For months now the Noble-prize winning economist has been decrying the conventional wisdom that governments need to cut deficit spending, arguing that continuing stimulus is what’s needed to boost a still-shaky economy. Now the on-the-ground situation in Ireland seems to bolster his argument. Two years after the country imposed deep austerity measures, the country’s economy is in worse shape because of it.

Despite its strenuous efforts, Ireland has been thrust into the same ignominious category as Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. It now pays a hefty three percentage points more than Germany on its benchmark bonds, in part because investors fear that the austerity program, by retarding growth and so far failing to reduce borrowing, will make it harder for Dublin to pay its bills rather than easier.

As Krugman interprets:

That’s why the Irish debacle is so important. All that savage austerity was supposed to bring rewards; the conventional wisdom that this would happen is so strong that one often reads news reports claiming that it has, in fact, happened, that Ireland’s resolve has impressed and reassured the financial markets. But the reality is that nothing of the sort has taken place: virtuous, suffering Ireland is gaining nothing.

Unfortunately, as the New York Times reports, the leaders of the G-20 nations are continuing the “cut and ye shall be rewarded mania.” Hopefully we don’t all end up paying far more than whatever deficits would have been incurred.

The New York Times has an informative article on how Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is trying to claim the federal government’s response to the Gulf oil spill is being undermined by bureaucratic dithering. Problems aside, in reality, the state is responsible for much of the relief planning, and their planning – thanks in part to funding cuts – was incomplete and unready.

As a result of this lack of planning, Jindal et al. want to rush forward with an emergency engineering response that will take months to complete and cost hundreds of millions of dollars…even as experts think it won’t work.

If the White House were proposing this plan, Jindal would ridicule it as undercooked pork, a la volcano monitoring. But apparently asking the experts to weigh in before committing to throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into this crude pit is the height of nanny-state incompetence.

Evan Osnos has a profile in the New Yorker of Chicago’s Mayor Daley, “The Daley Show,” which does a good job of cataloguing the man and all of his frustrating complications. But Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader has a compelling comeback, “Taking the New Yorker for a Ride,” charging that the profile falls for the typically myth-making surrounding the mayor.

My favorite line in Joravsky’s piece? The one citing people’s weakness for the argument that Chicago’s success relative to other rust-belt towns is the result of Daley’s strong-man rule.

But I’ll just ask our visiting correspondents to reconsider the pervasive view that Chicago needs a temperamental tyrant who oversees a corrupt and inefficient regime in order to get anything done.

In the same issue of the Reader, reporter Mick Dumke explores why the time might be right for Daley to be replaced in “Time for a Revolution.” I doubt it, but I hope so.

Reading the New York Times obituary of British politician Michael Foot, about whom I know little, I was struck by the following quote:

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress,” he declared in a campaign speech. “No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer, ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.”

It’s reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt’s “I Welcome Their Hatred,” a powerful statement of identification with the lower classes. It’s sad that even in the wake of the finance-led economic collapse–and citizen-funded bailout–nothing as forthright can be heard today, especially from our political leaders. They seem more concerned with massaging the money train to its next collapse.

Dan Froomkin, the reporter nobly exiled from the Washington Post, has a blistering piece on Rahm Emanuel in the Huffington Post. My hopes for Obama’s Presidency took a pretty big hit when he tagged Rahm as Chief of Staff; I haven’t seen much since then to make me think I was wrong.