Paul Krugman: Ruinous Policies Plunge Portugal into Despair

The Financial Times recently published a long, deeply depressing portrait of conditions in Portugal, focusing on the plight of family-owned businesses — once the core of the nation's economy and society, but now going under in droves.

This is what it's really about.

And anyone playing any role in our current economic debate, whether as an actual policy maker or as an analyst giving advice from the sidelines, should be focused, above all, on how and why we're allowing this nightmare to happen all over again, three generations after the Great Depression.