Jon…“highly ideological”, perhaps, but Krugman’s article is based on a solid foundation. It is, after all, an opinion piece and presumes the reader knows the facts leading up to the debt crisis. If you’re looking for nuance he does(correctly in my opinion) separate the financial mismanagement in Greece from the economic crisis in Ireland and Spain, but i wouldn’t put his “moral certitude” in line with the self righteousness of those who caused the crisis and suddenly have transformed themselves into champions of fiscal responsibility.

As a Nobel Laureate in Economics no doubt he is perfectly capable of burying us with numbers. After all, he did raise the alarm of the coming meltdown through 2007 and into 2008, based on his analysis of the data, and was ignored by those in a position to do anything about what was about to strike the US economy.

Thus, my impression, after years of reading his columns, is that he must be completely exasperated at the quality of arguments that are accepted in the public discourse, and which affect policy, and so is trying to present his data-driven arguments in a way that he hopes someone will listen to. As for data points, he does say (yet again):
"What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs."

And then goes on to make the reasonable argument, which seems to me a plea to journalists for perspective as they cover speeches:
“One answer is simple accountability. People who advocated budget-busting policies during the Bush years shouldn’t be allowed to pass themselves off as deficit hawks; people who praised Ireland as a role model shouldn’t be giving lectures on responsible government.”