Krugman is getting close to the edge

[hfojvt]

44. He does not seem to understand economics

as it is actually practiced by economists

"Graduate economics courses have become classes in rhetoric. The idea is to make plausible and logical arguments based on assumptions that need not be realistic at all. The criterion for economic theory is simply whether it is internally logical, not its realism. That is what makes economics a non-science in the sense that the physical sciences require not only a consistency of assumptions, but realism as well. The task of economists is to come up with a set of assumptions that will lead to the conclusions promoted by their employers." Micheal Hudson

Or as Galbraith said much earlier than Hudson

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Excpet in this case, it is a pseudo-intellectual justification for policies which are based on selfishness.