Let's review the tape:
Of course he's not only an asshole but like all true right-wingers, a shameless asshole:
Gramm and Hubbard: What a Romney Recovery Might Look Like
Krugman's reponse:
A number of people have asked me to respond to this Hubbard-Gramm piece on the Reagan recovery versus the Obama recovery, and why it proves that right-wing economics roolz. But I already did respond. When? In February 2008 — back when people like Hubbard and Gramm were denying that there was any recession at all. In fact, as late as July 2008 Gramm declared that all we had was a “mental recession”, and that America had become a “nation of whiners”. So, more than four years ago I predicted a very slow recovery. Why? Because recessions like those of 1990-91, 2001, and 2007-2009 have very different origins from recessions like 1974-75 or the double-dip recession of 1979-82. The old recessions were more or less deliberately created by the Fed via tight money to control inflation, which meant that you had a V-shaped recovery once the Fed decided that we had suffered enough and loosened the reins. The new recessions all reflected private-sector overreach, which is much harder to make up for.