Given Krugman's little rant on Sweden http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/sweden-sweden-as... which spawned responses like http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/sweden-no-longer-the-free-marke... and his attitude towards Estonia and the US stimuli, I think there is some doubt as to his work.

Whose work, especially in economics, isn't in "some doubt"? A one paragraph blog post hardly discredits Krugman in general.

I am of no fixed opinion when it comes to economic theory, but Krugman's and Dean Baker's writings on the economy of the last ten years (i.e. housing bubble onwards) are some of the few things I've found that are intended for a general audience, are (at least partly) based on data rather than ideology alone, and seem coherent to me. That doesn't mean they're right, of course. If there's a critique of their view that meets the same criteria – generally accessible, based on evidence, not entirely ideological, and coherent – I'd like to see it. Most of what I've run across in that department is either incomprehensible to me, obviously ideological, or both.

The people who seem lacking in credibility right now are the ones recommending plunging ahead with full-bore austerity when there are both obvious reasons to think it will make matters worse (because it will reduce demand and slow growth) and obvious evidence that it is doing so right now, e.g. in the UK, which has been running this experiment for the last few years. Perhaps this is just my ignorance speaking, but what I noticed is: (1) those austerity measures were greeted by loud cheers by the same people who still think that way today; (2) the Krugman and Baker types predicted that it would make things worse; (3) the UK has gone back into recession.

Interesting, I find Krugman to be more ideological than reasoned, but I that could be from working on government stuff in the 90s. I would recommend reading about spending changes in 1946, it is quite an interesting era to compare to 1920, 1929, and today.

Do you have the same opinion about Baker? I find him to be less political than Krugman (which doesn't necessarily mean less ideological). His posts are almost always based on data and seem to make a pretty strong case. Plus he called the housing bubble really early (2002 or so), again just by looking at data.

Probably the most interesting point that Baker makes (makes ad nauseum, in fact) is that the US's fiscal dilemma is almost entirely a matter of health care costs.

I've only read a little bit of Baker from his stuff on housing, and I tend to agree with him. He does a decent job of actually backing up his point without the slight-of-hand graphs Krugman uses. I am not fond of his headline writings to attract attention. His criticism of the regulators is detailed and backed up well.

I really, really wish we had gone another way on health care. Moving health care away from company to individual purchases, health savings accounts, government health disaster insurance (everything over a certain $ amount), massive changes to IHS. Phasing in items and protecting from day one our most vulnerable populations (fix the leaks instead of buying a new boat).

I'm curious: do you have any examples where Krugman is flat-out wrong? There are many cases where the people whom he criticizes are. His predictions have been more right than wrong, imho.

Well, that link I posted sure is him being wrong.

Actually, I'll have to disagree with you on that.

Well, if using deceptive graphs aren't very convincing (see all of the results of his article). Perhaps his criticism of Germany, Estonia, and his writings on the stimulus actions by the USA which turned out to be wrong would do it.