetic of Near-term Deficits

Now, as to the ‘facts’ it turns out that our nominal interest rate is indeed low [I calculate 1.38% using a nominal 200 bln in debt service on 14.5 trillion in debt] but we can quibble about that later. So, that IS a fact.

Now, we follow a hard fact with some phony political estimate, and that is the trick for the day!

“Meanwhile, the CBO estimates potential real GDP in 2021 at about $18 trillion in 2005 dollars, or around $19 trillion in 2011 dollars.

Put these together, and they say that an extra trillion in borrowing adds something like 0.07% of GDP in future debt service costs. Yes, that zero belongs there. The $4 trillion S&P said it needed to see clocks in at less than 0.3% of GDP.”-- The Arithmetic of Near-term Deficits

Here a hard fact is followed by some blob of nonsense whereby the first fact lends some synthetic credibility to the whole argument. The conclusion then is an assumption.

Here, we must peek into the source of this wonderful prediction and we find that it originates from our famous CBO [Congressional Baloney Orifice].[3] To say that this organization is anything less than a pack of stooges who must accept pet political assumptions stuffed into their little minds as a basis for their calculations is a broad acerbity—but accurate. The curve Krugman describes sweeps upwardly in some grand majestic motion and is smooth, ever rising and impressive. It is nothing but a guess that is puffed up with political fluff and nonsense. It assumes that GDP growth from 1950 will eventually reach infinity [or beyond] and is, in true fact, a sacrosanct basin of truth. It is not. It is a smoothed curve as it even boldly displays US recessions in shaded areas. Did Krugman mention that our revised GDP is less than 1% and will probably sink lower. Gee, wouldn’t this put a little downward droop to this wonderful curve?? Not in the political world of the frantic left.

We can tie this projection in with some other stunning conclusions that must include massive spending and that dismisses any attempts at austerity, the method now followed by the EU as they tried QE [idiot spending with printed monies with no limits] and it failed and now their economies are crashing in debt led by the PIIGS.

We cannot afford not to spend wildly:

“Austerity is self-defeating: when everyone tries to pay down debt at the same time, the result is depression and deflation, and debt problems grow even worse. And conversely, it is possible — indeed, necessary — for the nation as a whole to spend its way out of debt: a temporary surge of deficit spending, on a sufficient scale, can cure problems brought on by past excesses.”[4] --1938 in 2010 By Paul Krugman

At this point, we can see that the ‘math’ here is some soggy delirium oozing from the troubled minds of politicians who have brought us to the very edge of a deep financial carcass and we are about to tumble over the edge into some financial abyss. As such, the author here is a political chum-chucker who bends and twists any resource to make his tautological point that we must always spend, increase taxes and grow government. The Dow crashed some 634 points an hour ago.

How disgusting.

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

---

[1] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/the-arithmetic-of-near-term-deficits-and-debt/

[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet societybut also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Unionwhich only history could judge.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[3] http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDPPOT?cid=106

Dean BakerCo-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

Irresponsibly Following the Congressional Budget Office

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/irresponsibly-following-t_b_272965.html

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/

November 21, 1994

CBO and Economic Policy

http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/cbo11-94/cbo11-94.htm

There are many more examples of the CBO just offering some politico what they want to hear.

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06krugman.html