Paul Krugman has a brief post Barack Herbert Hoover Obama that ties together two of his other articles.  In the article he quotes from President Obama’s radio address today.

Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.

As I have been surmising, President Obama cannot forcefully stand up for the right economic policy for today because he believes in the wrong one himself.  My thesis is that Obama’s mind has been poisoned by the remnants of Milton Friedman that still reside in the University of Chicago where Obama was a professor.

Paul Krugman’s other two articles that he references are Myths of Austerity and Reposted: Sam, Janet, and Debt.

All is lost if President Obama’s idea of the right policy is a watered down version of the Republican’s policy.  Instead as Krugman, Reich, Stiglitz, Kuttner, Tyson, Galbraith, and many other economists have been saying, Obama needs to be pursuing a policy that is almost directly opposite of what the Republicans propose.

In the Presidential campaign, Krugman warned us about Obama.  Krugman favored Hillary Clinton. I thought he was wrong to think Hillary Clinton was a better choice than Barack Obama.  I still think he was wrong.  Bill Clinton understood the economics that Krugman endorses, but I saw no evidence that Hillary Clinton understood the issue at all.  Her weak defenses of liberalized world trade indicated to me that she didn’t have a clue.

It also showed to me that none of Bill Clinton’s understanding of the big picture had gotten through to Hillary.  And why should it have?  For instance, I studied Electrical Engineering for the equivalent of 5 college years.  I spent a 40 year career involving software related to electrical engineering.  Despite Sharon having been married to me throughout my career, I wouldn’t expect her to have the understanding of Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, and Semiconductor Physics that I do.  I talked a lot about those subjects to her, but she still did not have the experience of it that I did.  On the other hand, although Sharon has talked to me a lot about horticulture, birds, painting, and the art of cooking, I don’t understand any of those topics as well as she does.