Paul Krugman: Bad Ideas That Will Never Die

Three decades ago, when I went off for my year in the United States government, an old hand explained to me the nature of the job: it was mostly about fighting bad ideas. And these bad ideas, he went on to explain, were like cockroaches: no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they keep coming back. Lovely image, isn't it? But I have been noticing a lot of cockroaches lately.

I recently gave a book talk at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, which was actually a lovely event. But sure enough, there were people in the audience insisting that former Congressman Barney Frank, as part of a powerless Democratic minority in the House of Representatives, nonetheless somehow caused the recent housing bubble and the whole economic crisis; years of careful, evidence-based refutations from economists have made no impact at all on these people.