He goes further, embracing ideas once thought the exclusive preserve of the street protesters: the I.M.F. and the United States Treasury Department, he contends, pursue the interests of the big investment banks rather than the poor most directly affected by their macroeconomic solutions to crises like those in East Asia and Russia.
He is, in other words, sidestepping the macroeconomic solutions that some advocates insist are the only way to solve the problem of poverty -- better wages, a national jobs program, a bigger earned-income tax credit -- in favor of programs that in one way or another directly affect the performance of the neighborhood's poor children.
But inequality exists in a number of economic domains, including education, health, housing, and employment that broad brush macroeconomic solutions will not necessarily address.
In a recent speech, Toshihiko Fukui, the new governor of the Bank of Japan, claimed that macroeconomic textbooks offer no solution to deflation.
No macroeconomic theorizing can answer these questions.
And Mr Krugman doesn't argue that the crisis changed our understanding of the nature of the business cycle which is what motivated economists to call for macroeconomic intervention while embracing market solutions at the micro level.But let's take a step back.
Solution methods for macroeconomic models.
The market for commercial floor-cleaning equipment is large estimated at roughly $5 billion a year globally and macroeconomic forces favor the adoption of autonomous solutions.
All of the macroeconomic problems are massive, require creative political solutions appealing to different constituencies with different interests (think Republicans vs. Democrats; or wealthy Germans vs. impoverished Greeks), and must artfully convince a skeptical investing public that the solutions have real teeth and are sustainable.
Mr. Knapp of Barclays put it this way: "It seems unlikely the tax cliff negotiations will produce a comprehensive solution that will significantly reduce the macroeconomic risks related to fiscal and monetary policy for 2013, at least not without the markets falling sharply and forcing compromise.
