Why We Should Stop To Thank Paul Krugman

..because only he, out of all the "liberal economists", is vainglorious enough to feel the need to make absolutely clear the contradictions between his desired fiscal policy and that pesky thing called...reality. 

To wit: Via Hot Air, we get Krugman's anguished response to Obama's putting the temporary hold on the RPA onerous new job-killing smog regulations.

[T]ighter ozone regulation would actually have created jobs: it would have forced firms to spend on upgrading or replacing equipment, helping to boost demand. Yes, it would have cost money — but that’s the point! And with corporations sitting on lots of idle cash, the money spent would not, to any significant extent, come at the expense of other investment.

So when businesses don't want to spend their money, force them to via crazy government regulations!  Well, that's clear enough, I suppose, and certainly an indictment of liberal economics as well as Krugman's sanity, but the story actually gets funnier.  You see, the equipment required to bring businesses into code with the EPA's new regulations - the equipment that Krugman is demanding the private industry purchase out of patriotic necessity - doesn't even exits.  As per...the EPA:

The supplement to the [Regulatory Impact Analysis] assumes that the proposed standards can be achieved throughout the U.S. using a mixture of known air pollution control technologies and unknown, future technologies....EPA used several statistical methods to provide a range of likely compliance costs for other, currently unknown technologies that would be needed to attain the proposed primary standards.

Wow.  In other words, these EPA regulations would have required businesses to close, as we are not yet in a future in which the technology exists to adapt to the new standards.  And what would the crazed Dr, Krugmen then have our "corporations" purchase with their ill-gotten gains? If the products needed do not exist, how would the tighter ozone regulations have created new jobs? 

These are rhetorical questions, of course, and I no further expect Paul Krugman to answer them as I would expect reason from a street corner lunatic. But again, this is why we must thank him.  Via his arrogance and economic illiteracy, he has exposed not only the criminal stupidity of the EPA, but the intellectual vacuum in which liberal economics operate.

I will be hanging on your every word, Paul, even if not for the reasons you desire....