Links 5/16/2011

• The Destruction of Economic Facts – Hernando do Soto.  Just like in other banana republics.  The Wall Street shell game:  first you see your money, then you don’t.
• Krugman’s column on the financial crisis in Sunday’s Izvestia is shocking and appalling - Lambert Strether (h/t/ Yves).  I have commented before on Krugman’s “living too close to New York” bias.  Here Lambert Strether shows just how far up their fundaments the New York establishment has their heads, some of them anyway.  Just for good measure, I’m going to link to a Paul Farrell column as counterweight.
• 10 Doomsday trends America can’t survive – Paul Farrell, MarketWatch
• Economics in Crisis [Denial] – J. Bradford Delong.  What’s really wonderful about Delong’s comments is that he pretends the economists knew all along what was going to happen, only they didn’t think it would be so bad.  This is really rich as the economists missed all the signature characteristics of imminent depression like increasing income and wealth inequality, asset bubbles, and massive increases of aggregate debt-to-income ratios.  A more complacent and self-satisfied economist is hard to conceive of—the nail in the coffin being his defense of Larry Summers’ defense of economists.  They just got distracted… by being whoring agents of the thieving Wall Street elite.  Be a man and call a spade a spade, will ya, Brad?