In his latest column for the New York Times, award-winning economist and best-selling author Paul Krugman describes Republicans in Congress as "delusional ... about both the politics and the economics" of a government shutdown as well as a debt default.
Ultimately, Krugman concludes, Republican leadership won't stop listening to the "radicals" until Wall Street, "who got us into our economic mess," demands sanity.
Krugman ends on a bit of a down-note, wondering what will happen if even the Masters of the Universe — whom he lambasted recently as "sociopaths" — can't influence the GOP:
But what if even the plutocrats lack the power to rein in the radicals? In that case, Mr. Obama will either let default happen or find some way of defying the blackmailers, trading a financial crisis for a constitutional crisis.
This all sounds crazy, because it is. But the craziness, ultimately, resides not in the situation but in the minds of our politicians and the people who vote for them. Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
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