Paul Krugman trashes the "deficit peacocks" like President Obama who pretend to care about the mountain of debt we're building up without actually doing anything about it.

The LAST thing we want to do right now, Krugman says, is cut spending, because it's the only thing keeping us out of depression. But we do need a plan to increase spending now and cut it sharply later...and that's what our government is incapable of providing.

From the NYT:

The nature of America’s troubles is easy to state. We’re in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis, which has led to mass job destruction. The only thing that’s keeping us from sliding into a second Great Depression is deficit spending. And right now we need more of that deficit spending because millions of American lives are being blighted by high unemployment, and the government should be doing everything it can to bring unemployment down.

In the long run, however, even the U.S. government has to pay its way. And the long-run budget outlook was dire even before the recent surge in the deficit, mainly because of inexorably rising health care costs. Looking ahead, we’re going to have to find a way to run smaller, not larger, deficits.

How can this apparent conflict between short-run needs and long-run responsibilities be resolved? Intellectually, it’s not hard at all. We should combine actions that create jobs now with other actions that will reduce deficits later.

Read the whole thing at the NYT >