Contratry to what they think - Republicans don't have new ideas, Obamacare will not give the Republicans victory, you don't need a fancy degree to have influence, and five years of low interest rates and no change in policy

Krugman was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and couldn't believe that Peggy Noonan said that the Republicans are the party of ideas. Krugman wonders what examples there are of new ideas since if it is Medicare and slashing tax rates for the rich - then those come from Newt!

Krugman also finds someone who is happy with the health-care exchanges. He is surprised the Obama administration messed up the web-site programming but says this will get fixed and most importantly there is no way the Republicans will be able to run against it next year since it will be popular.

Krugman makes it clear he doesn't much care for academic prestige if the person is an idiot or fool. If you don't have fancy degrees but your ideas and work are sound then you will get respect. The degree and reputation will still give you a larger audience but you had better still have good quality work.

Krugman is pointing out that we are coming up the 5 year anniversary of interest rates bottoming out. This, he explains, has enormous implications that policy makers have not grasped. Namely that since you can't force interest rates lower than zero than other fiscal solutions must be tried to try and get the economy growing again. But these other solutions (higher stimulus spending) are not being tried.