Stock markets went completely to shit today. Not a good sign. But if you want to read something really apocalyptic, we have bigshot conservative talking head David Frum wondering aloud on his blog:

Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?

Ack. So you’re suggesting maybe everything the U.S. and European governments and all those global financial institutions have been doing to pull the globe (or at least most of the northern hemisphere) out of recession has been a big ol’ mistake?

Whoops. Sucks to be you. And, well, sucks to be us too. Thanks for that.

That said, I guess it’s good to see there’s at least one rational mind on the right-hand side of things who’s finally realizing it’s the liberal economists they should’ve been listening to all along and not those goons from the Chicago School. Hope it’s contagious. (But it probably isn’t.)

Meanwhile, what are those liberal economists saying?

Just that Obama’s debt deal compromise thingy is bullshit. Caving to the Tea Party and constricting government right now by cutting services and not raising taxes is bullshit. That, as Krugman points out, “Policy makers have been worrying about the wrong things, obsessing over deficits when the real problem was lack of growth.”

And that these are exactly the same mistakes that were made in the early ’30s and the key reason that the Great Depression was so Great (but not in a good way).

In other words, while Regina happily blunders along in this “boomtime” we keep hearing about, the rest of the world is burning. And if you don’t find today’s market plunge convincing, Krugman points to the growing likelihood of a total collapse of the eurozone.

This Summer Of Recovery really isn’t looking like it’s going to end on a high note.

Anyway, after all that, you’re probably wondering how Krugman replied to Frum’s sorta mea culpa? With a, “Yeah, you should’ve listened.”