Krugman: The EU is "one of the best things to have happened to humanity over the past century".
... one of the truly awful things about the Bush years was the deliberate conflation of the person sitting in the White House with the nation. If you criticized Bush, you were anti-American; if you denounced the Iraq war, you were attacking the troops.
So, look at what the Brussels tweeters are saying — namely, that an attack on the wrongheaded economic doctrine of Olli Rehn (European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs) is an attack on Europe, that anyone who criticizes the hash they are making of policy must be an American who hates Europe. Um, no.
As it happens, I’m very much pro-European; I consider the European project, the path of peace through prosperity and integration, one of the best things to have happened to humanity over the past century. I’ve seen the good work Europe has done in promoting democracy.
My problem isn’t with Europe, it’s with the bad policies that are ripping Europe apart, and with the officials who for whatever reason — intellectual inflexibility, ideological blinders, or, I suspect, sheer personal vanity, an unwillingness to admit that they were wrong — have refused to consider any modification of these policies despite years of disastrous results. And the attempt of these officials to wrap themselves in the mantle of European unity is truly contemptible.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/bushifying-the-berlaymont/
I had always figured that Krugman was pro-EU, just anti-austerity believing that is both extremely bad economic policy and damaging to the idea of a "prosperous and integrated" Europe. This is the clearest statement of it that I have come across.
More evidence I guess for right wingers that Krugman is a socialist at heart.
= new reply since forum marked as read
He understands that the purpose of economics is to serve society, not vice versa. 
