Once again clueless bloggers think Krugman of the NYT is a seer He is a political agitator and he is using selective data to forecast doom and gloom. What he leaves out of his forecast of doom that can only be saved by the Democrats include:

1. Revenues from the just starting recovery are up 85 billion dollars more than forecast.
2. The weak dollar is a function of Fed Policy. Unlike the Third World we have a strong central bank.
3. Transparent markets
4. The "crony capitalism" has been restricted to 20 firms at most and they have been closed down. It is not a function of the economy.
4A. The "crony capitalism" in the Third World happens to be "cronies of the government". Suharto's family in Indonesia, ditto in Thailand, everywhere in Africa. Crony Capitalism means government putting their relatives in charge of companies. Iran is the most odius of the bunch right now. See here for details of the set up.

Krugman deliberately confuses crony capitalism with crooks. He knows better. The bloggers are economic morons who don't know a spread from a straddle, who can't figure out a bond yield with a super computer, and don't have a clue about market risks.

The absolute worst thing Krugman leaves out is "contract law", the enforcement of contracts that is the underpinning of almost our entire economy; contracts allow us to buy cars, homes, stock. He also leaves out the near sacredness of "private property" which allows almost every one of us to create capital with our homes. None of these things are dreamed about in Third World economies.

And Krugman conveniently leaves out our economy. Ours is as diverse as any that one can imagine. We lead the world in agriculture, tech and services. We don't subsidize our airlines as all Third World countries do. We don't have a one segment economy like oil, or gemstones, or sugar like these other countries do (include Sweden, Norway, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland).

We have a huge budget deficit CAUSED BY SPENDING which may be much smaller come March of next year if our economy grows as it looks to. Interest rates will rise and the dollar will rise as it is rising right now because everyone is predicting higher rates come next year.

Our real problems are SPENDING, Medicare and Social Security, and SPENDING which can wreck us if we don't deal with them. Remember that Rome ran trade deficits for 200 years and fell for other reasons. There is no matrix for our economy because nothing like America has ever existed. For every Krugman you will find a Kudlow.

This Krugman piece that is being praised over the web by people who know jack shit about markets and the economy is just politics with selective data to give Democrats some fuel. It is our nature to take risks. We are taking them. That's who we are.