Orszag’s maiden voyage at the New York Times entitled “One Nation, Two Deficits,” is full of myths, and that’s the polite way to say it. I’ll review these and comment on each of them one-by-one.

The G-20 members should be selected by objective criteria, GDP rank based on purchasing power parity, rather than the way they were actually chosen, by the G-7 and/or the 1999 U.S. and Canadian finance ministers. Included is a chart showing how the proposed G-20 and the current one differ.

Deficit terrorism has lately turned to deficit hysteria. With Germany leading the way, most Eurozone countries appear ready to implement austerity programs. The United Kingdom, under its new Conservative/Liberal overlords, appears to be taken with austerity too. And Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have all jumped on the bandwagon. But it doesn’t look like this bandwagon will include Brazil and Argentina. They’ve had their fill of austerity, and the prescriptions of the IMF, and they’re not taking on neo-liberal ideology again any time soon. The question is what should the United States do?

Paul Krugman agrees that “We’re Not Greece.” But he only appears to have a glimmer of an understanding of the most important reason why this is so. We hope this commentary on his op-ed piece improves his understanding, and that of other deficit doves who appear to disagree with the deficit terrorists, but who in the end share their false basic assumptions about deficits, national debts, fiscal responsibility, and fiscal sustainability.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, things are indeed rotten in the State of Denmark (and Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and almost everywhere else in the euro zone). An entire continent appears determined to commit collective hara kiri, whilst the rest of the world is encouraged to draw precisely the wrong kinds of lessons from Europe’s self-imposed economic meltdown. So-called respectable policy makers continue to legitimize the continent’s fully-fledged embrace of austerity on the allegedly respectable grounds of “fiscal sustainability”.

The latest to pronounce on this matter is the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. This is a particularly sad, as the BOE – the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street – has actually played a uniquely constructive role amongst central banks in the area of financial services reform proposals. King, and his associate, Andrew Haldane, Executive Director for Financial Stability at the Bank of England, have been outspoken critics of “too big to fail” banks, and the asymmetric nature of banker compensation (“heads I win, tails the taxpayer loses”). This stands in marked contrast to America’s feckless triumvirate of Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and Ben Bernanke, none of whom appears to have encountered a banker’s bonus that they didn’t like.

For a present situation built upon risk and debt, it’s important that we be aware of situations that might escalate before the Powers that Be start talking about the End of the World.