This week, the United States and Europe offered a study in contrasts. Buoyed by an increasingly robust economic recovery and, not coincidentally, improving public opinion ratings, President Barack Obama delivered a State of the Union address in which he celebrated the nation's bounceback from the Great Recession, even as he laid out proposals aimed at assisting those who haven't reaped the recovery's benefits. Across the Atlantic, however, European leaders scrambled to stave off the threat of economic catastrophe in the eurozone, with European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi announcing bold measures aimed at stopping a deflationary spiral.

In his New York Times column today, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman examines the lessons from the U.S. and Europe's sharply different paths. The divergence is no mere accident, Krugman posits, but is instead the result of a "difference in attitudes."

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"Spendthrift, loose-money America is experiencing a solid recovery — a reality reflected in President Obama’s feisty State of the Union address. Meanwhile, virtuous Europe is sinking ever deeper into deflationary quicksand," Krugman writes, adding that he doesn't know anyone who thinks the ECB's latest moves to essentially print more money will be sufficient to head off deflation.

Whereas the Obama administration responded to the Great Recession with a large (if not large enough) stimulus package -- saving and creating jobs and thereby fostering consumer demand -- European leaders mostly shunned stimulus measures, Krugman notes, and they quickly pivoted to an austerity program of deep spending cuts, paired with some tax increases.

That was the fiscal side of policy; monetary officials, meanwhile, were more responsive to the Germans' inordinate fears of high inflation, even as every indicator suggested that deflation posed the biggest threat to the European economy.

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Things are improving under Draghi, Krugman argues, but as a central bank leader, Draghi isn't a benevolent dictator; Germany still has considerable power to deny sensible relief to debtor nations like Greece, and there's only so much monetary policy can do when fiscal policymakers adhere to the woefully wrongheaded notion that it's a good idea to cut spending in the midst of a depressed economy: