Paul Krugman: Fiscalizing Failure

If you read much of what’s being said these days by respectable people, you’d believe that deficits are always and everywhere the main source of economic problems. But, you know, that’s not really true.

A couple of samples from today’s Times — not terrible examples, but illustrative of the prevailing conventional wisdom. David Sanger asserts that

the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.

Is that really true?