If you had any doubts about where key figures in Europe are going, this op-ed by Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, in The Financial Times should clear them up: “Governments in and beyond the euro zone need not just to commit to fiscal consolidation and improved competitiveness — they need to start delivering on these now,” he wrote on Sept. 5.

He continued: “There is some concern that fiscal consolidation, a smaller public sector and more flexible labor markets could undermine demand in these countries in the short term. I am not convinced that this is a foregone conclusion, but even if it were, there is a trade-off between short-term pain and long-term gain. An increase in consumer and investor confidence and a shortening of unemployment lines will in the medium term cancel out any short-term dip in consumption.” So, austerity now now now — none of this waiting until recovery is well underway. And never mind concerns about deepening the slump — the confidence fairy will come to our rescue, and anyway, pain is good for the soul.

What’s so striking about all this, from an economist’s point of view, is the absence of anything that sounds like a model. It’s all about virtue and vice, with just the assumption that virtue will be rewarded.

And when the finance minister of Europe’s largest economy thinks and talks like this, at a time when the core euro economies are in a liquidity trap while the peripheral economies are desperately in need of strong external demand to make their austerity programs workable, it’s hard to see what hope there is for the euro project.

The Peasants Are Revolting The political blogger Atrios recently spotted another article claiming that we’re having trouble because those pesky voters won’t support what the wise men know is good for them. I’ve written about this before, with comparable disgust.

“Elections in the next two years may prompt politicians to delay painful action such as budget cuts, said Tina Fordham, Citigroup Inc.’s senior global political analyst in London,” according to a Bloomberg article published Sept. 6. “France holds its presidential contest in May, the U.S. follows in November and Germany, Japan and Italy vote in 2013. ‘The use of sticking-plaster policy measures to address deeper economic challenges is all but inevitable for the mature democracies,’ Fordham said.” Look, I don’t want to wax all sentimental about the genius of the common man. But the fact is that both the origins of this crisis and its perpetuation overwhelmingly reflect the errors of the very people now lamenting the annoyances of democracy that keep them from imposing their preferred policies.

As Atrios wrote in his blog, Eschaton, on the same day, the euro was very much a About Paul Krugman Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed page and continues as a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 2008.

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes, including “The Return of Depression Economics” (2008) and “The Conscience of a Liberal” (2007).

top-down, elite-imposed project; and it’s the European Central Bank and the German finance ministry, not the unwashed masses, that have advocated for the austerity-for-all agenda that is pushing the euro system to the edge as we speak.

Meanwhile, in the United States it was the Very Serious People who declared that our top priority must be deficit reduction now now now, and have left us slashing spending to fend off imaginary bond vigilantes at a time of mass unemployment and record low interest rates.

Meanwhile, voters may be confused and not all that well informed, but if anything they are making more sense on job creation than anyone in a real position of influence.

Suppose Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the E.C.B., and Mr. Schäuble were free to dictate fiscal policy for all of Europe, never mind the elected governments; suppose Alan Simpson, the former co-chairman of President Obama’s debt commission, were in a position to dictate American fiscal policy without that legislative nonsense. Do you really think we’d be in better shape? And more to the point: by blaming democracy, the people who have gotten everything wrong are letting themselves off the hook.

The elites on both sides of the Atlantic have messed up catastrophically, and need to face that fact.

Reader comments from nytimes.com

An economic model is the last thing Europe needs. If it hadn’t been for the erroneous models conceived by highly-paid economists, we wouldn’t be in this mess!

— Name withheld,

Spain Mr. Krugman, “experts” like you keep saying that countries must take on more debt to solve their problems, but without making plans for paying the money back. What do you think will happen when nations like China and Japan stop buying government bonds?

— O., Germany

At the start of the financial downturn it seemed that everyone was comparing it to the Great Depression and vowed not to make the same mistakes again. Then they proceeded to make the same mistakes again. What went wrong?

— S., Australia

By destroying the middle class, the United States has become the world’s largest third-world economy.

— Name withheld, Canada

Mr. Krugman, if you cannot see that demand is declining in the United States more than it is declining in Europe, well, God help America.

— S. K. Modi, India

Europe’s economy is not based on consumption — it is fundamentally different from that of the United States, where consumption alone accounts for some 70 percent of economic activity. The euro project, which focuses on affordable access to good public education and health care, and provides an adequate safety net for pensioners, is alive and kicking. Any civilized society would have it no other way.

— D., Italy

Until the last quarter, Germany’s economy was doing well, with the unemployment rate at its lowest in years.

It’s easy to call for austerity when things are going well. But Mr. Schäuble would call for austerity even if things weren’t going well (as he did back in the 1990s, when the German economy was hurting). The bottom line: Mr.Schäuble doesn’t understand economics.

Sadly, most German economists do not seem to understand economics either.

— G., Germany