Krugman vs Stockman

For a couple days now Krugman has been railing against Stockman (Reagan’s budget director who has reputation as an outsider). Stockman feels that the US is greatly in debt and basically there is no hope – we are destined for 3^rd world status. Krugman doesn’t have so much of an issue with this itself – more with the fact that Stockman’s thesis implies that the US must stop going into debt. This is counter to Krugman’s belief that the government has to borrow more and spend more to reduce unemployment so the people will spend more to get the economy growing faster.

At first Krugman thought Stockman’s article wasn’t worth that much effort to respond too since Stockman was so off his rocker – but in the past day Krugman has responded a couple times to Stockman since it seems Stockman’s article is getting a lot of play. It’s been fun reading how he calls Stockman and his article an ‘unfortunate rant’, ‘pathetic and embarrassing’, ‘hasn’t done his homework’, ‘cranky old man’, ‘sad’…