Krugman Rips Obama

Of course, not for any sound reason.

Krugman is upset that President Obama is talking spending freeze, even though this is the type of spending freeze that Paris Hilton would be happy to live under. Anyway, here's what happens when a leftie gets mad at one of his own:

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy."

First of all, it is hardly a freeze, as I pointed out, it will only have a minor impact on the budget, even if it's taken at face value and it is questionable as to whether it should be. When was the last time a government hit its budget forecasts?

Second, government cuts are a good thing. It puts money back in the hands of "the people" where it can be employed in useful exchange (Or hoarded, which means money would climb in value for everyone else).

Krugman's right about the betrayal, though, Obama has been lying his butt off to everyone, right and left, from at least the time he started claiming that he is the author of Dreams of My Father and Audacity of Hope. And, he hasn't stopped since.