Paul Krugman is annoyed as the gap between what the Bush Administration's economic officials tell the public, the Congress, and reporters and what they tell economists, financiers, and business men widens...

Paul Krugman: A Credibility Problem : ...can Mr. Bush convince us that his latest tax cut is just the tonic the economy needs? There are several reasons to doubt whether he can pull it off. For one thing, economists outside the administration, even those who always find ways to praise whatever he proposes, can't see what this tax cut has to do with the economy's immediate problems.

This has led to a striking dissonance between what administration officials say on TV -- where it's still all about jobs -- and what they say when speaking to knowledgeable audiences. In background briefings for reporters, at the Davos conference this past weekend and wherever else they encounter people who might actually know something about the numbers, officials now pooh-pooh concerns about the state of the job market. Never mind that, they say, our plan is all about increasing long-run growth.

Um, but what about "economic security"?

The administration's credibility problem is made worse by the high casualty rate among top economic officials, and the uninspiring quality of their replacements. Today is the first day of hearings for John Snow, the administration's choice for Treasury secretary. One official I spoke to was rueful: "I thought Paul O'Neill wasn't suited to being Treasury secretary; he'd have been better off running a railroad. Now they've picked a man who ran a railroad."...