No one here expects Americans who have anything to do with politics to be mild-mannered and level-headed, so when Paul Krugman came to London in May to promote his book End This Depression Now! (Norton, £14.99), even my landlord was impressed. Becoming a political pundit was never Krugman’s aspiration. You can tell he considers it slumming. His technocratic style suits American liberals’ idea of themselves as sober experts who could fix the country’s problems if only the loudmouths would stop obstructing them. But he also fits the right-wing caricature of liberals as tweedy snobs who never leave a college campus and never tire of saying taxes should be raised.

LRB 19 July 2012 | PDF Download