The always provocative Paul Krugman offers this insight in his most recent column.

"If you want to see what it really takes to boot the economy out of a debt trap, look at the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression. The war didn’t just lead to full employment. It also led to rapidly rising incomes and substantial inflation, all with virtually no borrowing by the private sector. By 1945 the government’s debt had soared, but the ratio of private-sector debt to G.D.P. was only half what it had been in 1940. And this low level of private debt helped set the stage for the great postwar boom.

"Since nothing like that is on the table, or seems likely to get on the table any time soon, it will take years for families and firms to work off the debt they ran up so blithely," Krugman so blithely writes.

Yeah, WWII, now there was a government public works program for you.

It cost $3.9 trillion (in inflation adjusted dollars). It required the rationing of many goods (from gasoline to sugar), the incarceration of thousands of innocent civilians (remember those Japanese internment camps?), other told and untold sacrifices and the lives of more than 400,000 American soldiders as well as tens of millions of non Americans. Those were the days.

Krugman has been complaining for weeks that the Democrat-crafted stimulus package is far too small. He would like to see goverment-directed spending that approaches a war economy. Why? He apparently thinks that governments spend money better and more effectively than individual citizens.

But suddenly, the shock of the collapse of the financial markets is making Americans rethink their spendy ways. This is both good and bad. Americans should incur less debt and save more. But more saving means less consumption, a slower growing economy, fewer jobs, and more difficult times for many Americans.

How this will all work out is anybody's guess? But the American people are not as convinced as Krugman and other liberals that a huge government spending program, is just what is needed right now. (According to Rasmussen, only 38 percent believe the spending program will actually help the economy.) And what the bulk of Americans think matters quite a bit because it affects how they act

Investor and businessman Francis Cianfrocca "Deconstructs Krugman" here.

He notes that "Krugman is a sober, first-rate economist, but also a woolly-eyed, low-grade political hack."

Sounds about right.