Paul Krugman: Perpetual Pessimism at Central Bank

Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, is sounding hawkish about inflation again, indicating in interviews that the bank will raise interest rates if officials see the need, even as countries struggle to recover from debt crises.

My former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Charles Kindleberger, once wrote that from the existence of multiple financial measurements arose one great virtue: observers, by picking and choosing, could always be optimistic or pessimistic, depending on their temperament.